[Dixielandjazz] Jo Stafford - NY TIMES OBIT

[Gluetje1 at aol.com]

No & No.  I really thank you Steve, and this list for yesterday's  education. 
 Born in a Missouri village to a minimally musical family, I  knew who Joan 
Stafford was, but sad to say had no clue as to the  enormous talent of Red 
Ingle.  So I lost yesterday morning to tracking  him on YouTube and it was 
wonderful!
Ginny
 
 
In a message dated 7/19/2008 10:32:45 A.M. Central Daylight Time,  
barbonestreet at earthlink.net writes:

Quite a  few list mates asked for this obit off list and so I am  
posting it.  Note the reference to Red Ingle and The Natural Seven  
backing her  (Cinderella G. Stump) on "Tim-Tayshun". I guess most of us  
know that  list mate Don Ingle is Red's son.
"Tim - Tayshun", plus her later spoofs  with hubby Paul Weston were  
very funny. But I think any of us who  served in the Armed Forces  
during WW 2 or the Korean "Police Action"  remember her for songs that  
made us think of  home.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone

NY TIMES - July 18, 2008 - By Stephen  Holden
Wistful Singer, Jo Stafford, Is Dead at 90

Jo Stafford, the  wistful singing voice of the American home front  
during World War II  and the Korean War, died on Wednesday at her home  
in Century City,  Calif. She was 90 years old.

The cause of death was congestive heart  failure.

A favorite of American servicemen, Ms. Stafford earned the  nickname G.  
I. Jo for records in which her pure, nearly vibrato-less  voice with  
perfect intonation conveyed steadfast devotion and  reassurance with  
delicate understatement.

She was the vocal  embodiment of every serviceman’s dream girl  
faithfully tending the  home fires while he was overseas. First as a  
member of the Pied  Pipers who sang with Tommy Dorsey and accompanied  
the young Frank  Sinatra, and later as a soloist, Ms. Stafford enjoyed  
a steady  stream of hits from the late 1930’s to the mid-1950’s.

Her biggest hit,  “You Belong to Me,” in 1952, sold two million copies.  
Ms. Stafford  sang everything from folk songs to novelties to hymns.  
Her gift for  hilarious musical parody was first revealed in the 1947  
novelty  sensation “Temptation” (“Tim-Tayshun”), a hillbilly spoof  
recorded  under the name of Cinderella G. Stump with Red Ingle and the  
Natural  Seven. It reached No. 1 on the music charts.

A decade later, a popular  party act with which she and her husband,  
the arranger and conductor  Paul Weston, amused their friends became a  
secondary comedy career,  in which they impersonated Jonathan and  
Darlene Edwards, an  excruciatingly inept New Jersey lounge act  
“presented by Jo Stafford  and Paul Weston.”

While Mr. Weston played the wrong chords and fudged  the rhythm, Ms.  
Stafford sang a half-tone sharp. Mr. Stafford won  her only Grammy, for  
best comedy album (“Jonathan and Darlene  Edwards in Paris,”) in 1961.  
The records faking the Edwardses, the  last of which was a hilariously  
inept 1977 single of “Stayin’ Alive”  backed by “I Am Woman,” rank as  
classic pop spoofs alongside those  of Spike Jones and Weird Al Yankovic.

But it was as a balladeer  crooning standards like “I’ll Be Seeing  
You,” “Haunted Heart,” “All  the Things You Are,” and “The Nearness of  
You,” that Ms. Stafford  distilled as pure a vocal essence of romantic  
nostalgia as any pop  singer of 1940’s and 50’s.

Ms. Stafford was born Jo Elizabeth Stafford  in Coalinga, Calif., near  
Fresno and brought up in Long Beach. As a  child she studied voice and  
hoped to become an opera singer but  because of hard times decided to  
join her older sisters Christine  and Pauline in a country-and-western  
singing group, the Stafford  Sisters, who performed on the radio in Los  
Angeles.

After the  Stafford Sisters broke up, Ms. Stafford, with seven male  
members  from two other groups, formed the Pied Pipers, an octet that  
caught  the attention of Paul Weston and Axel Stordahl, arrangers for  
the  Tommy Dorsey band. Reduced to a quartet, the group joined Dorsey  
and  quickly gained fame as the backup singers for the young Frank   
Sinatra.

In 1940, the No. 1 hit, “I’ll Never Smile Again”  established the  
creamy Dorsey-Sinatra-Pied Pipers sound.

Ms.  Stafford recorded her first solo record with Dorsey, “Little Man   
With a Candy Cigar,” in 1942. Her first husband, John Huddleston,  whom  
she later divorced, was a singer in the group.

Two years  later, she left the band to sign with Capitol Records, the  
new label  established by Johnny Mercer and along with Margaret Whiting  
and  Peggy Lee was one of its three female pop mainstays. Mr. Weston   
became named Capitol’s musical director and Ms. Stafford’s arranger   
and conductor. They eventually married in 1952. Weston died in  1996.

Ms. Stafford is survived by their son Tim Weston of Topanga,  Calif.,  
their daughter Amy Wells of Calabasas, Calif. a younger  sister, Betty  
Jane, and four grandchildren.

During the early  Capitol years, Ms. Stafford’s USO tours and V-Discs  
(recordings  specially made for servicemen) earned her the nickname G.  
I. Jo. In  1945, “Candy,” in which she and Pied Pipers accompanied Mr.  
Mercer  went to No. 1.

>From the mid-40’s on, Ms. Stafford was a major radio  star, who  
sometimes used her show, “The Chesterfield Supper Club,”  to acquaint  
the public with southern Appalachian folk music. She  recorded a  
groundbreaking album, “Jo Stafford Sings American Folk  Songs,” and  
followed it with “Songs of Scotland.”

The  folk-pop singer Judy Collins has credited Ms. Stafford’s version  
of  “Barbara Allen” as a major inspiration for her early folk career.  
In  the late 940’s and early 50’s Ms. Stafford teamed Gordon McRae   
teamed for a series of hit duets, including “My Darling, My  Darling,”  
from the Broadway musical, “Where’s Charley?” and the  devotional song,  
“Whispering Hope.” When Mr. Weston left Capitol  Records for Columbia,  
Ms. Stafford followed him.

Her Columbia  albums, like “Swingin’ Down Broadway,” “Ski Trails”  
“Ballad of the  Blues,” and “Jo + Jazz” (with the arranger Johnny  
Mandel)  foreshadowed the modern concept album. Her biggest hits for  
the  label included “Make Love to Me,” a pop version of Hank Williams’s   
“Jambalaya,” and “Shrimp Boats.”

On several hits she was teamed her  with Frankie Laine and of those the  
most popular was their duet of  another Williams song, “Hey, Good  
Lookin.’ After a falling out with  Columbia in the late 1950’s, Ms.  
Stafford returned to Capitol, the  joined Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label.

In 1966, Ms. Stafford went into  semi-retirement. After “Stayin’  
Alive,” she retired completely from  the music business. She re- 
appeared once, in 1990, at an event honoring  Frank Sinatra.

Many of her hits have been reissued on Corinthian  Records, a record  
company Mr. Weston founded as a religious  label.

Many years after her retirement, Ms. Stafford looked back  happily on  
her musical life with Mr. Weston. “Our talents — his and  mine — fit  
the music of the time,” she said. “And the music fit us.  We were very  
fortunate, because if both of us were starting out  today, we’d starve  
to  death!”
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