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Showing posts with label Jo Stafford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jo Stafford. Show all posts
March 13, 2025
20,000 vinyl LPs 382: Jonathan & Darlene Edwards ~ In Paris
~
vinyl LP front cover
photo of album cover by Styrous®
Today is the birthday of American pianist, arranger, composer, and conductor Paul Weston who worked in music and television from the 1930s to the 1970s, pioneering mood music and becoming known as "the Father of Mood Music".
Weston and his wife, Jo Stafford, conceived a routine to entertain their friends at parties in the 1950s that involved Weston playing songs on
the piano in unconventional rhythms, while Stafford sang off-key in a
high pitched voice. The two of them released five albums and one single as Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, and their 1960 album, Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris won that year's Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
Jonathan and Darlene Edwards ~ In Paris sits quite comfortably next to my copy of Florence Foster Jenkins ~ The Glory (????) of the Human Voice (link below).
date & photographer unknown
Weston and Stafford appeared on television twice as Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. In 1958, they were guests on the Jack Benny television program Shower of Stars, and in 1960 on The Garry Moore Show.
Shower of Stars - 1958
Their final album, Darlene Remembers Duke, Jonathan Plays Fats was released in 1982, on Corinthian Records – Cor-117.
Tracklist:
Side 1:
Side 1:
A1 - I Love Paris - 2:50
A2 - Valentine - 1:31
A3 - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams - 3:05
A4 - La Vie En Rose - 2:10
A5 - The River Seine - 2:10
A6 - April In Paris - 2:51
A2 - Valentine - 1:31
A3 - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams - 3:05
A4 - La Vie En Rose - 2:10
A5 - The River Seine - 2:10
A6 - April In Paris - 2:51
Side 2:
B1 - The Poor People Of Paris, written by Monnot/Lawrence
B2 - The Last Time I Saw Paris, written by Kern/Hammerstein - 2:47
B3 - Autumn Leaves, written by Mercer/Kosma - 2:28
B4 - Paris In The Spring, written by Gordon/Revel - 2:26
B5 - Mademoiselle De Paree, written by Durand/Parish - 2:16
B6 - Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup, written by Sosenko - 3:06
Companies, etc.
Published By – Buxton Hill Music Corp.
Published By – Harms, Inc.
Published By – Remick Music Corp.
Published By – Reg Connelly Music, Inc.
Published By – T.B. Harms Co.
Published By – Ardmore Music Corp.
Published By – DeSylva, Brown & Henderson, Inc.
Published By – Mills Music, Inc.
Published By – Chappell & Co., Inc.
Pressed By – RCA Records Pressing Plant, Rockaway
Credits:
Liner Notes – Jonathan Edwards (5)
Notes:
Remastered from original tapes this LP uses "Synchro-Kinetic Sound" processing.
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Rights Society: ASCAP
Rights Society (B3, B5): BIEM
Matrix / Runout (A-Side Label): Z4RS-0512
Matrix / Runout (B-Side Label): Z4RS-0513
Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout Etching): Z4RS-0512-1-B R
Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout Etching): Z4RS-0513-1-B R
Rights Society (B3, B5): BIEM
Matrix / Runout (A-Side Label): Z4RS-0512
Matrix / Runout (B-Side Label): Z4RS-0513
Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout Etching): Z4RS-0512-1-B R
Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout Etching): Z4RS-0513-1-B R
Jonathan And Darlene Edwards – In Paris
Label: Corinthian Records – Cor-103, Corinthian Records – COR 103
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered
Country: US
Released: 1970
Genre: Non-Music, Pop
Style: Comedy, Vocal, Parody
Viewfinder links:
Florence Foster Jenkins ~
September 8, 2020
Patsy Cline ~ Still Walkin' After Midnight!
~
Under the direction of producer Owen Bradley, her musical sound shifted and she achieved consistent success. The 1961 single I Fall to Pieces was her first to top the Billboard country chart. As the song became a hit, Cline was severely injured in an automobile accident, which caused her to spend a month in the hospital. After recovering, her next single release Crazy, written by Willie Nelson, would also become a major hit.
Between 1962 and 1963, Cline had hits with She's Got You, When I Get Through with You, So Wrong and Leavin' on Your Mind. She also toured and headlined shows with more frequency.
Patsy Cline songs ~
Crazy
I Fall To Pieces
She's Got You
You Belong To Me
Your Cheatin' Heart
Walkin' After Midnight
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Patsy Cline - late 1962
photo by Shane Collins
Patsy Cline, was born Virginia Patterson Hensley on this day, September 8, in 1932, in Winchester, Virginia. She is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and one of the first country music artists to successfully cross over into pop music; her records are responsible for the advent of the Nashville Sound, which blended country and pop music and introduced country to a whole new audience in the early 1960s.
