Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop singer, 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, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart and the first by a female artist to do so.
Born in remote oil-rich Coalinga, California, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley, Stafford made her first musical appearance at age 12. 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 vocals with his orchestra. From 1940 to 1942, the group often performed with Dorsey's new male singer, Frank Sinatra.
In addition to her singing with the Pied Pipers, Stafford was featured in solo performances with Dorsey. After leaving the group in 1944, she recorded a series of pop songs now regarded as 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 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 specialsincluding two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the UK.
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.
Early years
thumb|upright|The singing Stafford Sisters in 1941
Jo Elizabeth Stafford was born in Coalinga, California, in 1917, to Grover Cleveland Stafford and Anna Stafford (née York)a second cousin of World War I hero Sergeant Alvin York. Other authors, including the music biographer Gene Lees refer to her as Jo. Both her parents enjoyed singing and sharing music with their family. Anna insisted that her children should take piano lessons, but Jo was the only one among her sisters who took a keen interest in it, and through this, she learned to read music. Her second was far more dramatic. As a student at Long Beach Polytechnic High School with the lead in the school musical, she was rehearsing on stage when the 1933 Long Beach earthquake destroyed part of the school. With her mother's encouragement, Stafford originally planned to become an opera singer and studied voice as a child, taking private lessons from Foster Rucker, an announcer on California radio station KNX. The two older Staffords were already part of a trio with an unrelated third member when the act got a big booking at Long Beach's West Coast Theater. Pauline was too ill to perform, and Jo was drafted in to take her place so they could keep the engagement. She asked her glee club teacher for a week's absence from school, saying her mother needed her at home, and this was granted. The performance was a success, and Jo became a permanent member of the group. The Staffords were subsequently heard on KNX's The Singing Crockett Family of Kentucky, and California Melodies, a network radio show aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System. The couple divorced in 1943. The Stafford Sisters made their first recording,"Let's Get Together and Swing" with Louis Prima, in 1936. In 1937, Jo worked behind the scenes with Fred Astaire on the soundtrack of A Damsel in Distress, creating the arrangements for the film, and with her sisters she arranged the backing vocals for "Nice Work If You Can Get It". Stafford said that her arrangement had to be adapted because Astaire had difficulty with some of the syncopation. In her words: "The man with the syncopated shoes couldn't do the syncopated notes".
The Pied Pipers
By 1938, the Staffords were involved with Twentieth Century Fox's production of Alexander's Ragtime Band. The studio brought in many vocal groups to work on the film, including the Four Esquires, the Rhythm Kings, and the King Sisters, who began to sing and socialize between takes. The Stafford Sisters, the Four Esquires and the Rhythm Kings became a new vocal group called the Pied Pipers.
thumb|The Pied Pipers in 1944: Pictured here are Charles Lowry, Jo Stafford, Clark Yocum, and John Huddleston.
As the Pied Pipers, they worked on local radio and movie soundtracks. When Alyce and Yvonne King threw a party for their boyfriends' visit to Los Angeles, the group was invited to perform.
Weston persuaded Dorsey to audition the group in 1938, and the eight drove together to New York City.
When Frank Sinatra joined the Dorsey band, he and the Pied Pipers often performed together on songs, alternating between his solos and him singing with the group. Sometimes they both had solos as well as being in the group. Stafford commented that he was very careful to blend his voice with theirs when singing with them. Their version of "I'll Never Smile Again" topped the Billboard Chart for 12 weeks in 1940 and helped to establish Sinatra as a singer. Her public debut as a soloist with the band occurred at New York's Hotel Astor in May 1942. Bill Davidson of Collier's reported in 1951 that because Stafford weighed in excess of 180 lb, Dorsey was reluctant to give her a leading vocal role in his orchestra, believing she was not sufficiently glamorous for the part. Following their departure from the orchestra, the Pied Pipers played a series of vaudeville dates in the Eastern United States. When they returned to California, they were signed to appear in the 1943 Universal Pictures movie Gals Incorporated. From there, they joined the NBC Radio show Bob Crosby and Company. In addition to working with Bob Crosby, they also appeared on radio shows hosted by Sinatra and Johnny Mercer and were one of the first groups signed to Mercer's new label, Capitol Records, which was founded in 1942. Weston, who left Dorsey's band in 1940 to work with Dinah Shore, became music director at Capitol.
Solo career
Capitol Records and United Service Organization
thumb|right|upright|Jo Stafford, 1946
While Stafford was still working for Dorsey, Johnny Mercer told her, "Some day I'm going to have my own record company, and you're going to record for me." Her performance was well-received; an article in the July 1945 edition of Band Leaders magazine described it as "sensational", but Stafford did not enjoy singing before live audiences, and it was the only nightclub venue she ever played. On April 5, 1946, the entire cast, including Stafford and Perry Como, participated in the first commercial radio broadcast from an airplane. The initial plan was to use the stand-held microphones used in studios, but when these proved to be problematic, the cast switched to hand-held microphones, which because of the plane's cabin pressure became difficult to hold. Three flights were made that day; a rehearsal in the afternoon, then two in the eveningone for the initial 6:00 pm broadcast and another at 10:00 pm for the West Coast broadcast.
Stafford moved from New York to California in November 1946, continuing to host Chesterfield Supper Club from Hollywood. In 1948, she restricted her appearances on the show to Tuesdays, and Peggy Lee hosted the Thursday broadcasts. Stafford left the show when it was expanded to 30 minutes, making her final appearance on September 2, 1949. She returned to the program in 1954; it ended its run on NBC Radio the following year. During her time with Chesterfield Supper Club, Stafford revisited some of the folk music she had enjoyed as a child. Weston, her conductor on the program, suggested using some of the folk music for the show. With her renewed interest in folk tunes came an interest in folklore; Stafford established a contest to award a prize to the best collection of American folklore submitted by a college student. The annual Jo Stafford Prize for American Folklore was handled by the American Folklore Society, with the first prize of $250 awarded in 1949.
thumb|upright|In 1954, James Conkling, president of Columbia Records, presented Stafford with a diamond-studded plaque to mark the sale of 25 million of her records.
Stafford continued to record. She duetted with Gordon MacRae on a number of songs. In 1948, their version of "Say Something Sweet to Your Sweetheart" sold over a million copies. The following year, they repeated their success with "My Happiness", and Stafford and MacRae recorded "Whispering Hope" together. At the time, she was hosting Club Fifteen with Bob Crosby for CBS Radio. When that happened, Capitol wanted Stafford to record eight more songs before December 15, 1950, and she found herself in the unusual situation of simultaneously working for two competing record companies, an instance that was very rare in an industry where musicians were seen as assets. In 1954, Stafford became the second artist after Bing Crosby to sell 25 million records for Columbia. She was presented with a diamond-studded disc to mark the occasion. She presented a weekly show that aired in Eastern Europe, and Collier's published an article about the program in its April 21, 1951, issue that discussed her worldwide popularity, including in countries behind the Iron Curtain. The article, titled "Jo Stafford: Her Songs Upset Joe Stalin", earned her the wrath of the U.S. Communist Daily Worker newspaper, which published a column critical of Stafford and VOA.