Jo Stafford ...



One of the most technically gifted and popular vocalists of the immediate postwar period, Jo Stafford effortlessly walked the line between breezy pop and the more serious art of post-big-band jazz singing. With the help of her husband, top-flight arranger and Capitol A&R director Paul Weston, Stafford recorded throughout the '40s and '50s for Capitol and Columbia. She also contributed (with Weston) to one of the best pop novelty acts of the period, a hilariously inept and off-key satire that saw the couple billed as Jonathan & Darlene Edwards.
Born near Fresno, CA, Stafford sang from an early age and was classically trained, though she later joined her sisters in a country-tinged act (associated for a time with Joe "Country" Washburne). At the age of just 17, she became the first female voice in the seven-man vocal act known as the Pied Pipers. Soon after the group joined the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1939, however, it was pruned to a quartet (which also included Stafford's first husband, co-founder John Huddleston). The group appeared on several of the Dorsey band's hits of the early '40s, a few of which paired them with Frank Sinatra. Stafford gained her first solo spots on a pair of Dorsey band hits, "Yes, Indeed!" and "Manhattan Serenade." She finally left the Pied Pipers for a solo contract in 1944 (she was replaced by June Hutton), though the group provided backup for many of her initial solo hits. 
Not only signed to Capitol but able to preview hit songs as the co-host of label founder Johnny Mercer's radio program, Stafford hit the charts with the mid-'40s songs "Long Ago (And Far Away)," "I Love You," and "Candy." The latter, a duet with Mercer and the Pied Pipers, became her first number one. In 1948, her duet with Gordon MacRae on "My Darling, My Darling" became her second. She later moved to Columbia and recorded the two biggest hits of her career, 1952's "You Belong to Me" and 1954's "Make Love to Me." Stafford gained her own television program during the mid-'50s, and also recorded the first LP by Jonathan & Darlene Edwards, American Popular Songs. (It wasn't the first time Stafford had used a pseudonym, however; in 1947, she billed herself as Cinderella G. Stump to record a cover of the cornpone single "Temptation [Tim-Tay-Shun].") Though she slipped from the charts in the late '50s and retired from performance, Stafford continued to record for many years and issued the LP Getting Sentimental Over Tommy Dorsey on Reprise in 1963. She also founded Corinthian Records, with Weston, to reissue the couple's various recordings.

(Artist Biography by John Bush)