Regarding the Nashville sound, the record producer Owen Bradley stated:
According to the documentary Remembering Patsy, Cline couldn't read
sheet music. She was self-taught and had perfect pitch even as a
child. Her first professional performances began at the local WINC
radio station when she was fifteen. In the early 1950s, Cline began
appearing in a local band led by performer Bill Peer.
Various local appearances led to featured performances on Connie B. Gay's Town and Country television broadcasts. It also led to the signing of her first recording contract with the Four Star label in 1954.
She moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to further her career. Working with new manager Randy Hughes, Cline would become a member of the Grand Ole Opry and then moved to Decca Records in 1960.
Regarding the Nashville sound, the record producer Owen Bradley stated:
"Now we've cut out the fiddle and steel guitar and added choruses to country music. But it can't stop there. It always has to keep developing to keep fresh." -Owen Bradley
Owen Bradley & Patsy Cline - early 60's
photographer unknown
Patsy Cline & Bill Peer
date & photographer unknown
Various local appearances led to featured performances on Connie B. Gay's Town and Country television broadcasts. It also led to the signing of her first recording contract with the Four Star label in 1954.
She moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to further her career. Working with new manager Randy Hughes, Cline would become a member of the Grand Ole Opry and then moved to Decca Records in 1960.
Patsy Cline & Randy Hughes
date & photographer unknown
Under the direction of producer Owen Bradley, her musical sound shifted and she achieved consistent success. The 1961 single I Fall to Pieces was her first to top the Billboard country chart. As the song became a hit, Cline was severely injured in an automobile accident, which caused her to spend a month in the hospital. After recovering, her next single release Crazy, written by Willie Nelson, would also become a major hit.
Between 1962 and 1963, Cline had hits with She's Got You, When I Get Through with You, So Wrong and Leavin' on Your Mind. She also toured and headlined shows with more frequency.
In March 1963, Cline appeared at a benefit show in Kansas City, Kansas. To return home, she boarded a plane along with country performers Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and manager Randy Hughes. Upon hitting rough weather, the plane crashed outside of Camden, Tennessee, killing all those on board. Cline was thirty years old and her entire music career was only three years but what an impact she made on music!
In 1973, Patsy Cline became the first female performer to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In 1985 a biographical film on the life of Patsy Cline featuring her music was made with Jessica Lange as Cline; it also starred Ed Harris, Ann Wedgeworth, David Clennon, James Staley, Gary Basaraba, John Goodman, and P. J. Soles of Carrie and Rock 'n' Roll High School fame (link below).
In 1973, Patsy Cline became the first female performer to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In 1985 a biographical film on the life of Patsy Cline featuring her music was made with Jessica Lange as Cline; it also starred Ed Harris, Ann Wedgeworth, David Clennon, James Staley, Gary Basaraba, John Goodman, and P. J. Soles of Carrie and Rock 'n' Roll High School fame (link below).
Cline did a cover of You Belong To Me, one of my favorite songs from the fifties originally recorded by Joni James in February of 1952; it was covered later that year by Jo Stafford, Patti Page and Dean Martin. My favorite version was by Page (link below).
Viewfinder links:
Net links:
Wide Open Country ~ 10 Things You Didn't Know About Patsy Cline
YouTube links:
Patsy Cline songs ~
Crazy
I Fall To Pieces
She's Got You
You Belong To Me
Your Cheatin' Heart
Walkin' After Midnight
FOX4 News Kansas City ~ Remembering Patsy Cline
Patti Page ~ You Belong To Me Styrous® ~ Tuesday, September 8, 2020
July 21, 2020
Kay Starr ~ A shimmering light
~
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Starr among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire (links below).
date & photographer unknown
Kay Starr (Catherine Laverne Starks) was born on this date in 1922. I enjoyed
listening to her sing for decades. She had a voice that thrilled
me to the core. She could belt out a tune from any musical genre
whether it was pop, blues, jazz, or country. Her voice captivated listeners for over forty years.
She was born on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma. Her father, Harry, was an Iroquois native American; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and Native American heritage. I did not know any of these facts until I researched for this article.
She was born on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma. Her father, Harry, was an Iroquois native American; her mother, Annie, was of mixed Irish and Native American heritage. I did not know any of these facts until I researched for this article.
