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The Pied Pipers
The Pied Pipers
American popular singing group (formed in the late 1930s)
1
Paul Weston
Paul Weston
American pianist, arranger, composer, and conductor
2
Tommy Dorsey
Tommy Dorsey
American big band leader and musician
3
Axel Stordahl
Axel Stordahl
American arranger, orchestra leader
4
Ruth Lowe
Ruth Lowe
Canadian musician, songwriter
5
Mitch Miller
Mitch Miller
American musician, singer, conductor and record producer
6
Bobby Troup
Bobby Troup
American actor, jazz pianist, singer and songwriter (1918-1999)
7
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
American singer and actor (1915-1998)
8
The Sentimentalists
The Sentimentalists
American band
9
Matt Dennis
Matt Dennis
American singer, pianist, band leader, arranger, and writer of music
10
Sy Oliver
Sy Oliver
American jazz arranger, trumpeter, composer, singer and bandleader
11
Darlene Love
Darlene Love
American musician
12
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Riddle
American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator (1921-1985)
13
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
American recording artist; singer, songwriter, composer and actress (1920-2002)
14
Nick Fatool
Nick Fatool
American musician
15
Nancy Sinatra
Nancy Sinatra
American recording artist; singer
16
JoJo
JoJo
American actor-singer
17
Margaret Whiting
Margaret Whiting
American recording artist; singer
18
Dick Haymes
Dick Haymes
American actor and singer (1918-1980)
19
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
American jazz singer
20
Lee Denson
Lee Denson
American musician
Jo Stafford
American singer (1917-2008)

Jo Stafford

Intro
American singer (1917-2008)
Awards Received
star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer and occasional actress, 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 Bakersfield 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 back-up vocals for his orchestra.

In addition to her recordings with the Pied Pipers, Stafford featured in solo performances for Dorsey. After leaving the group in 1944, she recorded a series of pop 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 specials—including two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the U.K.

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.