Connie Francis died yesterday, July 16, 2025. That got me thinking about my mother.
My father was an early Hi Fi buff and almost all of the records in our house up until 1970 were his. There were four records that were my mother's. There were three that had been in the house longer than I could remember: 1) The Three Suns, a group consisting of guitar, accordion and organ but whose main things was harmony vocals, 2) Jerry Murad and His Harmonicats, and, most prominently, 3) "Silvikrin Shampoo Presents Sing Along With Connie Francis. Later, there was an album she purchased on impulse one day at K-Mart called "the World We Knew". It featured the then Sinatra hit from which it gets its title and a few others of the same ilk.
My mother's taste in art was perfectly summed by Paul Simon (in one of the few records I bought for myself that she loved):
"Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's
A sunny day, oh yeah"
That was the feeling my mother wanted songs, movies and paintings to give her. She would often say that there was more than enough sadness in real life. She didn't need more from art. She loved, for example, Anne Murray's version of "Snowbird". If you pay attention to the lyrics, which my mother tended not to, Snowbird is a very sad song. But Murray didn't sing it like that. She sang it like all the world was a summer's day. Doris Day was also a favourite for that reason.
In Doris Day's case, it was all a charade. She'd had a brutally hard life and had clawed her way to the top doing what it took, whatever it took. One of the many ironies looking back on things is the sometimes extraordinary contrast between the actual lives of the people my mother admired and their public images. Doris Day and Grace Kelly, for example. I won't go into details but a little research and you'll see what I mean.
Anyway, when we were very young, my sisters and I listed to, and sang along with, Connie Francis all the time. There was a family named the Gormans we were close to and when we went to parties with them, there was always a moment when someone sat down at the piano when we were inside or someone pulled out a guitar when we were outside and songs, many of them the same songs that Connie sang on that album, were sung. Every Christmas we would host a carolling party and, again, every one sang along.
Group singing is a wonderful thing. Some people still do it. I live close to a large university and sometimes I will walk by a student house and hear a group of them singing together. Mostly, though, it's a lost art. To be honest, much as she loved group singing, my mother wasn't very good at singing.
I mentioned about that when I bought "There Goes Rhymin' Simon" the year I was fourteen, it was a rare instance when she actually liked my music. As a consequence, I tend associate the whole album but especially this song with her. It's fun to sing along to.
