Before Rosemary Clooney embarked on a solo career that firmly established her as a household name to millions of Americans, she, along with her sister Betty, were singers during the Big Band era throughout the later 1940s.
Rosemary and Betty Clooney were a close sister act, and sang together. The family lived in Cincinnati in the early 1940s, where the girls continued to vocalize. In 1945, the sisters won a spot on Cincinnati’s WLW Radio Station as singers. One day they were heard by Tony Pastor (bandleader). The bandleader originally hesitated on hiring both sisters, but soon relented and so The Clooney Sisters hit the road with the Pastor band. They appeared in a movie short with the Pastor Orchestra in 1947. The Clooney Sisters recorded a number of songs for Columbia with the Tony Pastor Band like “The Secretary Song”, “I’m My Own Grandpa”, and “If I Had a Million Dollars”.
In 1950 Clooney performed in Cincinnati on television station WLWT. Not only was she a featured singer on the station’s main program (called The 50-50 Club and broadcast on TV as well as radio), she also hosted her own shows called Teen Canteen and Boy Meets Girl.
What’s playing tonight are three sides The Clooney Sisters recorded with Tony Pastor for the Lang-Worth Transcription Company in 1946 and not for commercial use. The other three sides are instrumentals Pastor recorded for the same company.
Something a bit different to end the week, guaranteed not to keep you up but it might keep you sane.
Dive in.
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