***
Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer and occasional actress, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music, and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song "You Belong to Me" topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, the record becoming the first by a female artist to reach number one on the U.K. Singles Chart.
Born in Coalinga, California, Stafford made her first musical appearance at age twelve. While still at high school she joined her two older sisters to form a vocal trio named The Stafford Sisters, who found moderate success on radio and in film. In 1938, while the sisters were part of the cast of Twentieth Century Fox's production of Alexander's Ragtime Band, Stafford met the future members of The Pied Pipers and became the group's lead singer. Bandleader Tommy Dorsey hired them in 1939 to perform back-up vocals for his orchestra.
In addition to her recordings with the Pied Pipers, Stafford featured in solo performances for Dorsey. After leaving the group in 1944, she recorded a series of pop standards for Capitol Records and Columbia Records. Many of her recordings were backed by the orchestra of Paul Weston. She also performed duets with Gordon MacRae and Frankie Laine. Her work with the United Service Organizations (USO) giving concerts for soldiers during World War II earned her the nickname "G.I. Jo". Starting in 1945, Stafford was a regular host of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio series The Chesterfield Supper Club and later appeared in television specials—including two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the U.K.
Stafford married twice: first in 1937 to musician John Huddleston (the couple divorced in 1943); then in 1952 to Paul Weston, with whom she had two children. She and Weston developed a comedy routine in which they assumed the identity of an incompetent lounge act named Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, parodying well-known songs. The act proved popular at parties and among the wider public when the couple released an album as the Edwardses in 1957. In 1961, the album Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris won Stafford her only Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and was the first commercially successful parody album. Stafford largely retired as a performer in the mid-1960s, but continued in the music business. She had a brief resurgence in popularity in the late 1970s when she recorded a cover of the Bee Gees hit, "Stayin' Alive" as Darlene Edwards. In the 1990s, she began re-releasing some of her material through Corinthian Records, a label founded by Weston. She died in 2008 in Century City, Los Angeles, and is interred with Weston at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. Her work in radio, television and music is recognized by three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Style, awards, and recognition 
Stafford was admired by critics and the listening public for the purity of her voice, and was considered one of the most versatile vocalists of her era. Peter Levinson said that she was a coloratura soprano, whose operatic training allowed her to sing a natural falsetto. Her style encompassed a number of genres, including big band, ballads, jazz, folk and comedy. The music critic Terry Teachout described her as "rhythmically fluid without ever sounding self-consciously 'jazzy' ", while Rosemary Clooney said of her, "The voice says it all: beautiful, pure, straightforward, no artifice, matchless intonation, instantly recognizable. Those things describe the woman too." Writing for the New York Sun, Will Friedwald described her 1947 interpretation of "Haunted Heart" as "effective because it's so subtle, because Stafford holds something back and doesn't shove her emotion in the listener's face."  Nancy Franklin described Stafford's version of the folk song "He's Gone Away" as "wistful and tender, as if she had picked up a piece of clothing once worn by a loved one and begun singing."  Frank Sinatra said, "It was a joy to sit on the bandstand and listen to her". The singer Judy Collins has cited Stafford's folk recordings as an influence on her own musical career.  The country singer Patsy Cline was also inspired by Stafford's work. 
In their guise of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, Weston and Stafford earned admiration from their show business peers. The pianist George Shearing was a fan and would play "Autumn in New York" in the style of Edwards if he knew the couple were in the audience.  Ray Charles also enjoyed their performance. Art Carney—who played Ed Norton in the comedy series The Honeymooners—once wrote the Edwardses a fan letter as Norton.  However, not everybody appreciated the Edwards act. Mitch Miller blamed the couple's 1962 album Sing Along With Jonathan and Darlene Edwards for ending his sing-along albums and television show, while in 2003, Stafford told Michael Feinstein that the Bee Gees had disliked the Edwards' version of "Stayin' Alive". 
In 1960, Stafford said there were good and bad points to working closely with Weston. His knowledge of her made it easy for him to arrange her music, but sometimes it caused difficulties. Weston knew Stafford's abilities and would write or arrange elaborate music because he knew she was capable of performing it. She also said she did not believe she could perform in Broadway musicals because she thought her voice was not powerful enough for stage work.  In 2003, she recalled that there was often limited rehearsal time before she recorded a song, and how Weston would sometimes slip musical arrangements under the bathroom door as she was in the bath getting ready to go to the studio. 
Her work in radio, television and music is recognized by three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1952, listeners of Radio Luxembourg voted Stafford their favorite female singer.  The New York Fashion Academy named her one of the Best Dressed Women of 1955.  Songbirds magazine has reported that, by 1955, Stafford had amassed more worldwide record sales than any other female artist, and that she was ranked fifth overall. She was nominated in the Best Female Singer category at the 1955 Emmy Awards. She won a Grammy for Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris, and The Pied Pipers' recording of "I'll Never Smile Again" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982, as was Stafford's version of "You Belong to Me" in 1998.  She was inducted into the Big Band Academy of America's Golden Bandstand in April 2007. Stafford and Weston were founding members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.[ 
Stafford's music has been referenced in popular culture. Her recording of "Blues in the Night" features in a scene of James Michener's novel The Drifters (1971), while a Marine Corps Sergeant Major in Walter Murphy's The Vicar of Christ (1979) hears a radio broadcast of her singing "On Top of Old Smoky" shortly before a battle in Korea. Commenting on the latter reference for his 1989 book Singers and the Song—which includes a chapter about Stafford—the author Gene Lees says it "somehow sets Stafford's place in the American culture. You're getting pretty famous when your name turns up in crossword puzzles; you are woven into a nation's history when you turn up in its fiction." 
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  Blue Moon