When the family moved to Dallas. Her mother raised chickens that Starr
serenaded in their coop. Her aunt Nora was impressed by her 7-year-old
niece's singing and arranged for her to sing on a Dallas radio station, WRR.
Starr finishing 3rd one week in a talent contest and placed first every
week thereafter. She was given a 15-minute radio show. She sang pop and
country songs with a piano accompaniment. By age 10 she was making $3 a
night, good pay during the Great Depression.
When the family moved again, to Memphis, she continued performing on the radio. She sang Western swing
music, still mostly a mix of country and pop. While working for Memphis
radio station WMPS, misspellings in her fan mail inspired her and her
parents to change her name to "Kay Starr".
In 1939, she worked with Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller, who hired her to replace Marion Hutton who was ill. With Miller she recorded Baby Me and Love with a Capital You. The songs were not a great success, in part because the band played in a key that, while appropriate for Hutton, did not suit Kay's vocal range.
She moved to Los Angeles and signed with the Wingy Manone band. From 1943 to 1945 she sang with the Charlie Barnet ensemble, retiring for a year after contracting pneumonia and later developing nodes on her vocal cords as a result of fatigue and overwork.
In 1946 Starr became a soloist and a year later signed a contract with Capitol Records. The label had a number of female singers signed up, including Peggy Lee, Ella Mae Morse, Jo Stafford, and Margaret Whiting, so it was hard to find her a niche of her own. In 1948 when the American Federation of Musicians was threatening a strike, Capitol wanted to have each of its singers record a back list for future release. Being junior to all these other artists meant that every song Starr wanted to sing was taken by her rivals on the label, leaving her a list of old songs which nobody else wanted to record.
In 1950 she returned home to Dougherty, Oklahoma, and heard a fiddle recording of Bonaparte's Retreat by Pee Wee King. She liked it so much that she wanted to record it. She contacted the publishing house for Roy Acuff in Nashville and spoke to Acuff directly. He was happy to let her record it, but it took a while for her to make clear that she was a singer, not a fiddler, and therefore needed to have some lyrics written. Acuff came up with a new lyric, and Bonaparte's Retreat became her biggest hit up to that point, with close to a million sales.
In 1955, she signed with RCA Victor Records, however, at that time, rock-and-roll was displacing the existing forms
of pop music and Kay had only two hits, the aforementioned, which is
sometimes considered her attempt to sing rock and roll, and sometimes as
a song poking fun at it, The Rock and Roll Waltz. She stayed at RCA until 1959, hitting the top ten with My Heart Reminds Me, then returned to Capitol.
Most of Starr's songs had jazz influences. Like those of Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray, they were sung in a style that anticipated rock and roll songs. These included her hits Wheel of Fortune (her biggest hit, No. 1 for 10 weeks), Side by Side, The Man Upstairs, and Rock and Roll Waltz. One of her biggest hits was her version of (Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man with the Bag, a Christmas song that became a holiday favorite.
After leaving Capitol for a second time in 1966, Starr continued touring
in the US and the UK. She recorded several jazz and country albums on
small independent labels, including How About This, a 1968 album with Count Basie.
In the late 1980s she performed in the revue 3 Girls with Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting, and in 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as part of the Pat Boone April Love Tour. Her first live album, Live at Freddy's, was released in 1997. She sang with Tony Bennett on his album Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues (2001). Two of her songs, Powder Your Face with Sunshine and It's a Good Day, appeared in the 2007 movie Fido.
Starr was married six times, including a brief marriage to bandleader Vic Schoen who later married Marion Hutton.
Kay Starr - 2006
Fred Prouser/Reuters
Kay Starr died from complications of Alzheimer's disease on November 3, 2016 in Los Angeles at the age of 94.
date & photographer unknown
In 1939, she worked with Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller, who hired her to replace Marion Hutton who was ill. With Miller she recorded Baby Me and Love with a Capital You. The songs were not a great success, in part because the band played in a key that, while appropriate for Hutton, did not suit Kay's vocal range.
She moved to Los Angeles and signed with the Wingy Manone band. From 1943 to 1945 she sang with the Charlie Barnet ensemble, retiring for a year after contracting pneumonia and later developing nodes on her vocal cords as a result of fatigue and overwork.
Kay Starr - 1946
photo Metronome Getty Images
photo Metronome Getty Images
In 1946 Starr became a soloist and a year later signed a contract with Capitol Records. The label had a number of female singers signed up, including Peggy Lee, Ella Mae Morse, Jo Stafford, and Margaret Whiting, so it was hard to find her a niche of her own. In 1948 when the American Federation of Musicians was threatening a strike, Capitol wanted to have each of its singers record a back list for future release. Being junior to all these other artists meant that every song Starr wanted to sing was taken by her rivals on the label, leaving her a list of old songs which nobody else wanted to record.
