Connie Francis

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风格: #传统流行
地区: United States of America 美国

艺人介绍

Connie Francis是位专门演唱西班牙与美式拉丁歌曲的女歌手，1958年以“Who’s Sorry Now”一曲成名。和五、六十年代的所有大牌歌手一样，她的声音几乎就代表着美国五十年代的优越生活方式，可以想象在战后的那—段歌舞升平的时期，人们是多么懂得浪漫情怀。

The 20th Century produced many popular singers. Of all the great “girl singers,” no one personified her generation, or was more idolized by millions across the world than Connie Francis, who was born Concetta Maria Franconero, in the Italian section of Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of first-generation Italian-American parents.

From the age of three, George Franconero recognized his daughter’s outstanding talent and, at his persistence, she began taking accordion lessons. However, her musical ingenuity would not be served well by the accordion, but because she was blessed with a golden voice; one that the world would come to adore, and which would inspire and touch the hearts of many millions.

Strongly influenced and encouraged by her father, an impoverished roofer, Connie gave her first performance at the Olympic Amusement Park in Irvington, NJ at the tender age of four, playing her accordion and singing Anchors Aweigh and, in Italian, O Solo Mio. By the age of 10, she was playing “that instrument” and singing an unlikely standard, St. Louis Blues at the Mosque Theatre in Newark, earning third place on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour radio show.

The duality of Connie’s interests would soon become apparent. While appearing on TV weekly, she was also an excellent straight “A” student, co-editor of both her high school newspapers (at Arts High School in Newark and then later, at Belleville High School in Belleville, New Jersey), a member of the National Honor Society, and possessed with lofty aspirations of one day becoming a prominent doctor in research.

At 14, she found herself making demonstration records (demos) for publishers, who would then pitch these yet-to-be published songs to the most popular singers of the day. Before that first four-hour demo session was over, Connie knew, for certain, that if she were ever to find her place in the sun, it would surely begin in a recording studio — the one place which would consume the major part of her time for the next generation and more. “Anywhere I traveled on planet Earth, I never failed to find myself at a session. Sometimes I felt as if I lived in a recording studio.”

From the very beginning, her father demonstrated a watchful, unrelenting eye on Connie; and with the other, an uncanny, unwavering vision of the destiny that lay before her. She was still 14 when she won a spot on The Arthur Godfrey Talent Scout Show, on which, every Christmas, rather than featuring the usual adult singers, Godfrey would highlight child performers instead. It was at the rehearsal for that show that Godfrey, having a tough time pronouncing her Italian last name, summoned her over to his desk. “Whew! Your last name, Connie — it’s givin’ me a headache. Why don’t we just give you a good ol’ easy-to-pronounce Irish name like, lemme see. . . what about Francis? Hey, that sounds good to me. . . let’s make it, ‘Connie Francis’, OK?” “Oh no, please, Mr. Godfrey,” Connie pleaded, “my father’ll have kittens. Couldn’t you please try to pronounce my last name just for tonight? And tomorrow, I’ll talk to daddy, and maybe he’ll let me be. . . what was that name again you just said. . . ? O.K., Connie Francis, it is.”

Amateur shows were the rage of 1950’s TV, and the talented young Connie soon found a home on a weekly kiddie variety show, NBC-TV’s The Startime Kids. Produced by a former hoofer named George Scheck, it was a program on which she would appear every single week for the next three-and-a-half years. When Startime had its run, Scheck became Connie’s personal manager, a close relationship that lasted almost 30 years.

At 17, with The Startime Kids off the air, George Scheck, together with music publisher, Lou Levy, raised the $6,000 needed for Connie’s first own recording session. They then brought these masters to every record company in the business and, everywhere, they were turned down flat. Mitch Miller, the top A&R man at Colombia Records had this advice for the two hopefuls, “This girl has no distinctive sound. She sounds like 50,000 other girl singers. Save your money, boys.”

But as luck would have it, when they took those four masters to the only company remaining, MGM Records, the then president Harry Meyerson, made a much different decision. He signed her to a 20-side/two-year unprecedented contract; one which allowed Connie to choose her own songs to record, and without having to rely on MGM recouping the costs for these sessions — the same unique rights she would enjoy for her next 15 years with the label.

After a string of 18 bomb sides (nine unsuccessful singles) MGM was finally ready to drop her from their roster. Her very wise father had other ideas, and for over a year, he had pleaded with her to record an old standard written in 1923, Who’s Sorry Now. But both she and MGM soundly rejected his suggestion. The head honchos at MGM told Connie, “Tell your old man to stick to his roofing business.” Connie and MGM were on the same page; she told her father, “That song of yours is so square, Daddy, that the kids on American Bandstand will laugh me right off the show.” Her father’s retort: “If you don’t record this song, sister, the only way you’ll ever get on American Bandstand, is if you sit on top of the goddamn TV set.”

With only 16 minutes remaining at that final session, Connie’s father gave her no choice other than to record the song about which he’d been hounding her for so long. She whispered to the conductor, Joe Lipman, “If I don’t cut this loser, Joe, then you’ll have to go home with the man today!” On January 1st, 1958, three months after that session, and when the single was a dud like all her previous records, America’s teenage icon, Dick Clark, turned Connie’s world around. He just happened to pick up a record that had been lying on his desk for months; he played it that day, liked it and continued to play it every day until April, when Who’s Sorry Now had sold close to a million records. Of this Connie says, “Without my friend and mentor Dick Clark, there simply would have been no Connie Francis.”

Connie Francis　康妮法蓝西斯

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Connie Francis 康妮 法蓝西斯

艺人介绍

热门评论

最新简评（共176条）

Connie Francis　康妮法蓝西斯