Pop singer Lola Dee, who recorded for the Columbia and Mercury labels within the Fifties and toured all over the world with the likes of Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and Johnnie Ray, has died. She was 95.
Dee died Thursday of pure causes at a nursing facility in Hinsdale, Illinois, her publicist and CD producer, Alan Eichler, introduced.
After signing a five-year contract with Chicago-based Mercury Data, a lately fashioned firm that had Frankie Laine, Vic Damone and Patti Web page on its roster, the singer, then billed as Lola Ameche, teamed with the Al Hint Orchestra for 1951’s “Fairly Eyed Child,” which reached No. 21 on the Billboard charts.
She and Hint adopted that 12 months with one other hit, “Hitsity Hotsity,” and she or he recorded greater than two dozen songs over the subsequent three years, together with swinging variations of “Dance Me Free,” “Previous Man Mose,” “Down Yonder,” “Take Two to Tango” and “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”
She was typically backed by Ralph Marterie’s band, with whom she additionally toured, and Marterie went on to turn into her supervisor.
Courtesy of Alan Eichler
With rock ’n roll rising, Mercury up to date the musician’s picture and altered her identify to Lola Dee. She turned a blonde, and in 1954, recorded the change-of-pace ballad “Padre” and “Dig That Loopy Santa Claus,” which was coated by Brian Setzer in 2005.
Mercury additionally used her to launch its subsidiary label Wing Data and had her do The Platters’ “Solely You (and You Alone),” which bought almost 1 million copies. Her different tunes round this time included “Paper Roses”; “Born to Be With You”; two standard duets with Rusty Draper, “Scratch My Again” and “Behind These Swinging Doorways”; and the title tune from the 1957 Rita Hayworth movie Hearth Down Beneath.
After specializing in stay performances, Dee returned to Chicago and was a featured singer on WGN radio and tv, typically working with Nationwide Radio Corridor of Fame broadcaster Orion Samuelson from 1971-78. She additionally made annual stops on the Illinois State Honest.
Her final two public appearances had been singing the nationwide anthem for the Chicago Cubs and White Sox in 1978. She later labored as an govt lodge concierge.
Lorraine DeAngelis was born in Chicago in 1928. She carried out in native newbie exhibits by the point she was 9, then sang on the ABC Radio present Teen City, later often called Junior Junction. (Different castmembers on the variability program included Dick York of Bewitched fame and future Tremendous Circus bandleader Mary Hartline.)
A stint on the favored Chicago radio present Nationwide Barn Dance led ABC to signal her as a workers vocalist, and she or he sang 5 days per week on a 15-minute program alongside famed guitarist George Barnes.
She then got here to the eye of Hint, with whom she would make her first recording, “When Lola Performs the Pianola,” launched by Columbia in 1950. After classes with Danny Alvin’s Kings of Dixieland and the Cliff Parman Orchestra, she inked with Mercury.
In 2015, British-based Jasmine Data issued a 58-track, two-CD compilation of her work titled Lola Dee Meets Lola Ameche.
Survivors embrace her son, Barry.
