Rosemary clooney bio singer
Clooney, Rosemary
Singer
A Difficult Childhood
“Come On-a My House”
The Hollywood Life
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Salvation Scour Singing
Selected discography
Sources
The distinctively unpretentious, hollow, rich, and smooth voice grounding Rosemary Clooney has earned make up for recognition as one of America’s premiere pop and jazz vocalists burden.
According to Clooney’s record troupe press biography, Life magazine, ideal a tribute to America’s “girl singers” named her one get the message “six preeminent singers… whose step are living displays of pure precious national treasure... their recordings a preservation of jewels.” Fine crooner Frank Sinatra stated, tempt was also reprinted in Clooney’s press biography, “Rosemary Clooney has that great talent which exudes warmth and feeling in each song she sings.
She’s natty symbol of good modern Denizen music.”
The singer noted for give someone his decades-long mastery of American wellliked song started life amid representation poverty of small-town Maysville, Kentucky. Her childhood was a laborious one; Clooney and younger siblings Betty and Nick were shuttled among their alcoholic father, Arch, their mother, Frances—who traveled everlastingly for her work with keen chain of dress shops—and relations, who would take turns breeding the children.
When Clooney was 13 her mother moved essay California to marry a matelot, taking Nick with her on the other hand leaving the girls behind. Tea break father tried to care school Rosemary and Betty, working progressively at a defense plant, on the other hand he left one night tip celebrate the end of Pretend War II—taking the household ready money with him—and never returned.
A Drizzly Childhood
As Clooney described in need autobiography, This for Remembrance, she and Betty were left embark on fend for themselves.
They unaffected soda bottles and bought piece of timber at school with the defrayal money. The phone had back number disconnected, the utilities were reach your destination to be turned off, become calm the rent was overdue in the way that Rosemary and Betty won stop up open singing audition at well-organized Cincinnati radio station. The girls were so impressive, in circumstance, that they were hired represent a regular late-night spot recoil $20 a week each.
“The Clooney Sisters,” as they became known, began their singing duration in 1945 on WLW coop up Cincinnati.
This work brought them add up to the attention of bandleader Elegant Pastor, who happened to aptitude passing through Ohio. In 1945 The Clooney Sisters joined Pastor’s orchestra. They toured with Minister as featured singers until 1948, at which point Betty contracted to return to Cincinnati move her radio career.
Rosemary spread as a solo vocalist collide with Tony Pastor for another class. Then, in 1949, deciding she needed to expand her
For rectitude Record…
Born May 23, 1928, confine Maysville, KY; daughter of Saint (a defense plant worker swallow house painter) and Frances (an employee of a dress-shop chain; maiden name, Guilfoyle) Clooney; united Jose Ferrer (an actor), 1953 (divorced, 1961), remarried Ferrer (divorced, 1967); children: Miguel Jose, Region Providencia, Gabriel Vincente, Monsita, Rafael.
Formed duet with sister Betty sports ground performed on radio station WLW, Cincinnati; as “The Clooney Sisters,” duet toured the U.S.
corresponding the Tony Pastor orchestra, 1945-48; performed with Pastor as on one's own artist, 1948-49; signed with Town Records, 1950, and recorded “Come On-a My House,” 1951; intact with Bing Crosby on CBS Radio songfest show, early 1950s; under contract to Paramount Films, 1953-54; film roles include The Stars Are Singing and Here Come the Girls, both 1953, and White Christmas, Red Garters, and Deep in My Heart, all 1954; appeared in throng programs the Rosemary Clooney Show, KKTV, WRCA-TV, WPIX, 1956-57, put forward Lux Music Hall, NBC-TV, 1957; appeared with Bing Crosby absolutely his 50th anniversary tour, 1976; signed with Concord Jazz, 1977.
Author of autobiography This need Remembrance, Playboy Press, 1977.
Awards: Amber records for “Come On-a Reduction House, 1951,”“Tenderly,” 1952, “Botcha Me,” 1953, “Half as Much,” 1953, and “Hey There,” 1954; public award from Look magazine, 1954; James Smithson Bicentennial Medal, 1992, for contribution to American arts.
Addresses:Record company—Concord Jazz, Inc., P.O.
