Wednesday, December 20, 2006

One Shot Wonders, pt. 8

See intro below
JANET BRACE
There are two singers from my hometown of Charleston, West Virginia. The very wonderful Jennie Smith, who I won’t be able to play here this afternoon---thankfully she recorded four albums and lots of singles. AND Janet Brace, who arrived in New York in 1948 and initially sang with the bands of Vincent Lopez and Johnny Long, with whom she recorded and appeared on the radio with in 1949. Her one album, in 1956 for ABC-Paramount came and went pretty much without notice. But a few years earlier she made a small mark in the Great American Songbook when she was the first singer to record “Teach Me Tonight.” It was not successful for her and it was not until a couple of years later that it became a hit for anyone else. Had Brace's recording of the song been popular, most likely we would not be playing a track from her Special Delivery LP as part of “One Shot Wonders” today. Even though she is from my hometown, she is one of the few singers who I have not been able to discover Whatever Happened To…

PLAY TRACK Time After Time, You Forgot Your Gloves

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, funny thing I knew Janet Brace, then Jan MacLean married to drummer Don MacClean in Ft. Lauderdale , Florida. She was the first person i ever heard sing Skylark , at a rehearsal for a club date after a long hiatus - I was too young to go to the date. But, she sang that and that was it as far as I know she's living in Costa Rica. She's quite a woman in my memory and I wish I could get the album but it seems to have been reissued and then..poof.