Georgia Gibbs - RIP

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Gibbs

Gibbs began her professional career at the age of thirteen, and was singing in Boston's Raymor Ballroom the following year. She cut her first record with the Hudson-DeLange Orchestra in 1936 (aged 16 or 17). "You don't really know loneliness unless you do a year or two with a one-night band, Gibbs said of her life on the big band circuit. [s]ing until about 2 a.m. Get in a bus and drive 400 miles. Stop in the night for the greasy hamburger. Arrive in a town. Try to sleep. Get up and eat." (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, May 12, 1994.)

She soon found steady work on popular radio shows including Your Hit Parade, Melody Puzzles and The Tim And Irene Show. Gibbs freelanced in the late 1930s and 1940s singing with the bands of Frankie Trumbauer, Hal Kemp, Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw. It was with Shaw's band (then billed as Fredda Gibson) that she scored her first hit, Absent Minded Moon (1942).
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Dec. 12, 2006, 10:09AM
Georgia Gibbs, famed for covers of R&B hits, dies at 87

By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Georgia Gibbs, a versatile singer who starred on the popular show Your Hit Parade and reached the top of the charts in the 1950s with covers of songs by black artists, has died. She was 87.

Gibbs died Saturday at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, family friend Leslie Gottlieb said. The cause was complications from leukemia.

Among her 15 Top 40 hits, mostly for Mercury Records, was the tango-based Kiss of Fire, which went to No. 1 in 1952.

But she is known historically — and controversially — as one of the whites who gained success in the 1950s covering rhythm and blues hits by black artists, sometimes upstaging the original versions with sanitized lyrics.

Tweedle Dee, an adaptation of LaVern Baker's R&B hit, reached No. 2 in 1954, while Dance With Me Henry, another R&B cover, reached No. 1 in 1955 with cleaned-up lyrics.

The original, Roll With Me, Henry or The Wallflower, was by Etta James as an "answer song" to the hit Work With Me, Annie.

"At that time you weren't allowed to say 'roll' because it was considered vulgar," James said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "So when Georgia Gibbs did her version, she renamed it Dance With Me, Henry and it went to No. 1 on the pop charts."

Besides a stint on Your Hit Parade, the radio and TV show that showcased the most popular songs each week, Gibbs was a regular on programs hosted by Garry Moore, Jimmy Durante and Danny Kaye and was a frequent guest on other radio and early television variety shows

Other memorable Gibbs recordings included the novelty If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd've Baked a Cake in the early 1950s, and her last Top 40 record, The Hula Hoop Song, in 1958.

Gibbs, along with Pat Boone, Connie Francis and others, was profiled this year in the book Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair With '50s Pop Music, by music critic Karen Schoemer.

In a review for The New York Times, singer Nellie McKay called the book's subjects "seven of the most neglected performers of the 20th century."

Gibbs, born Freda Lipschitz in Worcester, Mass., in 1919, began singing in Boston ballrooms as a teenager, using the name Gibbons, later becoming Georgia Gibbs. As her star rose, Moore began introducing her on the air as "Her Nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs," which became a popular phrase.

Although Gibbs was semiretired after 1960, her singing career spanned more than 60 years, "a remarkable and enduring talent, and very persistent," Gottlieb said.

A highlight of Gibbs' life, Gottlieb said, was performing for Israeli soldiers in 1949, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which helped establish the Jewish state.

Gibbs was married to Frank Gervasi, an author and World War II correspondent for United Press, who died before her. Survivors include a grandson and a brother.