[Dixielandjazz] FW: Obituary: Dolly Dawn, US band singer

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
This sad note from another list.
How did Steve Barbone miss this one?
Just kidding.
Long-time DJMLers may recall that Miss Dolly Dawn was the subject of posts in
late 1999.
I was given her address but, sadly, never got around to writing to her.
Go dig out those Henry Hall records. You will not be disappointed. Definitely
MKOM!
Kind regards,
Bill.

>From NY Times: Obituary: Dolly Dawn

Dolly Dawn, Big Band Singer, Is Dead at 86
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Dolly Dawn, a big-band vocalist whose honey-sweet voice each noon, six days a
week, bounced invitingly across America in the late 1930's and early 40's, died
last Wednesday [12/11] at a nursing home in Englewood, N.J. She was 86.

Her death was announced this week by her family.
She was one of the first vocalists to become the sole focus of a band, at a time
when bands and musicians were still the main draw. Ella Fitzgerald called Miss
Dawn an influence on her own singing. Joe Franklin, the New York radio and
television personality, said in an interview that when Walter Winchell coined
the term "canary" for female singers, he was referring to her.
 
She sang first with George Hall and His Orchestra, and then with a group carved
out of the band called "Dolly Dawn and Her Dawn Patrol." Later, she played
clubs, dance halls and street fairs, among other engagements, all over the
United States.

But Miss Dawn dropped out of the limelight and became known mainly to the cult
following that saw her in scattered club appearances in the 1970's and 80's, and
responded to the release of a two-disk album of her records with George Hall on
the RCA Bluebird label in 1976.

There was another revival of interest in her after Sony's reissue of some of her
hits, most recently a collection called "You're a Sweetheart" in 2001.

She received almost no royalties for her reissued recordings obtained only
minimal Social Security and suffered in recent years from diabetes and kidney
failure, Peter Sando, her nephew, said. She had lived in a transient hotel in
Manhattan before being given an apartment and other assistance by the Actors'
Fund, also in Manhattan. She moved to the Actors' Fund Nursing Home and Assisted
Living Care Facility in Englewood earlier this year.

Dolly Dawn (born Theresa Maria Stabile,  Feb. 3, 1916, in Newark  NJ), grew up
in Montclair, N.J. Both her parents were Italian immigrants and her father ran a
restaurant, among other jobs. Her cousin was the bandleader Dick Stabile.  At
14, she won an amateur contest that Hall held in Newark. He shook her hand, but
had forgotten her a year or two later when she showed up at the Taft Hotel in
Manhattan, where his band regularly played. With the regular female vocalist
about to leave, Ms. Dawn auditioned and got the job. She was known at the  time
as 'Billie Starr'. Mr. Hall and Harriet Mencken, a writer on The New York
Journal-American, came up with Dolly Dawn.

"She's as fresh as the dawn and as dimpled as a doll," the newspaperwoman said,
according to an article in Radio Guide in 1937. Miss Dawn never stopped hating
the name, which she thought made her sound like a stripper. After six months of
musical training, she began singing with Hall's band in July 1935, which every
day but Sunday was broadcast nationally on CBS radio from the Taft Hotel at
noon. The show's tagline: "Dance With Romance." Her relationship with Hall and
his wife was so close that they formally adopted her when she was 19. In a
ceremony on July 4, 1941, he turned his band over to her and became her manager.
She returned the loyalty. Tommy Dorsey asked her to sing with his band but she
turned him down, said Ronald Knoth, a social worker who helped her during her
later years.

A popular part of the band's performance had become her appearing with just
seven musicians in a group she named Dawn Patrol, after a newspaper column Ed
Sullivan wrote called "Along the Dawn Patrol." Sullivan, a friend, gave her
permission.

Ms. Dawn never married, saying that her music was her husband and children. She
is survived by her sister, Ida Sando, of Spring Lake, N.J.