Jo Stafford

Stump (with Red Ingle and the Natural Seven) and Darlene Edwards (with Paul Weston using the name Jonathan Edwards). The result was Les Rhythmes Automatiques, which vanished into obscurity, but not before apparently inspiring Kraftwerk to do the same for their album The Mix in 1991. In addition to the records she made in her own name, Stafford also made comedy records as Cinderella G. In 1989, Telex revisited all of their old tracks and remixed them to resemble the house music and other genres they had allegedly inspired. By Weston she had two children, Tim and Amy. Predictably, the album had no commercial success. She had two husbands, John Huddleston (of the original Pied Pipers) and Weston, the latter of whom was also her orchestra leader for most of her career. It was social commentary, but so bizarre as to be almost incomprehensible to most listeners.

In 1966, Stafford went into semi-retirement, retiring completely from the music business in 1975 except for one appearance in 1990 to honor Sinatra. "Temporary Chicken", for example, was a strange joke track about a man so desperate for work that he accepts a part time job in a chicken costume. In 1948 Stafford and Gordon MacRae had a million-seller with their version of "Say Something Sweet to Your Sweetheart" and in 1949 repeated their success with "My Happiness". By then, the band's earlier sound had influenced many other groups, but they had abandoned it in favor of sampling (music) and a more up-tempo humorous style. At Columbia, she was the first recording artist to sell twenty-five million records. In 1986, Warner Brothers inexplicably signed Telex and released Looney Tunes. In 1944, Stafford left the Pied Pipers to go solo, doing a lot of performances for military personnel, thus acquiring the nickname "GI Jo." In 1950, she left Capitol for Columbia Records, returning to Capitol in 1961. The fourth Telex album, Wonderful World, was barely distributed.

The couple married in 1952. However, the band still refused to play live and preferred to remain anonymous — common practice in the techno music artists they later inspired, but unusual in 1981. Capitol's music director was the same Paul Weston who had been instrumental in introducing Stafford to Dorsey. For their third album, Sex, Telex enlisted the suddenly hip US group Sparks to help write the lyrics. In 1942, the group had an argument with Dorsey and left, but in 1943 it became one of the first groups signed to Johnny Mercer's new label, Capitol Records. The self-mockery of tracks like "We Are All Getting Old" didn't help either. The group also backed Frank Sinatra in some of his early recordings. All of this was clearly bad news for the band's English record label, Virgin Records, who were trying to pass them off as part of the New Romantic movement.

This led to success for the whole group, but especially for Stafford, who was also featured in solo performances. Sadly, Turkey managed to scrape last place, robbing Telex of their victory. Half the members of he Pied Pipers Returning to Los Angeles, but they had a difficult time trying to make a living until they got an offer from Dorsey to join his big band 1939. When the vote-counting began, the verdict was so clear that when Greece actually awarded Belgium three points, the announcer thought she had misheard and tried to award the points to The Netherlands. They stayed in New York for three months, but landed only a single job that paid them just $3.60 each, though they did record four sides for RCA Victor Records. Finally, some polite but uncertain applause broke out, amidst sounds of muttering. Dorsey liked them enough to sign them for ten weeks, but after the second broadcast the sponsor heard them and disliked them, firing the group. One of the members of Telex stepped forward and took a photograph of the bewildered audience.

In 1938, Weston persuaded Dorsey to sign The Pied Pipers for his radio show, and they went to New York for a broadcast date. The audience clearly wasn't sure how to react to this self-referential joke, and after the band stopped playing there was a stunned silence. The group became very popular, working on local radio and movie soundtracks, and caught the attention of two of Tommy Dorsey's arrangers, Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston. Their song "Eurovision" was a cheerful bleepy song with deliberately banal lyrics about the contest itself. This group consisted of eight members: John Huddleston (who was Stafford's husband at the time), Hal Hooper, Chuck Lowry, Bud Hervey, George Tait, Woody Newbury, and Dick Whittinghill, besides Stafford. In 1980 Telex's manager asked them to enter for the Eurovision Song Contest. They did so, and somehow managed to get sent to the finals. When her sisters married, the group broke up and Stafford joined a new vocal group, The Pied Pipers. Like Kraftwerk, Telex built their music entirely from electronic instruments, and the sounds of the two groups have a certain similarity. However, unlike Kraftwerk's studied Teutonic irony, Telex favour a more joyously irreverent humour.

Originally, she wanted to become an opera singer and studied voice as a child. However, because of the economic Great Depression, she abandoned that idea and joined her sisters Christine and Pauline in a popular vocal group which performed on Los Angeles radio staton KHJ. They followed up with an ultra-slow cover of "Rock Around the Clock", a hilariously relaxed and dispassionate version of one-hit-wonder Plastic Bertrand's punk song "Ça Plane Pour Moi", and a perversely mechanical cover of "Dance to the Music", originally by Sly Stone. Stafford was born in Coalinga, California to Grover Cleveland Stafford and Anna York Stafford, a distant cousin of Sergeant Alvin York. Tropez" by Les Chats Sauvages. Stafford is greatly admired for the purity of her voice and is considered one of the most versatile vocalists of the era. Mixing the aesthetics of disco, punk and experimental electronic music, they released a stripped-down synthesized cover version of "Twist à St. Jo Elizabeth Stafford (born November 12, 1917) is a singer whose career spanned the late 1920s through the early 1960s. The Belgian pop group Telex was formed in 1978 by Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, as a kind of elaborate joke.

Candy. I Don't Like Remixes 1998 (remixed by Carl Craig and others). "Whispering Hope". I Don't Like Music 1998 (a 'best-of' compilation). "Say Something Sweet To Your Sweetheart". Belgium...One Point 1993 (a box set of the first five albums plus bonus tracks). "My Darling, My Darling". Les Rhythmes Automatiques 1989.

" "A" You're Adorable" (better known version by Perry Como). Looney Tunes 1986. "White Christmas" (better known version by Bing Crosby). Wonderful World 1984. "You Belong to Me" (her best-selling hit). Sex 1981 (released in some countries as "The Birds and the Bees"). "The Things We Did Last Summer". Neurovision 1980.

"There's No You". Tropez 1978. "That's For Me". Looking For St. "Thank You for Calling". "Teach Me Tonight" (better known version by The DeCastro Sisters).