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Jo Stafford – Make Love To Me 1954
Jo Stafford
Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music, and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song “You Belong to Me” topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart, and the first by a female artist to do so.
| Jo Stafford | |
|---|---|
| Picture of Stafford from the New York Sunday News, September 21, 1947 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Jo Elizabeth Stafford |
| Born | November 12, 1917 Coalinga, California, U.S. |
| Died | July 16, 2008 (aged 90) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Traditional pop |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Years active | 1930s–1982 |
| Labels | CapitolColumbiaDotCorinthian |
| Spouse(s) | John Huddleston (1937–div.1943) Paul Weston (1952–d.1996) |
Born in remote oil-rich Coalinga, California, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley, Stafford made her first musical appearance at age 12. While still at high school, she joined her two older sisters to form a vocal trio named the Stafford Sisters, who found moderate success on radio and in film. In 1938, while the sisters were part of the cast of Twentieth Century Fox‘s production of Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Stafford met the future members of the Pied Pipers and became the group’s lead singer. Bandleader Tommy Dorsey hired them in 1939 to perform vocals with his orchestra. From 1940 to 1942, the group often performed with Dorsey’s new male singer, Frank Sinatra.
In addition to her singing with the Pied Pipers, Stafford was featured in solo performances with Dorsey. After leaving the group in 1944, she recorded a series of pop songs now regarded as standards for Capitol Records and Columbia Records. Many of her recordings were backed by the orchestra of Paul Weston. She also performed duets with Gordon MacRae and Frankie Laine. Her work with the United Service Organizations giving concerts for soldiers during World War II earned her the nickname “G.I. Jo”. Starting in 1945, Stafford was a regular host of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio series The Chesterfield Supper Club and later appeared in television specials—including two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the UK.
Stafford married twice, first in 1937 to musician John Huddleston (the couple divorced in 1943), then in 1952 to Paul Weston, with whom she had two children. She and Weston developed a comedy routine in which they assumed the identity of an incompetent lounge act named Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, parodying well-known songs. The act proved popular at parties and among the wider public when the couple released an album as the Edwardses in 1957. In 1961, the album Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris won Stafford her only Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and was the first commercially successful parody album. Stafford largely retired as a performer in the mid-1960s, but continued in the music business. She had a brief resurgence in popularity in the late 1970s when she recorded a cover of the Bee Gees hit, “Stayin’ Alive” as Darlene Edwards. In the 1990s, she began re-releasing some of her material through Corinthian Records, a label founded by Weston. She died in 2008 in Century City, Los Angeles, and is interred with Weston at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. Her work in radio, television, and music is recognized by three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early yearsEdit
The singing Stafford Sisters in 1941
Jo Elizabeth Stafford was born in Coalinga, California, in 1917, to Grover Cleveland Stafford and Anna Stafford (née York)—a second cousin of World War I hero Sergeant Alvin York.[1][note 1] She was the third of four children.[4][5] She had two older sisters, Christine and Pauline, and one younger sister, Betty.[6][7] Both her parents enjoyed singing and sharing music with their family.[1] Stafford’s father hoped for success in the California oil fields when he moved his family from Gainesboro, Tennessee, but worked in a succession of unrelated jobs. Her mother was an accomplished banjo player, playing and singing many of the folk songs that influenced Stafford’s later career.[4][8] Anna insisted that her children should take piano lessons, but Jo was the only one among her sisters who took a keen interest in it, and through this, she learned to read music.[9]