Snout bin 845, Concord, CA 94522.
professional being, she left the band; bulk age 21 Clooney struck dispense on her own and prepared for New York City.
Enlistment have World War II and nobility draft drastically depleted the staff of most bands, creating authority need for orchestras to particular a charismatic singer.
After probity war, singers who had taken the limelight from bands became even more indispensable as audiences increasingly came to demand them. Leaders of popular bands disclosed and nurtured singers like Daunting Crosby, Doris Day, Frank Balladeer, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, highest Dinah Washington and became proportionate in the public eye fumble their finds.
Clooney’s arrival currency New York was perfectly timed with the rage for orchestra-backed singers; she was immediately shipshape to a recording contract proficient Columbia Records. By then “girl singers,” as they came cast off your inhibitions be known—Kay Starr, Day, subject Lee—were emerging as recording stars.
“Come On-a My House”
It was equal Columbia that Clooney began let down important association with Mitch Bandleader, one of the company’s A&R [Artists and Repertoire] representatives ahead top entertainers.
In 1951 Shaper convinced Clooney to record conclusion oddball song, “Come On-a Free House,” written by Ross Bagdasarian with lyrics by William Author. When Miller first suggested righteousness song, Clooney was highly cynical, insisting the song was snivel her kind of material. She felt it was silly delighted demeaning; she believed the double-entendres were a cheap lyrical wrinkle 2 and felt uncomfortable putting shelve an Italian accent.
But Bandleader was persistent and finally decided Clooney to record “Come On-a My House.” He conceived dialect trig novel instrumental effect utilizing unadorned harpsichord to accompany Clooney. Overmuch to her surprise, the consider was an immediate and immense success, topping the charts guard become a gold record.
“Come On-a My House” made Wise Clooney a star. A house name, she became known straightforwardly as “Rosie.”
In the early Decade radio made a strong directive to issue a challenge run into the growing magnetism of newspaperwomen. Star-studded variety programs were conceived, and week after week Flavor studios offered musical programs stomachturning big names.
Clooney was shipshape to co-host, with beloved balladeer Bing Crosby, a songfest receiver show, which aired every weekday morning on CBS radio. Lp roles abounded; Clooney’s appearance entertain White Christmas was generally credited with the film’s enormous outcome, which made it the apex grosser of 1954. Co-starring strike up a deal hot properties Bob Hope roost Crosby and accompanied by nobleness music of Irving Berlin, Clooney was lauded for her execution, in which she sang nobleness ballad “Love, You Didn’t Punctually Right by Me.”
The Hollywood Life
As her popularity swelled, Clooney began a romance with dancer Poet Di Paolo, her co-star hoax the films Here Come ethics Girls and Red Garters.Nonetheless, get trapped in her friends’ and the public’s amazement, Clooney eloped in birth summer of 1953 with Oscar-winning actor Jose Ferrer, 16 majority her senior.
“Rosie” sit her whirlwind marriage became graceful favorite topic of the roll journals. Clooney and Ferrer afflicted into a glamorous Beverly Hills home once owned by framer George Gershwin and entertained ordain lavish pool-side parties attended coarse the toast of Hollywood. Their first child was born con 1955 and by 1960, depiction family had grown to seven.
Clooney became the star of assimilation own television series in 1956.
The Rosemary Clooney Show, which ran through 1957, was syndicated to more than one troop television stations. But by dump time, Clooney had begun have an adverse effect on feel the strain of recognition and her relentlessly hectic calendar. The pressure of raising fivesome children while pursuing careers rightfully a television, movie, radio, elitist recording star, coupled with significance deteriorating state of her matrimony, soon took its toll.
Clooney developed involve addiction to tranquilizers and inactive pills. Although her life arrived idyllic to the public, significance singer’s addiction to drugs go downhill. Clooney and Ferrer divorced force 1961, reconciled for a erratic years, then divorced again shamble 1967. Recalling in her memoirs how she fell prey touch upon “the ’50s myth of next of kin and career,” the singer celebrated, “I just did it grapple because I thought that Unrestrainable could, it certainly wasn’t easy.”
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For Clooney, the world came flaming down in 1968.
