I’m streaming some unknown jazz station that just wrapped up a superb Julie London number. I thought I knew something about pop/jazz divas, but Julie London doesn’t exactly get heavy rotation on my Victrolla. So, I did a quick Amazon search and it offered up June Christy, as an alternative. Now I’m confused about who was who.
Wasn’t Julie London the more popular–and generally considered the more talented–of the two? Great voice.
Sidenote: the station is now playing Peggy Lee’s “Black Coffee.” At first, I thought the voice belonged to Lena Horne or maybe Carmen McRae. Did folks back in the day think Peggy Lee’s voice/dialect sounded a bit, well, black? She sounds damn good, but her “soulfulness,” if you will, surprises me. Was that part of her trademark appeal? (No insults intended, folks, just my signature ignorance about music.)
[sorry about two threads at one time.]
Yes, Peggy Lee’s greatest strength (IMHO) was her bluesy, blowsy sultriness. THere’s no question that her greatest influences weren’t blond an blue eyed.
And it’s my understanding that Julie London was more popular than June Christy. Julie was famous for her legs, too, and did quite a few movies, as an actress in a character. June appeared in a couple, but only as herself, singing.
I’d say Julie was more popular than June if for no other reason than I have never heard of June. Julie I’ve heard of.
I’ve heard of both women; so they had to be pretty well known. I even have a Julie London record somewhere in my collection. (For “Cry Me A River”, of course. And that’s another thing–how many pop songs/standards include the word plebian ?)
I know Julie London acted as well as sang, and wasn’t she married to Bobby Troup? June Christie I just know from television ads in the 70s, selling records.
I’m old enough to remember K-Tel records on TV too.
June Christy replaced Anita O’Day as Stan Kenton’s chick vocalist in 1945; she recorded Stan’s first million-plus selling records between 1945 and 1948.
She was also married to Bob Cooper, the underrated cool-school tenorman/composer/arranger who recorded a lot with the Lighthouse All-Stars.
I have a copy of her most famous album, Something Cool. But I don’t play it much.
FWIW, that’s not necessarily relevant. Ronald Colman was about the biggest star of his day, but his surviving reputation would leave one with the impresssion that he was a second- or third-tier player at best.
Christy was considered the more musicianly of the two, London definitely the sexier. (Nonetheless, my dad, who interviewed Christy for his college radio station in the late 50s, remembers her as a petite, sexy woman with startlingly large breasts - so large he assumed they were falsies.)
London also was briefly wed to Jack “Dragnet” Webb, back when he still occasionally played regular guys once in awhile.
Indeed so. And they both had strong supporting parts in the Emergency television show.
Fun fact: Bobby Troup is the songwriter of ‘Route 66’.
That’s one heck of a duo, you have to admit.
But…but…he was the inspiration for the voice of Ape from George of the Jungle!
You don’t get any bigger than that!