Kay Starr - 1946
photographer unknown
In 1950 she returned home to Dougherty, Oklahoma, and heard a fiddle recording of Bonaparte's Retreat by Pee Wee King. She liked it so much that she wanted to record it. She contacted the publishing house for Roy Acuff in Nashville and spoke to Acuff directly. He was happy to let her record it, but it took a while for her to make clear that she was a singer, not a fiddler, and therefore needed to have some lyrics written. Acuff came up with a new lyric, and Bonaparte's Retreat became her biggest hit up to that point, with close to a million sales.
date & photographer unknown
Kay Starr -1956
Evertt Collection
date & photographer unknown
Frank Carroll/NBCU Photo
In the late 1980s she performed in the revue 3 Girls with Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting, and in 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as part of the Pat Boone April Love Tour. Her first live album, Live at Freddy's, was released in 1997. She sang with Tony Bennett on his album Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues (2001). Two of her songs, Powder Your Face with Sunshine and It's a Good Day, appeared in the 2007 movie Fido.
date & photographer unknown
In her later years, she sang a duet with Tony Bennett for his 2001 album Playin’ With My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues.
vinyl LP front cover
Starr was married six times, including a brief marriage to bandleader Vic Schoen who later married Marion Hutton.
Fred Prouser/Reuters
Kay Starr died from complications of Alzheimer's disease on November 3, 2016 in Los Angeles at the age of 94.
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Starr among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire (links below).
Viewfinder links:
Roy Acuff
Allez-Vous-En & Half a Photograph
Count Basie
Tony Bennett
Pat Boone
Bob Crosby
Marion Hutton
Frankie Laine
Peggy Lee
Glenn Miller
Johnnie Ray
Frank Sinatra
Kay Starr
Roy Acuff
Allez-Vous-En & Half a Photograph
Count Basie
Tony Bennett
Pat Boone
Bob Crosby
Marion Hutton
Frankie Laine
Peggy Lee
Glenn Miller
Johnnie Ray
Frank Sinatra
Kay Starr
Net links:
Afterglow ~ Swingin’ With Kay Starr
Billboard ~ Universal Fire Destroyed 500,000 Iconic Master Recordings
Express UK ~ Kay Starr 1922 -2016: The ‘hillbilly’ who could sing it all
LA Times ~ Kay Starr, who lit up 1950s pop radio dies at 94
Afterglow ~ Swingin’ With Kay Starr
Billboard ~ Universal Fire Destroyed 500,000 Iconic Master Recordings
Express UK ~ Kay Starr 1922 -2016: The ‘hillbilly’ who could sing it all
LA Times ~ Kay Starr, who lit up 1950s pop radio dies at 94
Memphis Hall of Fame ~ Kay Starr
NBC News ~ What did we lose in the Universal Music fire?
NPR ~ From Chuck Berry To Tupac Shakur: The 2008 Universal Fire
NY Times ~ Kay Starr, Hillbilly Singer With Crossover Appeal, Dies at 94
Oklahoma Hall of Fame ~ Starr, Kay | 1988
NBC News ~ What did we lose in the Universal Music fire?
NPR ~ From Chuck Berry To Tupac Shakur: The 2008 Universal Fire
NY Times ~ Kay Starr, Hillbilly Singer With Crossover Appeal, Dies at 94
Oklahoma Hall of Fame ~ Starr, Kay | 1988
Kay Starr Discography
YouTube links:
KTLA ~ 2008 Universal fire: 500,000 Master Recordings Lost
Perry Como Show Guest Kay Starr (video) (1952)
Kay Starr
Interview (1993)
The Rock And Roll Waltz, Rockin' Chair (video) (1952)
KTLA ~ 2008 Universal fire: 500,000 Master Recordings Lost
Perry Como Show Guest Kay Starr (video) (1952)
Kay Starr
Interview (1993)
The Rock And Roll Waltz, Rockin' Chair (video) (1952)
Tribute to Kay Starr (video) (1952)
Wheel Of Fortune (1951)
Wheel Of Fortune (video) (1952)
TV Hit Medley Kay Starr, Tyrone Power (video) (1955)
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Wheel Of Fortune (1951)
Wheel Of Fortune (video) (1952)
TV Hit Medley Kay Starr, Tyrone Power (video) (1955)
“ . . . the only white woman who could sing the blues.”
~ Billie Holiday
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, July 21, 2020
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