Jo Stafford: A Reluctant Star

Rosemary Clooney said of Jo Stafford: “The voice says it all – beautiful, pure, straight forward, no artifice, matchless intonation, instantly recognizable. Those things describe the woman too.”

The third of four daughters, born to an Appalachian hill country couple from Tennessee in 1917 near Fresno, California, she went on to record over 800 songs, including 49 that made the best seller charts. Ms. Stafford was awarded 7 gold records and a platinum disc for selling over 25 million records, a first for a female singer. Her 1952 hit “You Belong to Me” was No. 1 for twelve weeks, selling 2 million records.

With all her success, Jo Stafford never sought it, and when the time came to give it up, she retired to raise her children. Nancy Franklin in a New Yorker piece in 1996 wrote: “One of the things you don’t hear in Stafford’s voice is ambition, a yearning to be recognized. She was a famous singer, but she was never a personality.”

After singing with her older sisters for a short time, she became the first female voice in the seven-man vocal act known as the Pied Pipers at the age of 17. By the time the Pipers joined Tommy Dorsey in 1939, they had become a quartet. Dorsey hired Frank Sinatra, and the Pied Pipers backed him. Stafford left the group and made her first solo recording in 1942 with the Dorsey band, leaving for Capitol Records in 1944, a new label started by Johnny Mercer. When her arranger Paul Weston moved to Columbia Records in 1950, she followed.

Jo Stafford, a major radio star in the 1940’s, recorded a number of V-Discs and toured with the USO. A favorite of serviceman, they named her G.I. Jo. She received a lot of letters from soldiers during WWII. They said that her voice reminded them of home. When asked why this was so, she answered “I’m not smart enough to know why.” In a conversation with NPR’s Terry Gross in 1988, she offered that the songwriters should get the credit not her. Writer Bill Reed, who interviewed her twice, said “She just sang with her heart and her guts. Her style was one of shy invitation, confessions of unbearable longing, a sense of comforting. She expressed a touch of wistful need and yet carried an almost subliminal message that everything would be all right.”

Trained as a classical singer, she’s said: “I’m really a frustrated group singer. My being in show business and the solo star business was a complete accident. Whatever fame came did so not because I wanted it.” Stafford never looked to be the center of attention; she liked to sing, but didn’t like to perform. “I’m basically a singer, period, and I think I’m really lousy in front of an audience – it’s just not me.” She avoided live solo performances, flopping at her only nightclub booking, New York’s Café Martinique, although her appearance at the London Palladium in 1952 was widely acclaimed.

Stafford’s son Tim Weston said: “My mom was proud of her body of work but was a very modest person. She didn’t receive the attention she deserved.” Jo Stafford retired in the late 1960’s when her voice no longer met her standards. Often asked why she stopped singing, she said: “For the same reason that Lana Turner doesn’t pose in bathing suits anymore.”

Cabaret singer Eric Comstock wrote: “Jo Stafford was one of the most gifted vocalists we’ve ever had. Jo just sang her heart out in a no-frills way. It wasn’t overly emotional, but just right.”