Songstress / Actress Connie Francis has passed away. She was 87 years old.
Connie checked herself into the hospital a little over two weeks ago to see if doctors could determine the cause of her constant pain. Ironically, her last Facebook post on the 4th of July stated that she was "feeling much better after a good night."
From a female perspective, Connie Francis dominated the pop charts (along with Brenda Lee) during the first stage of the Rock And Roll / Top 40 era, placing 44 songs in The National Top 40 between 1956 and 1966. Eighteen of those hits made The Top Ten and three of those went all the way to #1.
(Connie's complete HIT LIST can be viewed below)
Connie was fortunate enough to see an obscure album track she recorded back in 1962, "Pretty Little Baby," become a TikTok sensation over the past several months, earning over twenty million streams. Incredibly, several of the death announcements I saw posted Thursday Morning referred to her as the "Pretty Little Baby" artist ... a headline that eclipsed her incredible chart career. Connie was as surprised as anyone to see this 63 year old song take off, admitting that she herself didn't remember it! (She told People Magazine "“To tell you the truth, I didn’t even remember the song! I had to listen to it to remember.") Imagine how much it will take off now!
Connie's career was driven by a demanding father who would stop at nothing to clear a path for his daughter's success. (This even included chasing Bobby Darin, the love of Connie's life, away with a gun!) Theirs was a true love story but Papa Franconeo was letting NOTHING stand in the way of her daughter's career. To ensure international appeal, he even had his daughter record a number of her songs in multiple languages, leaving nothing to chance!
Despite that successful career, Connie's life was filled with stressful challenges once the hits stopped happening. (Francis, like so many other American artists, saw her chart success sidelined with the arrival of The British Invasion. Of those 44 National Top 40 Hits, only two came post-1964.)
After an appearance at The Westbury Music Fair, she was raped in her nearby hotel room in 1974. Ten years later, she attempted suicide. In between were bouts with drugs, paranoia and depression. Cosmetic surgery on her nose in the late '60's left her unable to sing in an air-conditioned room, making it impossible for her to perform in most clubs and Las Vegas casinos. Corrective surgery a decade later caused her to lose her voice entirely. In 1981, her younger brother, George, was murdered. A tailspin worse than anything you could imagine followed as Connie struggled to get well again. In her own words, "In the ’80's, I was involuntarily committed to mental institutions 17 times in nine years in five different states. I was misdiagnosed as bipolar, ADD, ADHD, and a few other letters the scientific community had never heard of. A few years later, I was discovered to have had post-traumatic stress disorder following a horrendous string of events in my life."
Neil Sedaka, who wrote Connie's hits "Stupid Cupid" (#14, 1958) and "Where The Boys Are" (#2, 1961) had this to say about Connie Francis: “What struck me was the purity of the voice, the emotion, the perfect pitch and intonation. It was clear, concise, beautiful. When she sang ballads, they just soared.” (Expect hundreds of tributes from fellow admirers to follow.)
Connie Francis always placed high on our list of Deserving And Denied Artists who were never recognized by The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. When Brenda Lee was inducted back in 2002, it just seemed natural that Connie would be next ... but she never even made the nomination ballot. When I talked with people representing the Rock Hall for our 2007 series, I was told that she likely never would. The general feeling there at the time was that inducting Brenda Lee was a mistake they couldn't undo ... and honoring Connie Francis would only compound that error. Ridiculous. Connie and Brenda represented Rock And Roll / Popular Music during its inception. There was NOBODY bigger than these two in the way of female performers ... and they BOTH belong there.
Connie was not an overnight success ... her first ten recordings failed to make an impression on the charts. After finally giving in to her father's insistence that she record "Who's Sorry Now" in 1958 (Connie HATED the song ... and felt it sounded much too old fashioned ... they had been arguing about it for a year and a half before she finally relented, and only then because she still had sixteen minutes to go on a recording session), she finally earned her first hit record.
Connie later said, "My father wanted me to record that song for a year and a half and I turned him down. I had 18 bomb records and was about to be dropped by the label ... and he wants me to record a song written in 1923. It was a square song and the kids on ‘American Bandstand’ would laugh me right out of the show. And he said, 'If you don't record this song, dummy, the only way you'll get on American Bandstand is if you sit on top of the television set.' So I did it as the last song.
