When a diva in a fire engine-red dress caressing every curve kicks off the pumps that complete her outfit, you know she’s down to earth. Her simple gesture says, “I’m going to get comfortable, and I want you to join me -- and besides, I still look cute!” For Phyllis Hyman’s fans, it was like an open invitation to curl up on a sofa with her. They knew they were in for a good time.

She’d tell some jokes, whistle the hell out of “Living All Alone,” throw out a catty comment about being mistaken for Angela Bofill and maybe even eat off your plate. But mostly, she’d pour out her heart in song: reinventing “Betcha By Golly Wow” or sharing hard-to-believe stuff about how she -- a woman who made brothers drool and shudder -- still couldn’t find a man.

But many missed the message in her music and her musings. They overlooked the serious side of her self-deprecating humor. They didn’t know that she was suffering from more than just some tired toes and weary feet. Her heart really was broken. Her curves had filled out more than she’d liked. Her brand of songstress was hitting sour notes in the mixed-up music business. And this thing called life? Well, it was much too much. So 10 years ago, she left fans waiting for her at the Apollo Theater in Harlem as she moved on to another stage.

Just days shy of her 46th birthday, Phyllis Hyman lay unconscious in her bed, a note and sleeping pills not far from her side. News of Hyman’s passing on June 30, 1995, ruled “an intentional overdose,” cast a pall over the Apollo and far-flung corners of the earth.

Reflecting on her legacy on the 10th anniversary of her death, many believe that she remains just as popular as she was in life -- and Hyman could pack a house.  “Her staying power is her style, her tone and her personality,” says Norman Connors, who gave the singer her first big break as part of his “Starship” tour in the ‘70s.

“At that point in time,” points out Will Downing, “it was about real music, and it was about real singing. That’s not necessarily the credo of the recording artists of today. She had a very unique sound, and she had a warm voice. She had a big voice.”

Hyman remains a presence on the airwaves, especially on jazz and “Quiet Storm” formats; her posthumous and earlier albums sell well; and bootleggers can’t keep her DVDs in stock. She resonates with a new generation of singers, including Erykah Badu, Faith Evans and Mary J. Blige. And artists like Jean Carne continue to pay tribute to her in concert or on their own CDs. Downing, for example, said he put “I Don’t Want to Lose You” on his Invitation Only CD because her interpretation touched him. “She just sung the hell out of the song.”

Her interpretive and improvisational skills were so good, Roy Ayers added, that she could do that even when she didn’t know the words, like when he put her on the spot at Blues Alley in Washington. Spying Hyman in the crowd, Ayers coaxed her onstage to join in his version of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” When she warned him that she was fuzzy on the lyrics, he replied that he’d whisper them in her ear, and she delivered an “incredible” rendition.
 
“The one thing that I miss about Phyllis is her whistling,” said pianist and keyboardist Onaje Allen Gumbs, whose arrangement of “Betcha by Golly Wow” became Hyman’s signature song and opened more doors for him in the process. She sang the hit so passionately, Gumbs added, that she recorded the wrong lyrics in the second verse. But it made no never-mind, because other artists moved by her version later repeated the mistake.

“She kind of epitomizes what a singer or musician should be -- just emotional about everything,” explains Downing, who first opened for Hyman in 1990. “If she was really feeling a song, everybody in the audience would be crying.”

That’s one of the reasons that Hyman remains the favorite vocalist of Marilyn Wilson, a housing assistant in New York. “I haven’t been able to find a replacement,” says Wilson, who has attended at least 15 of her concerts and was waiting outside the Apollo when Hyman failed to show. She later stood two hours in line to attend her memorial service.

Wilson has compiled the ultimate Phyllis Hyman collection. “Her CDs do not collect dust,” she says with a laugh. For fans like Wilson, Hyman sang the soundtrack of their lives -- the highest highs, the lowest lows and all the funny notes in between. “Her songs are so meaningful,” says Wilson, who declares “The Answer is You” and the entire Prime of My Life CD as being custom-made for her.

Pittsburgh-born and Philly-bred, Hyman was one of those artists who didn’t need new material to draw a crowd. It had been that way since the mid-‘70s, when she created a buzz on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at places like Mikell’s and Russ Brown’s, where word-of-mouth drew Connors, Gumbs and Carne among the curiousity-seekers trying to find out what the fuss was all about.

Gumbs didn’t believe the hype when he first saw a glamour shot of Hyman on signs advertising her appearance at Russ Brown’s. He thought that she looked like a Vogue model and was too gorgeous to be too talented. But after she opened her mouth, Gumbs admits, “I became a groupie after that.” Connors was also taken with Hyman’s talent and approached her about working with him. He was pleased to discover that she was “ultra professional” and could record a song in one take.

“If you close your eyes and listen to her voice, you would think of chinchilla and mink and diamond and pearls,” Carne recalled. “She had a gorgeous tonal quality.”

As Hyman’s solo career and venues grew, she remained a fixture in places like the Blue Note in Greenwich Village or Blues Alley in D.C., where one of the house specialties is a shrimp dish that bears her name. Spike Lee featured Hyman in “School Daze,” and she was nominated for a Tony Award for her turn as Ella in the Broadway tribute to Duke Ellington, “Sophisticated Ladies.”

Hyman stood tall in all of these roles, not just because she was about six feet when barefoot – more when she topped her full mane of copper curls with expansive crowns (She could wear a hat.) Hyman had the type of presence and confidence that made it seem as if she loved life and it loved her back.

That’s the Phyllis Hyman that Ayers remembers -- the one who traded headlining spots with him and strolled down Broadway, sharing cashews, laughs and observations on passers-by. “She was smart and witty and had a funny kind of sarcasm,” he said.

But it turns out that Hyman may have suffered from bipolar disorder, which can cause people to swing from a euphoric high to a depressive low with suicidal thoughts. Hyman told Jean Carne that her mother was also manic depressive. Carne says that haunting clues were in songs like “Living in Confusion” and “I Refuse to Be Lonely,” released months after her death.

“I remember her agonizing about being misunderstood,” said Carne, explaining that Hyman’s assertiveness and grand personality masked her caring, sensitive side. “I think a lot of the problem that she had before she took her life had to do with failed relationships, and she had the ‘weight problem.’ She would gain the weight, but she would lose it in a heartbeat.”

“She suffered from drug abuse for the longest time,” adds Carne, who prayed with Hyman daily for a period of time in person and by phone. Hyman had gone through counseling as well as Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, Carne said.

Various artists noted that Hyman increasingly became bitter and was upset that she began taking a backseat to singers-of-the-moment. In many ways, her up-tempo dance hit “Don’t Wanna Change the World” symbolized the concessions she had to make to survive in a changing music world. “She was always complaining that she never got her due, and I’d have to agree,” Carne said. “But I don’t think she realized what high esteem her public held her in.”

June 30, 1995 “was a very uneasy day for me,” Gumbs said. He and a few other friends were headed to Hyman’s place to check on her that day, but they were too late. Hyman had also sent her assistants out on errands as a ruse.

“It’s unfortunate that we had to lose her,” says Jon Lucien, who invited Hyman to sing on his Premonition album. “There’s only one Phyllis Hyman, just like there’s one Sarah Vaughn and one Lena Horne. They may have a lot of little offspring, but they’re not like the original.”

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Yanick Rice Lamb, who teaches journalism at Howard University, is the co-author of Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson and Rise & Fly: Tall Tales and Mostly True Rules of Bid Whist.