Stafford, Jo (1920—)

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Stafford, Jo (1920—)

Popular American singer of the 1940s and 1950s. Born Jo Elizabeth Stafford on November 12, 1920, in Coalinga, California; daughter of Grover Cleveland Stafford (an oilman) and Anna (York) Stafford (a banjoist); married John Huddleston (divorced); married Paul Weston (an arranger-conductor), in 1952; children: (second marriage) Tim and Amy.

Born in 1920 in Coalinga, California, where her father had come to seek his fortune in the California oil fields, singer Jo Stafford may have inherited some of her musical talent from her mother Anna York Stafford , who in addition to being a distant cousin of World War I hero Alvin York was also a highly acclaimed five-string banjoist. Stafford began her professional career singing in a trio with her sisters Christina and Pauline . The girls had their own weekly radio shows and also performed with David Broekman's California Melodies and with productions starring the Crockett Family of Kentucky. When marriage broke up the sister act, Stafford joined seven male singers in a group called the Pied Pipers. In 1938, the Pied Pipers were hired by Tommy Dorsey, but after only ten weeks with the band, the group split up. Stafford later joined three other singers (also called the Pied Pipers) and continued working with Dorsey for the next three years. During this time, she recorded "I'll Never Smile Again" with Frank Sinatra, who later praised her vocal technique. "She can hold notes for sixteen bars if she wants to," he said. Stafford and the Pipers left Dorsey in late 1942, after which they worked successfully on various radio shows, including "Your Hit Parade."

Stafford left the group in 1944, to go out on her own. She was immediately signed by Johnny Mercer for his radio show and to record with his newly formed Capitol Records. Before the end of World War II, Stafford was rivaling Dinah Shore as the most popular female singer in the country, particularly with soldiers. By 1946, after making guest appearances on numerous radio shows, she launched her own radio series, "Chesterfield Supper Club."

In 1950, Stafford began receiving international recognition with a series of tape-recorded youth programs broadcast worldwide on the Voice of America. She soon added another weekly musical show for Radio Luxemburg, then Europe's most powerful station. In 1952, she appeared at the London Palladium and toured the British Isles and the Continent for the Voice of America. That same year, she married Paul Weston, a conductor-arranger whom she had been working with since the 1940s. (Stafford had earlier been married briefly to John Huddleston, one of the Pied Pipers.) The couple had two children, Tim and Amy.

Stafford remained active during the early 1950s, recording and making regular appearances on many of the popular television variety programs and on her own series, "The Jo Stafford Show," which was launched in 1954. In the late 1950s, the singer curtailed her activities somewhat to devote more time to her children, although she continued to record and make occasional appearances on those television shows based in Hollywood, where she and her husband made their home. (Stafford also limited her television work because of her vision. "Idiot cards don't exist for people with eyesight like mine," she said.) In 1961, the family spent the summer in London, where Stafford did a series of shows for the ATV British network.

Stafford is one of the few performers to have three plaques on Hollywood's Boulevard of the Stars: for radio, television, and recordings. Her recording career culminated in a diamond award as the first recording artist to sell 25 million records. Among her best-known hits are "You Belong to Me," "Whispering Hope" (with Gordon MacRae), "Shrimp Boats," "Make Love to Me," and "Jambalaya." Her later recordings include more standards, Broadway show tunes, and some jazz. She also produced some religious albums for Corinthian and the World Library of Sacred Music.

Well known for her sense of humor, Stafford has also moonlighted as a couple of other singers, Cinderella G. Stump and Darlene Edwards (whose recordings with Jonathan Edwards—really Paul Weston—are some of the best comedy spoofs ever made). Under her first alias, Cinderella Stump, Stafford recorded "Timtayshun," a hillbilly version of the 1933 hit "Temptation," for which she tapped into her family's Southern roots. Capitol sent it out to disc jockeys saying only that Stump was a well-known singer out to have a little fun. After the recording sold 1 million copies, the record company finally revealed the singer's name, although most people did not believe it was Stafford until she performed the song live on a coast-to-coast broadcast.

The Jonathan and Darlene Edwards albums that Stafford made with her husband were an outgrowth of a party act the two performed parodying all the mediocre lounge singers and pianists they had encountered in their past travels. "At the piano, Jonathan blithely missed notes, fumbled for others, and completely misplaced still others," write Roy Hemming and David Hajdu, "usually while completely garbling the beat. Darlene, meanwhile, kept madly up with him in all respects, continually sliding into notes or wandering blithely off-key (usually exactly a quarter-tone off), holding on to notes or jumping ahead of Jonathan unpredictably, always demonstrating more gusto than musical accuracy." The initial Jonathan and Darlene Edwards album, issued in 1952, with a photograph on the cover of two left hands side-by-side on a keyboard, was such a hit that Columbia subsequently issued four more. One of the albums, Jonathan and Darlene in Paris, won a Grammy Award.

By the 1960s, Stafford had pretty much ended her career, although she came out of retirement in the 1970s for another Darlene Edwards album and one of Fats Waller and Duke Ellington songs. One of her last public appearances was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of SHARE, a charitable organization that aids the mentally challenged with which she has been associated for many years.