[Dixielandjazz] OT: Connie Haines - Rest In Peace

[Stan Brager]

>From the NY Times:

Connie Haines, Peppy Singer, Dies at 87 
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/douglas_martin
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 
Connie Haines, a peppy, petite, big-voiced singer with a zippy, rhythmic
style who most famously teamed up with Frank Sinatra
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/frank_sinatra/
index.html?inline=nyt-per>  as lead vocalists with the Tommy Dorsey
Orchestra, then went on to a prolific career of her own, died on Monday in
Clearwater Beach, Fla. She was 87.
The cause was myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease, said Roseanne
Young, a friend.
Miss Haines made 200 recordings, including 24 records that sold more than
50,000 copies; regularly filled up prestigious nightclubs like the Latin
Quarter in New York; and performed five times at the White House. Polls in
music magazines in the 1940s rated her as one of the top female band
singers.
While Sinatra specialized at the time in ballads and slow foxtrots, Miss
Haines threw herself into rhythmic up-tempo tunes.
"Where did you learn to swing like that?" Dorsey asked when he first heard
her at a club in New Jersey. "And when can you join my band?" 
Her recordings including gospel, pop and soul, as well as big-band
barnburners. The best-selling ones included "You Might Have Belonged to
Another"; "Oh! Look at Me Now"; "What Is This Thing Called Love?"; and "Will
You Still Be Mine?" A crowd favorite was "Snootie Little Cutie," which often
elicited ad libs from Sinatra.
She made the most of her sultry Southern accent, sometimes to Sinatra's
amusement. In her personalized rendition of "Let's Get Away From It All,"
she improvised, "We'll spend a weekend in Dixie. I'll get a real Southern
drawl."
Sinatra piped in, "Another one?"
Miss Haines appeared on the radio with Abbott & Costello, Bing Crosby
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/15874/Bing-Crosby?inline=nyt-per> , Bob
Hope <http://movies.nytimes.com/person/33168/Bob-Hope?inline=nyt-per>  and
Jack Benny <http://movies.nytimes.com/person/5438/Jack-Benny?inline=nyt-per>
, among others. On television she appeared with Milton Berle
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/milton_berle/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> , Ed Sullivan
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/1214966/Ed-Sullivan?inline=nyt-per> ,
Eddie Cantor
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/10700/Eddie-Cantor?inline=nyt-per>  and
Perry Como. Her work on Frankie Laine's variety show drew particular note.
Her movies included her favorite, "Duchess of Idaho" (1950), with Esther
Williams
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/76438/Esther-Williams?inline=nyt-per>  and
Van Johnson. 
Yvonne Marie Antoinette JaMais was born on Jan. 20, 1921, in Savannah, Ga.,
but grew up in Florida. Her mother, who taught voice and dance, pushed her
talented daughter to excel. At 4, Yvonne appeared at the Bijou Theater in
Savannah in a "Saucy Baby" show. At 5, Baby Yvonne Marie won state contests
in the Charleston dance in Georgia and Florida.
At 9 she won a talent contest sponsored by Uncle Ralph Feathers, who in the
South ran the sort of amateur contests for which Major Bowes was famous.
Before she turned 10, she parlayed that into a regular radio show on the NBC
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/nbc_universal/index.h
tml?inline=nyt-org>  affiliate in Jacksonville, Fla., billed as Baby Yvonne
Marie, the Little Princess of the Air. At 10 she appeared with the Paul
Whiteman Orchestra, and things accelerated even faster.
She won the actual Major Bowes contest in New York, and appeared on Fred
Allen
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/79366/Fred-Allen;movies?inline=nyt-per> 's
radio show. At 16 she was auditioning for a job in the Brill Building,
headquarters of Tin Pan Alley. Harry James
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/30738/Harry-James?inline=nyt-per> , the
orchestra leader, happened to hear her and immediately hired her. But he
asked her to change her name, saying she looked like a Connie. More
pointedly, he said that if she used her full name, there would be no room
for him on the marquee. At first she thought he had named her Ames, not
Haines, and for a few days signed autographs that way.
After James ran into financial trouble, both singers ended up with Dorsey
when he was adding a robustness and kick to his style, taking on an
innovative new arranger, Sy Oliver, and six new vocalists. The others were
Jo Stafford, who died on July 16, and the three-man vocal group the Pied
Pipers. Miss Haines said that Dorsey taught her phrasing, how to take one
big breath and let the words flow, she told The Tampa Tribune in 1998. He
told her to always think of telling a story, of "acting to music."
At one point when she was performing with Dorsey, she remembered, Sinatra
saved her life. She was about to go on stage in Madison Square Garden when a
smoker in a balcony tossed a match and set her ruffled tulle dress on fire.
Sinatra threw his coat over her and fell on her, smothering the flames, she
said.
Miss Haines's marriage to Robert DeHaven, a World War II fighter ace who
died in July, ended in divorce. She is survived by her sister, Barbara
JaMais of Hemet, Calif.; her daughter, Kimberly Harlan of Prineville, Ore.;
her son, Robert DeHaven Jr. of San Francisco; and her mother, Mildred JaMais
of Clearwater, Fla., who is 109.
On Wednesday Miss Haines's voice - still strong and swinging - could be
heard on her answering machine. "I've got the world on a string," she sang.