Kitty Kallen

Katie "Kitty" Kallen (May 25, 1921 – January 7, 2016) was an American singer whose career spanned from the 1930s to the 1960s, including the Swing era of the Big Band years, the post-World War II pop scene, and the early years of rock 'n roll. Kallen performed with popular big band leaders of the 1940s, including Jimmy Dorsey and Harry James, before establishing a solo career.

She is best known for her 1954 solo recording '"Little Things Mean a Lot", a song that stayed at the U.S. Billboard number one spot for nine consecutive weeks and took top honor as 1954's #1 song of the year, charted in the U.S. for almost seven months, hit No. 1 on the UK singles chart, and sold more than two million copies. Voted "most popular female singer" in 1954 in both Billboard and Variety polls, and stopped singing before an audience for four years. on May 25, 1921, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Russian Jewish immigrants Samuel and Fannie Kalinsky (née Kaplan) (later Kallen), she was one of seven children. As a child, she won an amateur contest by imitating popular singers. When she returned home with her prize, a camera, her father did not believe her, and punished her for stealing the camera. Only when neighbors subsequently visited to congratulate her did Kallen's father realize she had actually won it.

Career As a young girl, she sang on The Children's Hour, a radio program sponsored by Horn & Hardart, the automat chain. As a preteen, Kallen had a radio program on Philadelphia's WCAU and sang with the big bands of Jan Savitt and Jack Teagarden in 1939. It was with Teagarden's band that Kallen cut her first records, eight sides in total.

Shortly before her 21st birthday, on May 5, 1942, she sang the vocals for "Moonlight Becomes You", with Bobby Sherwood and His Orchestra at the second ever session for what was then still called Liberty Records but would soon be renamed Capitol Records. It was her only session for the label.

At 21, she joined the Jimmy Dorsey band, replacing Helen O'Connell. One of her recordings with Dorsey was a favorite of American servicemen: "They're Either Too Young or Too Old" reached the No. 2 position in the Billboard charts in 1944. The same year, Kallen performed the vocals for Dorsey's number-one hit "Besame Mucho". Most of her singing assignments were in duets with Bob Eberly, and when Eberly left to go into the service toward the end of 1943, she joined Harry James's band.

Between January and November 1945, she had two songs recorded with the Harry James Orchestra in the top twenty, six in the top ten, and two at the No. 1 spot: "I'm Beginning to See the Light" and "It's Been a Long, Long Time", In 1951, Kallen appeared with Buster Crabbe as the Queen and King of Winter at the Lake Placid resort.

As a solo performer following the war, Kallen bounced from label to labela brief stint with Musicraft in 1946 and then three years at Mercury in 1949-51, followed by a stint at Columbia and a reunion with Harry James. Despite covering a number of songs that had been hits for other singers, she still failed to produce a major hit. It was not until signing with Decca in 1953 that she at last enjoyed chart success.

With the 1954 hit "Little Things Mean a Lot", she was voted the most popular female singer in Billboard and Variety polls. AllMusic called the recording a "monster hit", She followed up the song with "In the Chapel in the Moonlight", another million selling record, the Cafe Rouge at the Hotel Pennsylvania and the Plaza Hotel's Persian Room. As well as this, she starred on Broadway in Finian's Rainbow; in the 1955 film The Second Greatest Sex American Bandstand, and Fred Allen's Judge for Yourself.

In 1956, rock-and-roll was dominating the charts and nosing out most older singers. Kallen experienced a mental breakdown during this time in which she found herself unable to sing live, although she could perform in the studio with no problems. She sought help from a psychiatrist but ended the sessions after he asked her to undress as part of therapy. Kallen's psychological issues and the changing music landscape convinced her to retire from performing, but three years later she decided to make a comeback and signed with Columbia.

In 1959, she recorded "If I Give My Heart to You" for Columbia and in 1963, she recorded a top-selling version of "My Coloring Book" for RCA Victor. Her final album was Quiet Nights, a bossa nova–flavored release for 20th Century Fox Records after which she retired from recording permanently.

During the height of her popularity, three imposters billed themselves as Kitty Kallen. When one of them, Genevieve Agostinello, died in 1978, it was incorrectly reported that Kallen herself had died. On February 8, 1960, Kallen received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (located on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard at #7021). — who later became a pioneering television syndicator.

In 2008, Kallen joined artists Patti Page, Tony Martin, Dick Hyman, Richard Hayman and the estates of Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Sarah Vaughan, Woody Herman, Les Brown, the Mills Brothers, Jerry Murad, Frankie Laine, and the gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe in a suit against the world's then largest music label, Universal Music Group, alleging the company had cheated them on royalties.

In 2009, Kallen was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

Kallen had homes in Englewood, New Jersey, and Cuernavaca, Mexico. By the end of her life, she lived full-time in Cuernavaca, where she died on January 7, 2016, at the age of 94. She was in a relationship with Sonny Shiell in her later years.

Albums discography 1956 It's A Lonesome Old Town 1960 If I Give My Heart To You 1961 Honky Tonk Angel, Country Songs With A City Flavor 1963 Kitty Kallen Sings Our Lady of Fatima 1963 Kitty Kallen's "My Coloring Book" And Her Other Great Hits 1964 Quiet Nights

Singles discography