Editing Barbara Cook (section)

==Early life==
Cook was born in [[Atlanta]], the daughter of Nell (née Harwell) and Charles Bunyan Cook. Her father was a traveling hat salesman and her mother was an operator for [[Southern Bell]].<ref name="filmref">[http://www.filmreference.com/film/72/Barbara-Cook.html "Barbara Cook Biography"] filmreference.com, accessed September 6, 2011</ref> Her parents divorced when she was a child and, after her only sister died of [[whooping cough]], Barbara lived alone with her mother. She later described their relationship as "so close, too close. I slept with my mother until I came to New York. Slept in the same bed with her. That's just, it's wrong. But to me, it was the norm....As far as she was concerned, we were one person."<ref name="nymag"/> Though Barbara began singing at an early age, at the [[Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks|Elks Club]] and to her father over the phone, she spent three years after graduating from high school working as a typist.<ref name="nymag"/>