Biography:

Connie Francis (born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; December 12, 1937 – July 16, 2025) was an American pop singer, actress, and top-charting female vocalist of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She was estimated to have sold more than 200 million records worldwide.[3]

In 1960, Francis was recognized as the most successful female artist in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, and the United States.[4] She was the first woman in history to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 when “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” topped the chart in 1960. She was also the first woman to have three No. 1 hits on the chart, just three of her 53 career hits.[5]

1938–1955: Early life and first appearances

Francis was born to an Italian-American family (one of her grandfathers having immigrated from Reggio Calabria in 1905)[6] in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, the first child of George Franconero (1911–1996) and Ida (née Ferrari-di Vito; 1911–2000). She spent her first years in the Crown Heights, Brooklyn area (Utica Avenue/St. Marks Place) before the family moved to New Jersey.[7] Growing up in a mixed Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Francis became fluent in Yiddish, which led her later to record songs in Yiddish and Hebrew.[7][8]

In her autobiography Who’s Sorry Now? published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants, and other neighborhood festivities as a child singing and playing the accordion.[citation needed]

During rehearsals for her appearance on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in December 1950, Francis was advised by Godfrey to change her stage name to Connie Francis for easier pronunciation. Godfrey also told her to drop the accordion—advice she gladly followed, as she had begun to hate the large and heavy instrument.[7] Around the same time, Francis took a job as a singer on demonstration records, to bring unreleased songs to the attention of established singers and/or their management who might choose to record them for a professional commercial record.[9]

Francis attended Newark Arts High School in 1951 and 1952. Francis and her family moved to Belleville, New Jersey, where she graduated as salutatorian from Belleville High School Class of 1955.[10]

Francis continued to perform at neighborhood festivities and talent shows (some of them broadcast on television), appearing alternately as Concetta Franconero and Connie Franconero. Under the latter name, she appeared on NBC‘s variety show Startime Kids between 1953 and 1955.[7]

1955–1957: Recording contract & commercial failure

In 1955, Startime Kids went off the air. In May that same year,[11] George Franconero Sr. and Francis’s manager George Scheck raised money for a recording session of four songs which they hoped to sell to a major record company under Francis’s own name. Even when MGM Records decided to sign a contract with her, it was because one track she had recorded, “Freddy”, happened to be the name of the son of a company executive, Harry A. Meyerson, who thought of the song as a nice birthday gift. Hence, “Freddy” was released as Francis’s first single, which turned out to be a commercial failure, just like her next eight solo singles.[7]

Despite these failures, Francis was hired to record the vocals for Tuesday Weld‘s “singing” scenes in the 1956 movie Rock, Rock, Rock, and for Freda Holloway in the 1957 Warner Brothers rock and roll movie Jamboree.[12]

In the fall of 1957, Francis enjoyed her first modest success with a duet single she had recorded with Marvin Rainwater: “The Majesty of Love”, with “You, My Darlin’ You” as the B-side, peaked at number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100.[13] Eventually, the single sold over one million copies.[9]

1957–1959: Breakthrough

However, her minor chart success came too late for her record label—Francis’s recording contract consisted of ten solo singles and one duet single. Though success had finally seemed to come with “The Majesty of Love”, Francis was informed by MGM Records that her contract would not be renewed after her last solo single.[citation needed]

Francis considered a career in medicine and was about to accept a four-year scholarship offered at New York University. At what was to have been her final recording session for MGM on October 2, 1957, with Joe Lipman and his orchestra,[11] she recorded a cover version of the 1923 song “Who’s Sorry Now?” written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Francis has said that she recorded it at the insistence of her father, who was convinced it stood a chance of becoming a hit because it was a song adults already knew and that teenagers would dance to if it had a contemporary arrangement.[14]

Francis did not like the song and argued about it with her father heatedly, delaying the recording of the two other songs during the session so much that she thought no time was left on the continuously running recording tape.[15] Her father insisted, though, and when the recording “Who’s Sorry Now?” was finished, only a few seconds remained on the tape.[7]

The single seemed to go unnoticed like all previous releases, just as Francis had predicted, but on January 1, 1958, it debuted on Dick Clark‘s American Bandstand. Francis watched the show and wrote in her diary:

I heard Dick Clark mention something about a new girl singer. So, what else is new? Another girl singer. There are ninety-five million females in the country, and I’ll bet ninety-five percent of them sing. “There’s no doubt about it”, predicted Mr. Clark. “She’s is headed straight for the number one spot”. I began feeling sorry for myself and a bit envious, too. Good luck to her, I thought. And then Mr. Clark just happened to play a song called “Who’s sorry now” – MY “Who’s Sorry Now”! Well, the feeling was cosmic – just cosmic! Right there in my living-room, it became Mardi Gras-time and New Year’s Eve at the turn of the century!

And on February 15 of that same year, Francis performed it on the first episode of The Saturday Night Beechnut Show, also hosted by Clark. By mid-year, over a million copies had been sold, and Francis was suddenly launched into worldwide stardom. In April 1958, “Who’s Sorry Now?” reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart and number 4 in the US.[16] That year, by a wide margin, Connie was voted “Best Female Vocalist” by American Bandstand viewers. She went on to collect similar “Bandstand” awards for the next four years.[7]

As Connie Francis explains at each of her concerts, she began searching for a new hit immediately after the success of “Who’s Sorry Now?” since MGM Records had renewed her contract. After the relative failure of the follow-up singles “I’m Sorry I Made You Cry” (which stalled at No. 36) and “Heartaches” (which failed to chart at all), Francis met Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who sang a number of ballads they had written for her. After a few hours, Francis began writing in her diary while the songwriters played the last of their ballads. This, and her refusal to let Sedaka and Greenfield see the diary to mine it for material, inspired the duo to write Sedaka’s own breakthrough hit “The Diary.”) Afterwards, Francis told them that she considered their ballads too intellectual and sophisticated for the young generation and requested a more lively song. Greenfield urged Sedaka to sing a song they had written that morning with the Shepherd Sisters in mind. Sedaka protested that Francis would be insulted, but Greenfield said that since she hated all the other songs they had performed, they had nothing to lose. Sedaka then played “Stupid Cupid.” When he finished, Francis announced that he had just played her new hit song. It went on to reach number 14 on the Billboard chart and was her second number 1 in the UK.[16]

The success of “Stupid Cupid” restored momentum to Francis’ chart career, and she reached the U.S. top 40 an additional eight times during the remainder of the 1950s.[16] She managed to churn out more hits by covering several older songs, such as “My Happiness” (number 2 on the Hot 100) and “Among My Souvenirs” (number 7), as well as performing her own original songs. In 1959, she gained two gold records for a double-sided hit: on the A-side, “Lipstick on Your Collar” (number 5), and on the B-side, “Frankie” (number 9).

Credits:

Wikipedia