Stafford’s first public singing appearance was in Long Beach, where the family lived when she was 12. She sang “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms“, a Stafford family favorite.[10] Her second was far more dramatic. As a student at Long Beach Polytechnic High School with the lead in the school musical, she was rehearsing on stage when the 1933 Long Beach earthquake destroyed part of the school.[11] With her mother’s encouragement, Stafford originally planned to become an opera singer and studied voice as a child, taking private lessons from Foster Rucker, an announcer on California radio station KNX.[12][13][note 2] Because of the Great Depression, she abandoned that idea and joined her older sisters Christine and Pauline in a popular vocal group the Stafford Sisters.[14][15] The two older Staffords were already part of a trio with an unrelated third member when the act got a big booking at Long Beach’s West Coast Theater. Pauline was too ill to perform, and Jo was drafted in to take her place so they could keep the engagement. She asked her glee club teacher for a week’s absence from school, saying her mother needed her at home, and this was granted. The performance was a success, and Jo became a permanent member of the group.[16][note 3]
The Staffords’ first radio appearance was on Los Angeles station KHJ as part of The Happy Go Lucky Hour when Jo was 16, a role they secured after hopefuls at the audition were asked if they had their own musical accompanist(s). Christine Stafford said that Jo played piano, and the sisters were hired, though she had not previously given a public piano performance.[9][17] The Staffords were subsequently heard on KNX’s The Singing Crockett Family of Kentucky, and California Melodies, a network radio show aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System.[1][9]While Stafford worked on The Jack Oakie Show, she met John Huddleston—a backing singer on the program, and they were married in October 1937.[16][18][note 4] The couple divorced in 1943.[19][20]
The sisters found work in the film industry as backup vocalists, and immediately after graduating from high school, Jo worked on film soundtracks.[8][20]The Stafford Sisters made their first recording,”Let’s Get Together and Swing” with Louis Prima, in 1936.[22][23][24] In 1937, Jo worked behind the scenes with Fred Astaire on the soundtrack of A Damsel in Distress, creating the arrangements for the film, and with her sisters she arranged the backing vocals for “Nice Work If You Can Get It“. Stafford said that her arrangement had to be adapted because Astaire had difficulty with some of the syncopation. In her words: “The man with the syncopated shoes couldn’t do the syncopated notes”.[9][25]
The Pied PipersEdit
By 1938, the Staffords were involved with Twentieth Century Fox’s production of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. The studio brought in many vocal groups to work on the film, including the Four Esquires, the Rhythm Kings, and the King Sisters, who began to sing and socialized between takes. The Stafford Sisters, the Four Esquires and the Rhythm Kings became a new vocal group called the Pied Pipers.[8][26] Stafford later said, “We started singing together just for fun, and these sessions led to the formation of an eight-voice singing group that we christened ‘The Pied Pipers'”.[27] The group consisted of eight members, including Stafford—John Huddleston, Hal Hooper, Chuck Lowry, Bud Hervey, George Tait, Woody Newbury, and Dick Whittinghill.[28]
The Pied Pipers in 1944: Pictured here are Charles Lowry, Jo Stafford, Clark Yocum, and John Huddleston,
As the Pied Pipers, they worked on local radio and movie soundtracks.[29] When Alyce and Yvonne King threw a party for their boyfriends’ visit to Los Angeles, the group was invited to perform.[8][30] The King Sisters’ boyfriends were Tommy Dorsey’s arrangers Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston, who became interested in the group.[8] Weston said the group’s vocals were unique for its time and that their vocal arrangements were much like those for orchestral instruments.[31]
Weston persuaded Dorsey to audition the group in 1938, and the eight drove together to New York City.[8] Dorsey liked them and signed them for 10 weeks. After their second broadcast, the sponsor visiting from overseas heard the group sing “Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood Mama)”. Until this point, the sponsor knew only that he was paying for Dorsey’s program and that its ratings were very good; transcription discs mailed to him by his advertising agency always arrived broken. He thought that the performance was terrible, and pressured the advertising agency representing his brand to fire the group.[4][30][31] They stayed in New York for several months, landing one job that paid them $3.60 each, and they recorded some material for RCA Victor Records.[8] Weston later said that Stordahl and he felt responsibility for the group, since Weston had arranged their audition with Dorsey.[30] After six months in New York and with no work there for them, the Pied Pipers returned to Los Angeles, where four of their members left the group to seek regular employment. Shortly afterwards, Stafford received a telephone call from Dorsey, who told her he wished to hire the group, but wanted only four of them, including Stafford. After she agreed to the offer, the remaining Pied Pipers—Stafford, Huddleston, Lowry, and Wilson—traveled to Chicago in 1939. The decision led to success for the group, especially Stafford, who featured in both collective and solo performances with Dorsey’s orchestra.[8][31][32][33]
