Connie Francis (belated RIP thread)

[davey]

Did we really go two weeks without acknowledging the passing of Connie Francis? Am I the only fan of her extraordinary run of 50s and 60s singles?

I guess there isn’t a lot to say, except I love all of those songs. This one is a favorite. Any time they’d double-track her doing her own Everly-style close-harmonies with herself, that was a magic trick:

[davey]

Not a single person here?

[Charlie O.]

I liked "Stupid Cupid".

[Stacy Heydon]

Aug 6, 2025 21:59:48 GMT davey said:

Not a single person here?

I did read the Bob Stanley piece in The Guardian (like Roy Orbison there's a lot of tragedy in her life), but I don't really know her music.

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jul/17/connie-francis-dead-pop-star-legacy

[rayge]

I didn't join in partly because I was busy with the cup and disgogs stuff, but also because I don't have much positive to say. Who's Sorry Now, Heartaches, Where the Boys Are and Stupid Cupid were all over the radio in the late ’50s, early ’60s, just before I started buying records, and rightly or wrongly I thought of her as a pop singer for my parent's generation, and - although in terms of time she was often lumped in with rock and roll - I could hear the difference: Rosemary Clooney was more of a rocker than she was. I rarely picked up her singles from the second-hand stores/junk shops where I bought the majority of my singles - and virtually all of those that were released before 1962. It didn't help - and I know this seems shallow - that her singles over here were released on MGM, which seemed to favour show tunes and ballad hits (Tommy Edwards' admittedly beautiful All in the Game, for instance) rather than rockers, black vocal groups or R&B.

Her achievements - first female artist to have a number 1 in the US, largest selling female artist in history (which she held for a while) - show she was a major figure, but she never resonated with me as anything other than a transitional star between the orchestral pop of the ’50s and the beat scene/guitar pop of the ’60s: I didn't hate, or even dislike, her output, it was just there - until it wasn't any more.

An RIP thread probably isn't the place to air this, but I've often thought how the Forties and Fifties brought forth some huge Italian-American stars - Sinatra, Bennett and Martin, as well as Francis, but no real rock & rollers. The only ones I can think of are Dion and Freddy Cannon, although I may have missed some who changed their name. Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe it's because Italian families tended to migrate to the northern and eastern cities, while rock and roll and especially rockabilly came out of the south.