Showing posts with label Dick Haymes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dick Haymes. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Jo Stafford & Dick Haymes - That's Love

Styles: Vocal, Swing
Year: 2024
Time: 26:34
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 61,9 MB
Art: Front

(1:52) 1. Play A Simple Melody
(2:02) 2. Those Old Piano Roll Blues
(3:08) 3. That Old Black Magic
(2:16) 4. A Little Bit Independent
(2:56) 5. No Other Love (Alternative Version)
(2:10) 6. Driftin' Down The Dreamy Ol' Ohio
(2:18) 7. I've Got You Under My Skin
(1:20) 8. We'll Build A Bungalow
(2:11) 9. Mississippi
(2:20) 10. On The Sunny Side Of The Street
(3:56) 11. Begin The Beguine

Jo Elizabeth Stafford, the third of four sisters, was born November 12, 1917 on a tract of land known as "Lease 35" in Coalinga,California. Her mother, Anna York Stafford,a distant cousin of World War I hero Alvin York was known as one of the finest five-string banjoists in Gainsboro, Tennessee. Her father, Grover Cleveland Stafford, had come West to work in the California oil fields.

Jo's professional debut was with the Stafford Sisters, a trio in which Jo, upon graduation from Long Beach Poly High, joined her sisters Christine and Pauline. They had their own weekly radio show on KHJ radio, were regular performers on David Broekman's California Melodies, the Crockett Family of Kentucky shows, and performed both solo and group vocal work for all the major motion picture studios.

After marriage broke up the Stafford Sisters trio , Jo joined a group called the Pied Pipers, and along with her seven other group members was hired by Tommy Dorsey for the Raleigh-Kool radio program in 1938. After ten weeks with Dorsey the group dissolved, but Jo was hired back with three others once again as the Pied Pipers who sang with Dorsey for three years, recorded "I'll Never Smile Again" with Frank Sinatra, and provided Jo with the opportunity of making her own solo recordings with the Dorsey band. Her first solo recording was "Little Man with a Candy Cigar."

When Johnny Mercer assembled the artists to form Capitol Records in 1943, Jo began a recording career that was to culminate in Columbia Records giving her a Diamond Award as the first recording artist to sell 25,000,000 Records.

After guesting on all the major radio shows, Jo started her own series with the Chesterfield Supper Club, to which was added the Jo Stafford Show for Revere Camera, followed by featured roles on the Carnation and Club 15 Shows.

In 1950, Jo began a series of broadcasts that brought her international recognition. In Hollywood she recorded a weekly fifteen minute Youth Program for the Voice of America to internationally promote the cause of democracy.

Soon she added another weekly half-hour musical show, also recorded in Hollywood, for broadcast over 200,000 watt Radio Luxembourg; Europe's most powerful station. During this period Frank Lee , then British director of Radio Luxembourg said: "In her own quiet way Stafford is selling America to Europe."

In 1952, coinciding with her marriage to arranger/conductor/composer Paul Weston, European demand (and a honeymoon) took them to London, where she headlined the bill at the Palladium and made appearances for the Voice of America in the British Isles and on the continent.

With the advent of television , Jo Stafford guested on all the major variety shows, and in 1954 hosted her own JO STAFFORD SHOW on CBS-TV. Thus when Hollywood decided to commemorate its stars with plaques in the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street Jo Stafford was one of the few stars to have three separate plaques, one for records, one for radio, and one for television.

In the late fifties she cut down her activities sharply in order to devote her time to her family, and aside from a few trips to New York to appear on the Garry Moore and Firestone Hour Variety Shows, she did only recordings and TV shows based in Hollywood.

In 1961 the family moved to London for the summer so that Jo could host her final JO STAFFORD SHOW, a syndicated series for the ATV British Network. These shows were seen in this country, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as well as in the British Isles, and her guests included Bob Hope, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Peter Sellers.

While family commitments precluded her public appearances, Jo did continue to record for Capitol, Dot , and Reader's Digest Records, as well as making religious albums for Corinthian and the World Library of Sacred Music.

Her Hits include: "You Belong to Me", "Timtayshun" , "Whispering Hope" ( with Gordon MacRae ), "Shrimp Boats", "Make Love to Me", "Jambalaya", her album of "American Folk Songs", and the comedy albums made under the name of Darlene Edwards. One of these, "Jonathan and Darlene in Paris", won a Grammy Award in 1960 for Best Comedy Recording. Most of her best known recordings including "The Columbia Hits Collection", are currently in release on the Corinthian Records label.

She is a past-president of SHARE, one of Hollywood's best known charitable organizations, which concerns itself with aiding mentally handicapped children. One of her last public appearances was at SHARE's 25th Anniversary Show, along with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis,Jr., Johnny Carson and Milton Berle.

Her final public vocal performance was with the Hi Los as part of a Society Of Singers tribute to Frank Sinatra. Her Corinthian recordings continue to enjoy sales throughout the world.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/jo-stafford/

That's Love

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Dick Haymes - No More Little White Lies

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2022
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 28:27
Size: 65,7 MB
Art: Front

(3:13) 1. Little White Lies
(2:32) 2. It's A Grand Night For Singing
(2:45) 3. You'll Never Know
(2:45) 4. Love Letters
(3:05) 5. How Blue The Night
(2:32) 6. It's Magic
(2:41) 7. I'll Get By
(2:41) 8. Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey
(3:03) 9. The More I See You
(3:05) 10. 'Till The End Of Time

There was a time when no one would have left Dick Haymes (1918-1980) out of the top class of his contemporaries such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. But now the Argentine-born baritone is known only to those ardent fans and music historians who still claim him as one of the most talented popular singers of the twentieth century.

He worked with several great bandleaders, including Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, before beginning a solo career that vaulted him to Hollywood stardom. In 1944, he worked with Twentieth Century-Fox, headlining such hit musicals as Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe and State Fair. Popular recordings such as "Little White Lies," "The More I See You," "How Blue the Night," "For You, For Me, For Evermore," "Speak Low," and "Another Night Like This," made him a top draw at the box office.

In the 1950s, when television took over the media landscape and the appeal of musicals declined, Haymes's career suffered. Despite efforts in the 1970s, he never re-established success. In The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies, Ruth Prigozy uses over forty personal interviews with singers, musicians, composers, arrangers, and Haymes's family members. She searches archival recordings of The Dick Haymes Show, films, recordings, music studies, and histories to present a full portrait of this complicated man.

Prigozy chronicles Haymes's childhood, his rise in the 1940s, his decline into alcoholism, his multiple marriages among them to such leading stars as Rita Hayworth and Joanne Dru and divorces, and the minor resurgence of his career in Europe during the last years of his life. By Ruth Prigozy https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/326018

No More Little White Lies