  Blue moon you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon
You knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a pray'r for 
Someone I really could care for
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper "Please adore me"
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold!
Blue moon! Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

 Blue moon you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon
You knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for 
Someone I really could care for
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper "Please adore me"
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold!
Blue moon! Now I'm no longer alone

 Without a dream in my heart



Moonlight in Vermont

 Frozen winter streams
withered leaves, a sycamore
moonlight in Vermont

 Icy finger waves
ski trails down a mountain side
snowlight in Vermont

 Telegraphs cables they sing down the highway
and travel each bend in the road
people who meet in this romantic setting 
are so hypnotized by the lovely 

 Shadows through the trees
snowdrifts shining in the dark
moonlight in Vermont

 All the lovely shadows through the trees
snowdrifts shining in the dark
moonlight in Vermont
Moonlight in Vermont

Too Young 

  They try to tell us we're too young
Too young to really be in love
They say that love's a word
A word we've only heard
But can't begin to know the meaning of

 And yet we're not too young to know
This love will last though years may go
And then some day they may recall
We were not too young at all

 And yet we're not too young to know
This love will last though years may go
And then some day they may recall
We were not too young at all



"I Didn't Mean A Word I Said"

  I didn't mean a word I said
And if I hurt you, I'm sorry
I didn't mean to lose my head
And if I made you cry, I'm sorry
It was just another foolish quarrel
Won't you end it with a kiss
And just remember this
Except the TIME I said I love you
I didn't mean a word I said

 I didn't mean a word I said
And if I hurt you, I'm so so so so so sorry, so so sorry
I didn't mean to lose my head
And if I made you cry, I'm sorry
It was just another foolish quarrel
Won't you end it with a kiss
And just remember this
Except the TIME I said I love you

 I didn't mean a word I said

 
  A Sunday kind of love

 I want a Sunday kind of love
A love to last past Saturday night
I'd like to know
It's more than love at first sight
I want a Sunday kind of love

 I want a a love that's on the square
Can't seem to find somebody to care
I'm on a lonely road that leads to nowhere
I need a Sunday kind of love

 I do my Sunday dreaming,
And all my Sunday scheming
Every minute, every hour, every day

 I'm hoping to discover
A certain kind of lover
Who will show me the way
My arms need someone to enfold
To keep me warm when Mondays are cold
Love for all my life to have and to hold
I want a Sunday kind of love

 A love for all my life
To have and to hold
I want a Sunday kind of love
A Sunday kind of love
trooper7h

 Blues In The Night

 My mama done told me when I was in knee-pants
My mama done told me, she said Son
A woman will sweet-talk ya, she'll give you the big eye
But when that sweet talkin' is done

 A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing
Who'll leave ya to sing the blues in the night
Now the rain's a fallin', hear the train a callin', oooo-ee
Hear the lonesome whistle blowin' 'cross the trestle, oooo-ee

 Oooo-ee-a-oooo-ee, ol' clickety-clack
Comes echoing back the blues in the night
The evening breeze will start the trees to cryin'
And the moonlight will hide its light

 When you get the blues in the night
Take my word, the mockingbird
He will sing the saddest kind of song
He knows things are wrong and he's right

 From Natchez to Mobile
From Memphis to St. Joe
Wherever the four winds seem to blow
I've been in some big towns and I've heard me some big talkin'

 But there is one thing I know
A woman's a two-face
She's a worrisome thing
Who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night

 Got a case of the blues in the night
Don't know what to do
Blues every night
It's all because of you  
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Autumn leaves

  The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

 Since you went away the days grow longer
And soon I'll hear old winters song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
RoundMidnightTV

  September In The Rain 

 The leaves of brown came tumbling down
Remember in September in the rain
The Sun went out just like a dying amber
That September in the rain