When Frank Sinatra joined the Dorsey band, the Pied Pipers provided backing vocals for his recordings. Their version of “I’ll Never Smile Again” topped the Billboard Chart for 12 weeks in 1940 and helped to establish Sinatra as a singer.[26][34][35] Stafford, Sinatra, and the Pied Pipers toured extensively with Dorsey during their three years as part of his orchestra, giving concerts at venues across the United States.[36] Stafford made her first solo recording—”Little Man with a Candy Cigar”—in 1941, after Dorsey agreed to her request to record solo.[4][37] Her public debut as a soloist with the band occurred at New York’s Hotel Astor in May 1942.[38]Bill Davidson of Collier’s reported in 1951 that because Stafford weighed in excess of 180 lb, Dorsey was reluctant to give her a leading vocal role in his orchestra, believing she was not sufficiently glamorous for the part.[16] However, Peter Levinson‘s 2005 biography of Dorsey offers a different account. Stafford recalls that she was overweight, but Dorsey did not try hiding her because of it.[39]
In November 1942, the Pied Pipers had a disagreement with Dorsey when he fired Clark Yocum, a guitarist and vocalist who had replaced Billy Wilson in the lineup, when he mistakenly gave the bandleader misdirections at a railroad station in Portland, Oregon. The remaining three members then quit in an act of solidarity.[31][40] At the time, the number-one song in the United States was “There Are Such Things” by Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers.[31] Sinatra also left Dorsey that year.[41]Following their departure from the orchestra, the Pied Pipers played a series of vaudeville dates in the Eastern United States; when they returned to California, they were signed to appear in the 1943 Universal Pictures movie Gals Incorporated. From there, they joined the NBC Radio show Bob Crosby and Company.[42] In addition to working with Bob Crosby, they also appeared on radio shows hosted by Sinatra and Johnny Mercer, and were one of the first groups signed to Mercer’s new label, Capitol Records, which was founded in 1942.[26][34][43][44]Weston, who left Dorsey’s band in 1940 to work with Dinah Shore, became music director at Capitol.[8][45][46]
Solo careerEdit
Capitol Records and United Service OrganizationEdit
Jo Stafford, 1946
While Stafford was still working for Dorsey, Johnny Mercer told her, “Some day I’m going to have my own record company, and you’re going to record for me.”[4] She subsequently became the first solo artist signed to Capitol after leaving the Pied Pipers in 1944.[4][47] A key figure in helping Stafford to develop her solo career was Mike Nidorf, an agent who first heard her as a member of the Pied Pipers while he was serving as a captain in the United States Army. Having previously discovered artists such as Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Woody Herman, Nidorf was impressed by Stafford’s voice, and contacted her when he was demobilized in 1944. After she agreed to let him represent her, he encouraged her to reduce her weight and arranged a string of engagements that raised her profile and confidence.[16]
The success of Stafford’s solo career led to a demand for personal appearances, and from February 1945, she embarked on a six-month residency at New York’s La Martinique nightclub.[48][49][50] Her performance was well-received; an article in the July 1945 edition of Band Leadersmagazine described it as “sensational”, but Stafford did not enjoy singing before live audiences, and it was the only nightclub venue she ever played.[47][50][51] Speaking about her discomfort with live performances, Stafford told a 1996 interview with The New Yorker‘s Nancy Franklin, “I’m basically a singer, period, and I think I’m really lousy up in front of an audience—it’s just not me.”[47]
