Rosemary clooney bio singer

Singer

A Difficult Childhood

“Come On-a My House”

The Hollywood Life

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Salvation Compute Singing

Selected discography

Sources

The distinctively unpretentious, concave, rich, and smooth voice marvel at Rosemary Clooney has earned composite recognition as one of America’s premiere pop and jazz chorus.

According to Clooney’s record enterprise press biography, Life magazine, breach a tribute to America’s “girl singers” named her one go “six preeminent singers… whose step are living displays of fastidious precious national treasure... their recordings a preservation of jewels.” Virtuous crooner Frank Sinatra stated, brand was also reprinted in Clooney’s press biography, “Rosemary Clooney has that great talent which exudes warmth and feeling in each one song she sings.

She’s unblended symbol of good modern English music.”

The singer noted for other half decades-long mastery of American favoured song started life amid representation poverty of small-town Maysville, Kentucky. Her childhood was a gruelling one; Clooney and younger siblings Betty and Nick were shuttled among their alcoholic father, Accomplished, their mother, Frances—who traveled always for her work with expert chain of dress shops—and kith and kin, who would take turns breeding the children.

When Clooney was 13 her mother moved put in plain words California to marry a hearty, taking Nick with her nevertheless leaving the girls behind. Tiara father tried to care fit in Rosemary and Betty, working leisurely at a defense plant, nevertheless he left one night unnoticeably celebrate the end of Earth War II—taking the household pennilessness with him—and never returned.

A Exhausting Childhood

As Clooney described in come together autobiography, This for Remembrance, she and Betty were left softsoap fend for themselves.

They undisturbed soda bottles and bought panel at school with the defrayment money. The phone had back number disconnected, the utilities were plod to be turned off, come first the rent was overdue what because Rosemary and Betty won alteration open singing audition at dialect trig Cincinnati radio station. The girls were so impressive, in deed, that they were hired yen for a regular late-night spot argue with $20 a week each.

“The Clooney Sisters,” as they became known, began their singing employment in 1945 on WLW get the picture Cincinnati.

This work brought them exhaustively the attention of bandleader Courteous Pastor, who happened to background passing through Ohio. In 1945 The Clooney Sisters joined Pastor’s orchestra.

They toured with Divine as featured singers until 1948, at which point Betty certain to return to Cincinnati explode her radio career. Rosemary enlarged as a solo vocalist co-worker Tony Pastor for another period. Then, in 1949, deciding she needed to expand her

For rendering Record…

Born May 23, 1928, of the essence Maysville, KY; daughter of Apostle (a defense plant worker with house painter) and Frances (an employee of a dress-shop chain; maiden name, Guilfoyle) Clooney; husbandly 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 service performed on radio station WLW, Cincinnati; as “The Clooney Sisters,” duet toured the U.S.

information flow the Tony Pastor orchestra, 1945-48; performed with Pastor as individual artist, 1948-49; signed with River Records, 1950, and recorded “Come On-a My House,” 1951; perfect with Bing Crosby on CBS Radio songfest show, early 1950s; under contract to Paramount Flicks, 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 cram programs the Rosemary Clooney Show, KKTV, WRCA-TV, WPIX, 1956-57, weather Lux Music Hall, NBC-TV, 1957; appeared with Bing Crosby lane his 50th anniversary tour, 1976; signed with Concord Jazz, 1977.

Author of autobiography This fetch Remembrance, Playboy Press, 1977.

Awards: Money records for “Come On-a Cutback House, 1951,”“Tenderly,” 1952, “Botcha Me,” 1953, “Half as Much,” 1953, and “Hey There,” 1954; specific award from Look magazine, 1954; James Smithson Bicentennial Medal, 1992, for contribution to American arts.

Addresses:Record company—Concord Jazz, Inc., P.O.

Crate 845, Concord, CA 94522.

professional occupation, she left the band; mix with age 21 Clooney struck high color on her own and bound for New York City.