"I stretched the other songs before I got to ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ so there wouldn’t be time. But there were still 16 minutes left. My father said, ‘If I have to nail you to that microphone, you’re gonna do "Who’s Sorry Now."’ So I did it. I didn’t like it … and at first the track also performed poorly ... I remember that record had been out for three months and it went nowhere ... but Dick Clark liked it and he played it on American Bandstand … and then it became a hit in both the US and the UK. It was a cosmic moment for me. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. Because I knew in five seconds my life would never be the same. And it wasn’t. It was a happy shock." Francis and Clark would form a lifelong friendship.
"Who's Sorry Now" soared to #2 and sold a million copies ... and her life was changed overnight. Connie never looked back, placing at least one song in The Top Ten every year between 1958 and 1962. In 1960, she became the first solo female artist to hit the #1 spot on The Billboard Hot 100 when "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" topped the chart for the first of two weeks.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Once again, Billboard is ignoring all of their charts prior to the August, 1958 launch of The Hot 100. Earlier #1 Hits by female artists during the rock era, 1955 - 1958, include: "Let Me Go Lover" by Joan Weber, "Rock And Roll Waltz" by Kay Starr, "The Wayward Wind" by Gogi Grant and "Tammy" by Debbie Reynolds ... some pretty big hits in their own right! By the way, Connie had four Top Ten Hits of her own before Billboard launched their Hot 100 Chart - kk]
A "MUST READ" is Connie's autobiography "Among My Souvenirs, Part 1." (Sadly, I'm guessing we'll never see a Part 2, although she often mentioned that she was working on it. Perhaps it can finally see the light of day posthumously.)
And finally, we offer yet another request to the powers that be on the Nominating Committee ...
PLEASE do right and induct Connie Francis into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. She earned it. We've been pushing for this for almost twenty years now. We wanted to see it happen while she was still alive so she could bask in the moment. Once again, you've waited far too long ... and now that moment has passed. But you can still allow her her rightful place in The Rock Hall. (kk)
THE CONNIE FRANCIS HIT LIST
| 1956 | My Treasure | 37 |
| 1958 | Who's Sorry Now | 2 |
| 1958 | I'm Sorry I Made You Cry | 10 |
| 1958 | Stupid Cupid | 14 |
| 1958 | Carolina Moon | 32 |
| 1958 | Fallin' | 30 |
| 1959 | My Happiness | 2 |
| 1959 | If I Didn't Care | 9 |
| 1959 | Lipstick On Your Collar | 3 |
| 1959 | Frankie | 5 |
| 1959 | You're Gonna Miss Me | 22 |
| 1959 | Plenty Good Lovin' | 39 |
| 1959 | God Bless America | 29 |
| 1959 | Among My Souvenirs | 5 |
| 1960 | Teddy | 17 |
| 1960 | Mama | 7 |
| 1960 | Jealous Of You (Tango Della Gelosia) | 19 |
| 1960 | Everybody's Somebody's Fool | 1 |
| 1960 | My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own | 1 |
| 1960 | Malaguena | 42 |
| 1960 | Many Tears Ago | 6 |
| 1961 | No One | 34 |
| 1961 | Where The Boys Are | 2 |
| 1961 | Breakin' In A Brand New Broken Heart | 3 |
| 1961 | Together | 4 |
| 1961 | (He's My) Dreamboat | 14 |
| 1961 | Hollywood | 20 |
| 1961 | Baby's First Christmas | 22 |
| 1961 | When The Boy In Your Arms (Is The Boy In Your Heart) | 7 |
| 1962 | Don't Break The Heart That Loves You | 1 |
| 1962 | Second Hand Love | 6 |
| 1962 | Vacation | 9 |
| 1962 | He Thinks I Still Care | 51 |
| 1962 | I Was Such A Fool (To Fall In Love With You) | 18 |
| 1963 | I'm Gonna Be Warm This Winter | 17 |
| 1963 | Al Di La | 59 |
| 1963 | Follow The Boys | 11 |
| 1963 | If My Pillow Could Talk | 14 |
| 1963 | Drownin' My Sorrows | 26 |
| 1963 | Your Other Love | 20 |
| 1963 | In The Summer Of His Years | 31 |
| 1963 | Blue Winter | 13 |
| 1964 | Be Anything (But Be Mine) | 20 |
| 1964 | Looking For Love | 34 |
| 1964 | Don't Ever Leave Me | 37 |
| 1965 | Whose Heart Are You Breaking Tonight | 42 |
| 1965 | For Mama (La Mamma) | 30 |
| 1965 | Wishing It Was You | 49 |
| 1965 | Forget Domani | 58 |
| 1965 | Jealous Heart | 25 |
