A Salute to the Golden Age of American Popular Music

We salute the music from Broadway, Hollywood, New Orleans, Tin Pan Alley and the "melody makers;" i.e. the bands and singers that brought the music to us via the radio, recordings and live events in the period from the 1920's to the 1960's. This is the golden period of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Van Heusen, Harold Arlen, Harry Warren, etc.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Singin' Rage is gone



The Singin' Rage Miss Patti Page has died. Clara Ann Fowler (November 8, 1927 - January 1, 2013), known by her professional name Patti Page, was one of the best-known female artists in traditional pop music. She was the best-selling female artist of the 1950s, and sold over 100 million records.
Page signed with Mercury Records in 1947, and became their first successful female artist, starting with 1948's "Confess".

In 1950, she had her first million-selling single "With My Eyes Wide Open, I'm Dreaming", and would eventually have 14 additional million-selling singles between 1950 and 1965.
Page's signature song, "Tennessee Waltz", recorded in 1950, was one of the biggest-selling singles of the 20th century, and is also one of the two official state songs of Tennessee. "Tennessee Waltz" spent 13 weeks atop the Billboard magazine's Best-Sellers List in 1950. Page had three additional No. 1 hit singles between 1950 and 1953, with "All My Love (Bolero)", "I Went to Your Wedding", and "(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window".

Unlike most pop music singers, Page blended the styles of country music into many of her most popular songs. By doing this, many of Page's singles also made the Billboard Country Chart. Towards the 1970s, Page shifted her career towards country music, and she began charting on the country charts, up until 1982. Page is one of the few vocalists who have made the country charts in five separate decades.
When rock and roll music became popular during the second half of the 1950s, traditional pop music was becoming less popular.

Page was one of the few traditional pop music singers who was able to sustain her success, continuing to have major hits into the mid-1960s with "Old Cape Cod", "Allegheny Moon", "A Poor Man's Roses (Or a Rich Man's Gold)", and "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte".

In 1997, Patti Page was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. She will be posthumously honored with the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2013. Source:Wiki

Health problems caused Page to write a sad-but-resolute letter to her fans late last year; "Although I feel I still have the voice God gave me, physical impairments are preventing me from using that voice as I had for so many years," Page wrote. "It is only He who knows what the future holds."
Page died on New Year's Day in Encinitas, Calif., according to publicist Schatzi Hageman.


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