[Dixielandjazz] Margaret Whiting - Times (London) obituary

[Robert Ringwald]

Margaret Whiting - Times (London) obituary

Margaret Whiting
Popular American singer who had a hit with That Old Black Magic and whose duet partners
included Dean Martin and Mel Torme
The Times (London)
Saturday January 29th 2011
As one of the first singers to record for Capitol Records, a matter of weeks after
it was founded in 1942, the 17-year-old Margaret Whiting became one of its foremost
stars. She went on to develop into one of America's most popular singers of the 1940s
and 1950s, also starring in a light comedy television series with her sister Barbara.
She was particularly adept at singing duets with male singers, notably her mentor,
the songwriter Johnny Mercer, and the country music star Jimmy Wakely, but her duet
partners also included Dean Martin and Mel Torme. Although her last forays into the
charts were in the 1960s she continued to perform in variety, and she gained some
notoriety for her (fourth) marriage in 1994 to the former gay porn star Jack Wrangler,
who was more than 20 years her junior.
Whiting's early years were spent in New York, until her songwriter father Richard
left for Hollywood as part of the exodus that followed the advent of the "talkies"
in 1927. He was to write songs for all the big studios (most notably On the Good
Ship Lollipop for Shirley Temple). Whiting remembered that her father's closest friends,
whom she called her "uncles", included Jerome (Kern), George (Gershwin) and Johnny
(Mercer).
Richard Whiting was a father figure for Mercer (with whom he collaborated on several
songs) and in 1931 the precocious seven-year-old Margaret was brought downstairs
to sing her father's latest songMy Ideal to Mercer. He never forgot the charm with
which she delivered Leo Robin's lyrics, and it was the first piece he suggested she
record when he signed her to Capitol in 1942. By then Mercer had assumed the role
of surrogate father, as her own father had suffered a fatal heart attack.
My Ideal was recorded with the trumpeter Billy Butterfield the day before Whiting's
18th birthday, and it was to have been her first issued disc. But, she recalled:
"Johnny Mercer suddenly came over to the house and with Harold Arlen and said, 'We've
gotta do another record. You're going to be introducing one of our songs, and it's
called That Old Black Magic." Recorded with Freddie Slack's Orchestra, just ten days
after her first venture into a studio, the song made Whiting's name.
Her next major hit record, Moonlight in Vermont, from 1944, reunited her with Butterfield
and his pianist Johnny Guarnieri. This was to become one of her most requested songs.
>From 1945 onwards, Whiting recorded under her own name, rather than as the singer
for a band. She topped the charts with her first duet with Jimmy Wakely, Slippin'
Around, in 1949, and she was to enjoy further hits in the following five years, including
a comedy record with Bob Hope called Blind Date. With her blonde good looks, fresh-faced
appearance and no-nonsense delivery of lyrics, she became a Forces' favourite, and
undertook tours to entertain the troops during the Korean War.
She and her sister Barbara were recruited to star in Those Whiting Girls for CBS
television in 1955. The show was produced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball as a summer
replacement for I Love Lucy and typically portrayed Barbara as something of an innocent,
outsmarted in budding romances by her scheming older sister and her mother. It ran
for three years.
Television success led to a temporary drying-up of hit records, but Whiting returned
to the charts again in the 1960s. Meanwhile, by 1958 she had married three times.
Her second marriage, to the jazz pianist Joe "Fingers" Carr, produced a daughter
(who survives her).
By the 1970s Whiting was a regular on TV talk shows and in cabaret. She was to appear
from time to time in London, her last appearance being at the Pizza on the Park in
1994. By this time she had married Wrangler. After his death in 2009, she moved into
a home for retired actors.
__________
Margaret Whiting, singer and actress, was born on July 22, 1924. She died on January
10, 2011, aged 86


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