Connie Francis

[DownRound]

Odds are pretty good no one else is going to do it.
But I just wanted to note the passing of Connie Francis.
Even as a kid, her music sounded a little silly to me, but she had that voice, so much an archetype of the late 50s.
One of the primary ones that comes to mind when the 1950s float up in the little Magic 8 Ball of memories.
From the era when about half of the mainstream popular singers were Italian-American.



And she even had the little hiccup rockabilly thing going in this one.

 

[GretschWretch]

I remember Connie as a contemporary of Brenda Lee. Never had a problem with her music.

 

[Michedelic]

She was a bit before my time, but always struck me as being caught in the twilight zone between the “Your Hit Parade” adult pop of the 50’s and the rock’n’roll era, somewhat like Bobby Darin. Still, more interesting than most of the usual “malt shop” teen stuff. One unique aspect of her career was that her material was often multi-cultural, and she was one of the first American recording artists to perform songs in a variety of foreign languages. She was also a sexual assault survivor, the perpetrator was never found, and that severely impacted her life and later career.

 

[Zooberwerx]

I remember the bad stuff….the Jericho NY incident and her brother’s murder (mafia hit men).

Riis

 

[jallenbass]

I played a week of shows with her at Packard Hall in Youngstown, Ohio. It was a lot of fun.

 

[DownRound]

I wasn't aware of all of the horrible stuff that she endured.
Like a bunch of other music from earlier in my life, I came around to a whole different appreciation of her when I got older.

I read this just now, following up on what was mentioned above:
"Francis told PEOPLE in 2017 that she wanted to be remembered “not so much for the heights I have reached, but for the depths from which I have come. . . . I hope I did okay.”

I have even higher regard for her now.

The more you read about those days, the more you realize just how cut-throat that world overwhelmingly was, the business aspect, managers, labels, the mob e.g. the degree to which Bobby Darin and Frankie Valli were entangled, as well as the more obvious cases.
That entanglement going back to the Jazz Age, both Jewish and Italian mob. Jukeboxes, labels.

A much rougher life than the music would suggest.

(edit: and as with Connie Francis, I really came to like Brenda Lee more and more over the years.
I was actually thinking when I first about Connie, "At least we still have Brenda Lee".
Boy, do I remember Little Miss Dynamite, coming over the radio in those old cars in that same period.
Both iconic singers, they kind of go together in my mind.)

 

[Leo Smith]

Only the BBC noticed ---

Connie Francis dies, months after her 60s song goes viral on TikTok.

The singer had recently enjoyed a career resurgence after her 1960s song Pretty Baby went viral.

www.bbc.com

 

[DownRound]

Only the BBC noticed ---

Connie Francis dies, months after her 60s song goes viral on TikTok.

The singer had recently enjoyed a career resurgence after her 1960s song Pretty Baby went viral.

www.bbc.com

Great story.
I didn't know about the TikTok revival.
It's good that she got to experience that at the end.
And more than that, coming back from depression.
I know some people that struggled with that for decades, depression is a hard, hard road sometimes.

 

[Pdaddy1978]

Who's sorry now?......
I am.
RIP Connie.

 

[jerry]

Its funny, as soon as I saw her name Who's Sorry Now started playing in my head, it shows how people are influences without you thinking about it. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood in the 60's, Connie was all over the radio.
Fly on Connie.......................................

 

[whodom]

Bassist Jeff Ganz (Roy Buchanan, Johnny Winter) posted a nice tribute to her on FB a couple of days ago.

 

[jnewmark]

I grew up when she was popular. Never a big fan, except for this little known recording that absolutely got to me, later done by The Cocktail Slippers. RIP.

 

[DownRound]

this little known recording

Nice.
When it first started playing, I was thinking The Ronettes, it just had that Brill Building/Phil Spector feel.
Checked Discogs, yep, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry wrote it.
Must have been toward of end of Connie's peak, 1964, when the Beatles were changing up the whole thing.

 

[BadMonk]

Awww, RIP Connie.
I was born in 1955 so I heard her on our local AM station (WAEB and saw her on TV.

 

[jnewmark]

Nice.
When it first started playing, I was thinking The Ronettes, it just had that Brill Building/Phil Spector feel.
Checked Discogs, yep, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry wrote it.
Must have been toward of end of Connie's peak, 1964, when the Beatles were changing up the whole thing.

One of those songs from that era that sounds great over the car radio. Here's a more modern version by The Cocktail Slippers, produced by Steve Van Zandt.

 

[Hurricane Jimmie]

So Anyway, I was in a 60s band that had a woman as the lead singer. We learned a couple of Leslie Gore songs and Where The Boys Are by Connie Francis.
WTBA packed the dance floor. Every. Single. Time.

I wish more women who want to sit in would sing WTBA instead of Me And Bobby McGee.

 

[DownRound]

So Anyway, I was in a 60s band that had a woman as the lead singer. We learned a couple of Leslie Gore songs and Where The Boys Are by Connie Francis.
WTBA packed the dance floor. Every. Single. Time.

I wish more women who want to sit in would sing WTBA instead of Me And Bobby McGee.

My wife and I were just talking about WTBA; we both remembered it from back in the day, and Connie singing the title song.
Every once and a while, over the years, I'd thought about how different it was, when the girl who slept with a guy before marriage was considered "loose", a "fallen woman" - and contrasted now with pretty much anything goes, the change in sixty years.

But then reading about it, there was an element that I hadn't picked up on as a kid, that sadly presaged what happened with Connie about ten years later. And in a certain way, it prefigured the series of beach movies that came a few years later.

I'd totally forgotten the jazz aspect of it, probably about as accurate as Maynard G. Krebs.

I can still hear Connie singing the title song, but I couldn't tell you what Annette Funicello sounded like from any of those beach movies.

Where the Boys Are - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[74hc]

Ah, AM radio mixing. Well before my time. I grew up in the FM stereo era.

 

[DownRound]

The best part about AM radio was the analog tuners, all the interesting buzzes, pops, and the way that distant stations rose and faded. And the phenomenon of skip - you could tune precisely with analog, and pull in stations from hundreds of miles away.
Digital just doesn't do it.