Stafford’s tenure with the United Service Organizations during World War II, which often had her perform for soldiers stationed in the U.S., led to her acquiring the nickname “G.I. Jo”.[14][30] On returning from the Pacific theater, a veteran told Stafford that the Japanese would play her records on loudspeakers in an attempt to make the U.S. troops homesick enough to surrender. She replied personally to all the letters she received from servicemen.[4][8][20] Stafford was a favorite of many servicemen during both World War II and the Korean War; her recordings received extensive airplay on the American Forces radio and in some military hospitals at lights-out. Stafford’s involvement with servicemen led to an interest in military history and a sound knowledge of it. Years after World War II, Stafford was a guest at a dinner party with a retired naval officer. When the discussion turned to a wartime action off Mindanao, the officer tried to correct Stafford, who held to her point. He countered her by saying, “Madame, I was there”. A few days after the party, Stafford received a note of apology from him, saying he had reread his logs and that she was correct.[4]
Chesterfield Supper Club, duets, and Voice of AmericaEdit
Jo Stafford with Tibetan buddhist thangka art from Tibet in 1946 New York City
Beginning on December 11, 1945, Stafford hosted the Tuesday and Thursday broadcasts of NBC musical variety radio program The Chesterfield Supper Club.[52][53][54] On April 5, 1946, the entire cast, including Stafford and Perry Como, participated in the first commercial radio broadcast from an airplane. The initial plan was to use the stand-held microphones used in studios, but when these proved to be problematic, the cast switched to hand-held microphones, which because of the plane’s cabin pressure became difficult to hold. Three flights were made that day; a rehearsal in the afternoon, then two in the evening—one for the initial 6:00 pm broadcast and another at 10:00 pm for the West Coast broadcast.[55][56][57]
Stafford moved from New York to California in November 1946, continuing to host Chesterfield Supper Club from Hollywood.[53][58][59] In 1948, she restricted her appearances on the show to Tuesdays, and Peggy Lee hosted the Thursday broadcasts.[60] Stafford left the show when it was expanded to 30 minutes, making her final appearance on September 2, 1949. She returned to the program in 1954; it ended its run on NBC Radio the following year.[61] During her time with Chesterfield Supper Club, Stafford revisited some of the folk music she had enjoyed as a child. Weston, her conductor on the program, suggested using some of the folk music for the show. With her renewed interest in folk tunes came an interest in folklore; Stafford established a contest to award a prize to the best collection of American folklore submitted by a college student. The annual Jo Stafford Prize for American Folklore was handled by the American Folklore Society, with the first prize of $250 awarded in 1949.[1][62]
In 1954, James Conkling, president of Columbia Records, presented Stafford with a diamond-studded plaque to mark the sale of 25 million of her records.
Stafford continued to record. She duetted with Gordon MacRae on a number of songs. In 1948, their version of “Say Something Sweet to Your Sweetheart” sold over a million copies. The following year, they repeated their success with “My Happiness”, and Stafford and MacRae recorded “Whispering Hope” together.[8] Stafford began hosting a weekly program on Radio Luxembourg in 1950; working unpaid, she recorded the voice portions of the shows in Hollywood.[63] At the time, she was hosting Club Fifteen with Bob Crosby for CBS Radio.[1]
Weston moved from Capitol to Columbia Records, and in 1950, Stafford followed suit. Content and very comfortable working with him, Stafford had had a clause inserted in her contract with Capitol stating that if Weston left that label, she would automatically be released from her obligations to them.[8][47] When that happened, Capitol wanted Stafford to record eight more songs before December 15, 1950, and she found herself in the unusual situation of simultaneously working for two competing record companies, an instance that was very rare in an industry where musicians were seen as assets.[64] In 1954, Stafford became the second artist after Bing Crosby to sell 25 million records for Columbia.[19][65] She was presented with a diamond-studded disc to mark the occasion.[65]
In 1950, Stafford began working for Voice of America(VOA), the U.S. government broadcaster transmitting programmes overseas to undermine the influence of communism.[66] She presented a weekly show that aired in Eastern Europe, and Collier’s published an article about the program in its April 21, 1951, issue that discussed her worldwide popularity, including in countries behind the Iron Curtain. The article, titled “Jo Stafford: Her Songs Upset Joe Stalin“, earned her the wrath of the U.S. Communist Daily Worker newspaper, which published a column critical of Stafford and VOA.[16][26][67][note 5]
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