The Silkiest Voice of the Big Band Era

Jun 09, 2024

Very few people merit three stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, but Jo Stafford (1917-2008) was one of those amazing artists of the 20th century. In fifty years of performing, she excelled in radio, television, and music and earned each one of those glittering stars.

She got her start in the late 30s when she became the lead singer of a group called The Pied Pipers who spent two years performing with Tommy Dorsey’s big band. There she met and sang with a young Frank Sinatra, who was just breaking into the music scene.

The vagaries of human culture and memory, however, often lose track of someone of such incomparable talent. It’s sad that her silken voice and contributions to musical culture are hardly known today.

“G.I. Jo”

But the men who went off to World War II certainly knew who Jo Stafford was. During the War, she toured with the USO and became so beloved of the troops that she was given the nickname, “G.I. Jo”.

In her mid-twenties at the time, she was lovely and became the perfect stand-in for all the girls left at home when the men went off to war.

She was also faithful to the cause. She was at the dock in New York harbor in 1946 to meet the Queen Mary and welcome home the men of the 35th Infantry Division.

Classy and Talented

I love artists who combine real class with irresistible talent. To me, they are like sacred windows: a sort of channel of joy and goodness to us from beyond. They raise us up, fill our hearts with noble sentiments, and open us to grace.

Even if their performances are not overtly religious, they inspire us to be better people and in so doing, they help preserve human culture from the endless degrading influences that tear it down.

Perhaps as a measure of that, Jo Stafford was admired by her own peers in a way that can hardly be imagined in the competitive worlds of Hollywood or the music industry today. Sinatra said,

"It was a joy to sit on the bandstand and listen to her."

And Rosemary Clooney had highest praise for her:

"The voice says it all: beautiful, pure, straightforward, no artifice, matchless intonation, instantly recognizable. Those things describe the woman, too."

Long Career and Life

Understandably, regular accolades accompanied her throughout her career. In 1955 she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Female Singer about the same time she was named one of the Best Dressed Women of 1955 by the New York Fashion Academy!

As I said, real classy.

Metronome Magazine named her and Perry Como the best female and male vocalists of 1956. By that time, she had also sold more records than any other female recording artist in history.

**Being presented with the Diamond Award from CBS for 25 millions records sold.**

In the ’60s she won a Grammy Award for Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris, the comedy show she had created with her husband, Paul Weston. Two of her songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982, which you’ll hear in the first and third videos below.

Jo Stafford effectively retired from public life in the late 70s and went to her eternal reward in 2008 at the ripe old age of 90. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has so delighted audiences and won more hearts by her class and talent than the incomparable Jo Stafford.

Enjoy her silky-smooth voice in her signature song, “You Belong to Me” and a few other memorable pieces.

(PS—Sinatra was a bit rough around the edges in the Ed Sullivan performance below, but the lovely Jo Stafford standing next to him more than made up for it!)