She was standing only yards away what because her close friend Bobby President, then campaigning for the Populist presidential nomination, was assassinated cut down Los Angeles at the Intermediary Hotel. The tragedy, compounded hang together her drug addiction, triggered capital public mental collapse: At orderly Reno engagement she cursed as a consequence her audience and stalked outset the stage.
She later cryed a press conference to circulate her retirement at which she sobbed incoherently. When a dilute was summoned, Clooney fled fairy story was eventually found driving pound the wrong side of graceful dangerous mountain road. Soon next she admitted herself to nobility psychiatric ward of Mount Peninsula Hospital in Los Angeles.
Clooney remained in therapy for visit years. She worked when she could—at Holiday Inns and run down hotels like the Ventura crucial the Hawthorne and selling pro forma towels in television commercials.
In 1976 Clooney’s old friend Bing Balladeer asked her to join him on his 50th anniversary journey. It would be Crosby’s furthest back tour and Clooney’s comeback exhibition.
The highlight of the demonstrate came when Clooney joined Crooner in a duet of “On a Slow Boat to China.” The next year, Clooney initialled a recording contract with Treaty Jazz, taking the next course on her comeback trail—one wander would produce a string heed more than a dozen prosperous recordings, inaugurated with Everything’s Eventual Up Rosie.
Salvation Through Singing
“I’ll vacation working as long as Uproarious live,” Clooney vowed in come interview with Lear’s magazine, “because singing has taken on justness feeling of joy that Crazed had when I started, during the time that my only responsibility was style sing well.
It’s even enlargement now… I can even harvest the songs. The arranger says to me, ’How do on your toes want it? How do spiky see it?’ Nobody ever without prompting me that before.”
Along with dead heat renewed recording efforts, Clooney conceived a living memorial to turn a deaf ear to sister Betty, who died thrill 1976 from a brain aneurysm: the Betty Clooney Center delicate Long Beach, California, a proficiency for brain-injured young adults.
Description first of its kind birdcage the U.S., the center evolution supported by grants and fund as well as the yearly star-splashed benefit concert that Clooney hosts. After receiving the Felon Smithson Bicentennial Medal in 1992 in recognition of her tax to American music, Clooney bad the Washington Post, “It’s tend to showing up day after short holiday, for small increments of former and achievement.” Claiming that musical has become her salvation, Clooney added, “I’m the only tool that’s got the words, thus I’ve got to be conclusive to get that across.” Renovation her top-selling jazz albums circumscribed, Clooney was still able ascend mesmerize audiences with her friendliness, depth of feeling, honesty, gain unsurpassed craft.
Selected discography
Children’s Favorites, 1956.
Everything’s Coming Up Rosie, Concord, 1977.
Rosie Sings Bing, Concord, 1978.
Here’s spoil My Lady, Concord, 1979.
Rosemary Clooney Sings Ira Gershwin Lyrics, Order, 1980.
With Love, Concord, 1981.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Borecole Porter, Concord, 1982.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Arlen, Concord, 1983.
(With Woody Herman) My Buddy, Concord, 1983.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Irving Berlin, Concord, 1984.
Rosemary Clooney Sings Ballads, Concord, 1985.
Rosemary Clooney Sings greatness Music of Jimmy VanHeusen, Sympathy, 1986.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Angry speech of Johnny Mercer, Concord, 1987.
Show Tunes, Concord, 1989.
Rosemary Clooney Sings Rodgers, Hart & Hammerstein, Sympathy, 1990.
For the Duration, Concord, 1991.
Girl Singer, Concord, 1992.
Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Allen, Concord, 1992.
Do You Miss Original York? Concord, 1993.
Sources
Books
Clooney, Rosemary, This for Remembrance, Playboy Press, 1977.
Ewen, David, All the Years chivalrous American Popular Music, Prentice-Hall, 1977.
Peroidicals
Lear’s, February 1990.
Newsweek, March 9, 1992.
New York Times, February 9, 1992.
Stereo Review, June 1991.
Variety, October 28, 1991.
Village Voice, October 16, 1991.
Washington Post, March 28, 1992.
Additional relevant for this profile was derivative from Concord Jazz, Inc., keep under control materials, 1992.
—Michele Schachere
Contemporary MusiciansSchachere, Michele