Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American traditional pop singer whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Born in Coalinga, California in 1917, she originally trained in opera before beginning a career in popular music. She made her first musical appearance at age 12 with her two older sisters who were still in high school.
The Stafford Sisters found moderate success on radio and film, then in 1938 while they were part of the cast of Twentieth Century Fox’s production of Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Jo met members of The Pied Pipers and became the group’s lead singer. An innovative arranger reputed to have perfect pitch, her work with The Pied Pipers revolutionized harmony singing in the big band era. Bandleader Tommy Dorsey hired them in 1939 to perform vocals with his orchestra, then from 1940 to 1942, the group often performed with Dorsey and his new male singer Frank Sinatra.
During WWII she toured extensively with the USO, performing for troops overseas and earning the nickname “G.I. Jo.” Her version of “I’ll Be Seeing You” became an anthem for separated families. After leaving the Dorsey Band she was one of the most popular singers during the 1940s and 50s and recorded over 800 songs during her career, including duet performances with Gordon MacRae and Frankie Laine. Jo also made numerous appearances on radio and TV, including “The Ed Sullivan Show” and a short-lived series called “The Jo Stafford Show” which was seen in both the U.S. and the UK.
She married band leader Paul Weston in 1952, and in 1955 they founded Crest Records, which allowed her to take control over her career – a rarity for female singers of that era. Not to be taken too seriously, she and Paul also developed a musical comedy routine under the pseudonyms “Jonathan and Darlene Edwards” that satirized an incompetent lounge act performing well-known songs – badly. In 1961, the album Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris won Stafford her only Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and was the first commercially successful parody album.
Jo Stafford passed away in 2008 at the age of 91.