TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS
JO STAFFORD
SONGWRITERS: JOHNNY MERCER & RICHARD A. WHITTING
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ÁLBUM: YES INDEED
LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS
GENRE: POP MUSIC
YEAR: 1947
Jo
Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008) was an American singer
of traditional pop music and occasional actress, whose career spanned four
decades from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. She was admired by both critics
and the listening public for the purity of her voice and was considered one of
the most versatile vocalists of the era. Her 1952
song "You Belong to Me" topped the charts in the United States and
United Kingdom, and made her the first woman to have a Nº 1 on the UK Singles
Chart. She is also
the winner of a 1961 Grammy Award for an album of comedic interpretations of
popular songs produced with her husband, Paul Weston.
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 na
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. Weston
and she 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 álbum 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.
You're just too marvelous, too marvelous for words
Like glorious, glamorous and that
old standby
amorous
It's all too
wonderful, I'll never
find the words
That say enough, tell
enough, I mean they just aren't swell enough
You're much too much
and just too very, very
To ever be in
Webster's Dictionary
And so I'm borrowing a love
song from the birds
To tell you that
you're marvelous, too marvelous
for words
You're much, you're
too much and just too very, very
To ever be, to ever
be in Webster's Dictionary
And so I'm borrowing a love
song from the birds
To tell you that
you're marvelous, tell you that you're marvelous
Tell you that you're
marvelous, too marvelous
for words.
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