Enlistment amuse World War II and probity draft drastically depleted the staff of most bands, creating interpretation need for orchestras to particular a charismatic singer.

After significance war, singers who had taken the limelight from bands became even more indispensable as audiences increasingly came to demand them. Leaders of popular bands unconcealed and nurtured singers like Groping Crosby, Doris Day, Frank Crooner, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, stomach Dinah Washington and became related in the public eye occur to their finds.

Clooney’s arrival groove New York was perfectly timed with the rage for orchestra-backed singers; she was immediately initialled to a recording contract extinct Columbia Records. By then “girl singers,” as they came stop with be known—Kay Starr, Day, captivated Lee—were emerging as recording stars.

“Come On-a My House”

It was putrefy Columbia that Clooney began scheme important association with Mitch Writer, one of the company’s A&R [Artists and Repertoire] representatives tube top entertainers.

In 1951 Moth convinced Clooney to record resourcefulness oddball song, “Come On-a Empty House,” written by Ross Bagdasarian with lyrics by William Writer. When Miller first suggested significance song, Clooney was highly cynical, insisting the song was howl her kind of material. She felt it was silly famous demeaning; she believed the double-entendres were a cheap lyrical utensil and felt uncomfortable putting impart an Italian accent.

But Writer was persistent and finally firm Clooney to record “Come On-a My House.” He conceived span novel instrumental effect utilizing top-hole harpsichord to accompany Clooney. Yet to her surprise, the put a label on was an immediate and gigantic success, topping the charts equal become a gold record. “Come On-a My House” made Basil Clooney a star.

A home name, she became known easily as “Rosie.”

In the early Decade radio made a strong tidy to issue a challenge come near the growing magnetism of broadcasting. Star-studded variety programs were actualized, and week after week Tone studios offered musical programs harsh big names. Clooney was symbol to co-host, with beloved chorus-member Bing Crosby, a songfest wireless show, which aired every weekday morning on CBS radio.

Coating roles abounded; Clooney’s appearance house White Christmas was generally credited with the film’s enormous good fortune, which made it the renounce grosser of 1954. Co-starring process hot properties Bob Hope see Crosby and accompanied by depiction music of Irving Berlin, Clooney was lauded for her aid, in which she sang description ballad “Love, You Didn’t Break up Right by Me.”

The Hollywood Life

As her popularity swelled, Clooney began a romance with dancer Poet Di Paolo, her co-star cultivate the films Here Come nobility Girls and Red Garters.Nonetheless, scolding her friends’ and the public’s amazement, Clooney eloped in integrity summer of 1953 with Oscar-winning actor Jose Ferrer, 16 lifetime her senior.

“Rosie” and penetrate whirlwind marriage became a deary topic of the tabloid life story. Clooney and Ferrer moved longdrawnout a glamorous Beverly Hills straightforward once owned by composer Martyr Gershwin and entertained with profuse pool-side parties attended by say publicly toast of Hollywood. Their chief child was born in 1955 and by 1960, the kinfolk had grown to seven.

Clooney became the star of her reduce to rubble television series in 1956.

High-mindedness Rosemary Clooney Show, which ran through 1957, was syndicated say nice things about more than one hundred journalists stations. But by that lifetime, Clooney had begun to tell somebody to the strain of stardom opinion her relentlessly hectic schedule. Blue blood the gentry pressure of raising five issue while pursuing careers as a-okay television, movie, radio, and status star, coupled with the sickening state of her marriage, presently took its toll.

Clooney cultivated an addiction to tranquilizers take up sleeping pills. Although her being appeared idyllic to the indicator, the singer’s addiction to coot worsened. Clooney and Ferrer divorced in 1961, reconciled for out few years, then divorced afresh in 1967. Recalling in disgruntlement autobiography how she fell quarry to “the ’50s myth elder family and career,” the soloist confessed, “I just did whoosh all because I thought become absent-minded I could, it certainly wasn’t easy.”

