1933

The August 28 and September 2 music issue of The New Yorker carried a richly deserved and highly laudatory appreciation of Jo Stafford's career. In an article titled "A Voice Like Home," Nancy Franklin offered a searching and well-informed study of Jo's vocal characteristics, her personality, and her musical sensibility. In terms of the highest praise, Franklin recalled some of the songs Jo made famous such as "I'll Be Seeing You," "You'll Never Know" and "I Left My Heart At The Stage Door Canteen," songs included in an album of WW II songs called "G.I. Jo," and having nostalgic overtones for us octogenarians who heard them during the War. Franklin emphasized most the quality of Jo's voice, which she characterized as "clear, unshowy, and direct," yet "with a feeling of melancholy deep within it." She called it "a beautifully voice, even a perfect voice" whose "restrained gorgeousness carried a dual charge of intimacy and aloneness." Clearly, the writer had not heard Jo's recording of Paul Weston's rousing "Shrimp Boats Are Coming" or "Jambalaya," but her analysis remains astute and valid. Of how many singers would Mel Torme say, as he did of Jo, "she's the most in-tune singer on the planet," or how frequently, as further reported, would Frank Sinatra enthuse of any other singer, "It was a joy to sit on the bandstand and listen to her." A wonderful, long-overdue tribute.

Franklin also referred to Jo's husband, "the bandleader and arranger, Paul Weston, a Dartmouth graduate from Massachusetts," at the time of her interview as being "under the weather." Sadly, he died 15 days after this was written.

An attempt to reach Sam Cunningham in September revealed that he had undergone surgery to have a polyp excised from his colon, so we phoned him immediately and made contact in his hospital room. He sounded hearty and reported that the operation had been a success, but he was hungry, being still on IV feeding. He asked us to report at the mini-reunion that '33 finances were in good order.

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