 To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed to play our sweet refrain
Though spring is here to me it's still September
That September in the rain

 To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed to play our sweet refrain
Though spring is here to me it is still September
That September in the rain

 That September that brought the pain
That September in the rain



 Haunted Heart

 Listen while you read!
In the night, though we're apart,
There's a ghost of you within my haunted heart
Ghost of you, my lost romance,
Lips that laugh, eyes that dance

 Haunted heart won't let me be,
Dreams repeat a sweet but lonely song to me

 Dreams are dust, it's you who must belong to me
And thrill my haunted heart,
Be still my haunted heart

 Dreams are dust, it's you who must belong to me
And thrill my haunted heart,
Be still my haunted heart
RoundMidnightTV

 I'll never smile again

  I'll never smile again, until I smile at you
I'll never laugh again, what good would it do?
For tears would fill my eyes, My heart would realize
That our romance is through.

 I'll never love again, I'm so in love with you
I'll never thrill again to somebody new
Within my heart, I know I will never start
To smile again, until I smile at you.

 ( Instrumental Bridge )

 I'll never love again, I'm so in love with you
I'll never thrill again to somebody new
Within my heart, I know I will never start
To smile again, until I smile at you.
RoundMidnightTV

 QUIET NIGHT OF QUIET STARS 

 Quiet nights and quiet stars
Quiet chords from my guitar
Floating on the silence that surrounds us

 Quiet nights and quiet dreams
Quiet walks by quiet streams
And the window lookin' on the mountains and the sea how lovely

 This is where to be
Here with you so close to me
Till the final flicker of life's ember

 I who was lost and lonely
Believing life was a only a bitter tragic joke
Have found with you the meaning of existence oh, my love

 This is where to be
Here with you so close to me
Till the final flicker of life's ember

 I who was lost and lonely
Believing life was a only a tragic joke
Have found with you the meaning of existence oh, my love

 
ru.vocal

 You Belong To Me  

 See the pyramids along the Nile 
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me.

 See the marketplace in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
But remember when a dream appears
You belong to me.

 I'll be so alone without you
Maybe you'll be lonesome too, and blue

 Fly the ocean in a silver plane
Watch the jungle when it's wet with rain
Just remember till you're home again
You belong to me
Larry Hinze
 
As Time Goes

 You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by

 And when two lovers woo
They still say I love you
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by

 Moonlight and love songs
Never out of date
Hearts full of passion
Jealousy and hate
Woman needs man
Man must have his mate
That no one can deny

 It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by
rujazzka


 People

 People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world
We're children, needing other children
And yet letting a grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like children than children

 Lovers, very special people
They're the luckiest people in the world
With one person 
One very special person 

 A feeling deep in your soul 
Says you were half now you're whole
No more hunger and thirst
But first be a person who needs people
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world

 With one person, one very special person
A feeling deep in your soul 
Says you were half now you're whole
No more hunger and thirst
But first be a person who needs people
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world 
ru.vocal

JazzBreakTV 
 Jo Stafford - The Nearness of You 1956

Jymster46 
 Jo Stafford - If My Heart Had A Window

vulcanswork 
 No Other Love - Jo Stafford

Prof Davis 
 The Many Jo Stafford

Rarity Music Great Hits '60
Jo Stafford - I'll Be Seeing You - Vintage Music Songs
I don't want to walk with you 00:00:00,00 It could happen to you 00:03:28,09 I'll walk alone 00:07:01,22 I'll remember April 00:10:49,09 We mustn't say goodbye 00:13:47,06 Yesterdays 00:17:09,17 No love, no nothin' 00:20:17,10 I'll be seeing you 00:23:37,23 I left my heart at the Stage Door Canteen 00:27:08,02 I fall in love too easily 00:30:27,24 You'll never know 00:33:55,19 I should care 00:37:39,15


Prof Davis
Jo Stafford Sings American Folk Songs

Prof Davis
Songs of Scotland - Jo Stafford