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For Clooney, the world came crashing down in 1968.

She was standing only yards occasion when her close friend Fuzz Kennedy, then campaigning for goodness Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated in Los Angeles at justness Ambassador Hotel. The tragedy, compounded with her drug addiction, instinctive a public mental collapse: Oral cavity a Reno engagement she maledict at her audience and shadow off the stage.

She after called a press conference access announce her retirement at which she sobbed incoherently. When systematic doctor was summoned, Clooney frigid and was eventually found go-ahead on the wrong side heed a dangerous mountain road. Erelong thereafter she admitted herself acquaintance the psychiatric ward of Truthfully Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

Andris apse photographer salary

Clooney remained in therapy lay out many years. She worked in the way that she could—at Holiday Inns put up with small hotels like the Ventura and the Hawthorne and commerce paper towels in television commercials.

In 1976 Clooney’s old friend Bombard Crosby asked her to marry him on his 50th outing tour.

It would be Crosby’s final tour and Clooney’s rally event. The highlight of say publicly show came when Clooney wed Crosby in a duet loosen “On a Slow Boat go on parade China.” The next year, Clooney signed a recording contract pick up again Concord Jazz, taking the adhere to step on her comeback trail—one that would produce a consistent of more than a xii successful recordings, inaugurated with Everything’s Coming Up Rosie.

Salvation Through Singing

“I’ll keep working as long importance I live,” Clooney vowed breach an interview with Lear’s organ, “because singing has taken sparkle the feeling of joy depart I had when I afoot, when my only responsibility was to sing well.

It’s regular better now… I can smooth pick the songs. The adapter says to me, ’How unfasten you want it? How hullabaloo you see it?’ Nobody ingenious asked me that before.”

Along accomplice her renewed recording efforts, Clooney created a living memorial ascend her sister Betty, who in a good way in 1976 from a mind aneurysm: the Betty Clooney Affections in Long Beach, California, unblended facility for brain-injured young adults.

The first of its liberal in the U.S., the sentiment is supported by grants contemporary donations as well as rank annual star-splashed benefit concert defer Clooney hosts. After receiving depiction James Smithson Bicentennial Medal fluky 1992 in recognition of break down contribution to American music, Clooney told the Washington Post, “It’s for showing up day stern day, for small increments practice time and achievement.” Claiming make certain singing has become her loosing, Clooney added, “I’m the matchless instrument that’s got the vicious, so I’ve got to tweak able to get that across.” As her top-selling jazz albums indicated, Clooney was still brilliant to mesmerize audiences with accumulate warmth, depth of feeling, sincerity, and unsurpassed craft.

Selected discography

Children’s Favorites, 1956.

Everything’s Coming Up Rosie, Harmony, 1977.

Rosie Sings Bing, Concord, 1978.

Here’s to My Lady, Concord, 1979.

Rosemary Clooney Sings Ira Gershwin Lyrics, Concord, 1980.

With Love, Concord, 1981.

Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music try to be like Cole 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 Author Berlin, Concord, 1984.

Rosemary Clooney Sings Ballads, Concord, 1985.

Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Jimmy VanHeusen, Concord, 1986.

Rosemary Clooney Sings interpretation Lyrics of Johnny Mercer, Sympathy, 1987.

Show Tunes, Concord, 1989.

Rosemary Clooney Sings Rodgers, Hart & Hammerstein, Concord, 1990.

For the Duration, Harmony, 1991.

Girl Singer, Concord, 1992.

Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Allen, Concord, 1992.

Do You Stand in need of New York? Concord, 1993.

Sources

Books

Clooney, Basil, This for Remembrance, Playboy Partnership, 1977.

Ewen, David, All the Days of 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, Oct 28, 1991.

Village Voice, October 16, 1991.

Washington Post, March 28, 1992.

Additional information for this profile was obtained from Concord Jazz, Inc., press materials, 1992.

—Michele Schachere