- Fran Warren
Fran Warren (born
March 4 ,1926 ) is an American popularsinger .She was born as Frances Wolfe to a
Jewish family in the borough of theBronx , inNew York City . After some time on a chorus line at New York's Roxy Theater, she auditioned with thebig band ofDuke Ellington at age 16; though she never made it onto Ellington's band, she soon became a singer with bands led byRandy Brooks ,Art Mooney ,Billy Eckstine ,Charlie Barnet , andClaude Thornhill . It was Eckstine who gave her thestage name of Fran Warren. With Charlie Barnet, she replacedKay Starr as featured vocalist. In 1947, she made the charts for the first time, with the Thornhill band's recording of "A Sunday Kind Of Love " onColumbia Records . She made a number of other records with Thornhill that year.In 1948 she went solo, signing with
RCA Records . On RCA she made a number of recordings, but her biggest hit was a duet with Tony Martin, "I Said My Pajamas (and Put On My Pray'rs) " which reached #3 on the charts. Other recordings which she made include more duets with Tony Martin and withLisa Kirk .In the early 1950s, after a number of her RCA records failed to chart, she moved to
MGM Records . She had a number of records for MGM, making her last chart hit in 1953 with "It's Anybody's Heart."In the 1950s she also started to play in musical comedy, performing in "The Pajama Game" in the mid-1950s and later playing the title role in "Mame." She did not neglect her band singing, touring with
Harry James in the 1960s.She currently resides in
Connecticut .External references
*Bio on [http://home.earthlink.net/~jaymar41/fwarren.html The Interlude Era] site
*Bio on [http://theiceberg.com/artist.html?artist_id=796 The Iceberg] site
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