Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American traditional pop music singer and occasional actress. She originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music. By 1955, she had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Stafford largely retired as a performer in the mid-1960s, but continued in the music business. Her work in radio, television, and music is recognized by three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
About Jo Stafford in brief
Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American traditional pop music singer and occasional actress. She originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music. By 1955, she 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, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart and the first by a female artist to do so. 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. Stafford 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. She was married twice, first in 1937 to musician John Huddleston, then in 1952 to Paul Weston, with whom she had two children. Her mother was an accomplished banjo player, playing and singing many of the folk songs that influenced Stafford’s later career. Her father hoped for success in the California oil fields when he moved his family from Gainesboro, Tennessee, but worked in a succession of unrelated jobs. The two older Staffords were part of a popular vocal group the Stafford Sisters, who found moderate success on radio and in film.
Stafford’s first public singing appearance was in Long Beach, California, where the family lived when she was 12. She sang \”Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms\”, a Stafford family sentimental favorite. As a student at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, she was the lead in the school musical, As far As Those Enduring Those Endtechnic, which she was rehearsing on stage when the 1933 Long Beach earthquake destroyed the school. With her mother’s encouragement, she studied voice as a child, taking private voice lessons as well as taking private radio lessons from Foster Rucker, an announcer on California radio station KNXX. In 1938, Stafford met the future members of the Pied Pipers and became the group’s lead singer. She later appeared in television specials, including two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the UK. In 1961, the album Jonathan and Darlne Edwards in Paris won Stafford her only Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and was the first commercially successful parody album. Stafford was a regular host of the National Broadcasting Company radio series The Chesterfield Supper Club and later appeared on television specials. She is a second cousin of World War I hero Sergeant Alvin York, and her father was an oil field worker in Gainesborough, Tennessee. Stafford was the only one among her sisters who took a keen interest in it, and through this, she learned to read music.
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This page is based on the article Jo Stafford published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
