Born in Rochester, Minnesota on August 12 in 1925, Cynthia Gooding was a multilingual folksinger who made her name on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1950s.

She discovered folk music as a teenager while studying guitar in Mexico and gave her first public performance for a radio station in Mexico City in 1945. After moving to New York in 1947 she became a regular in the Greenwich Village cabaret clubs where she was discovered by Jac Holzman who signed her to his label Elektra Records. In April 1953 she released her first album Turkish And Spanish Folk Songs and went on to record five more albums for Elektra during the 50s including an album with actor and singer Theodore Bikel called A Young Man And A Maid Sing Love Songs Of Many Lands in 1958. She also performed at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959, which was co-founded by Bikel.

In addition to folksinging Gooding was also known as a radio personality, hosting the radio shows Cynthia And Sensible and Folksingers Choice on WBAI-FM. She famously interviewed a 20-year old Bob Dylan on the latter in 1962 just before the release of his debut album.

Gooding died of cancer in Kingston, New Jersey in 1988.

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