The Artist Jo Stafford had a career that spanned five decades from the late 1930s through to the early 1980s. She was trained as a classical singer but ended having a long career in pop music. Stafford starting singing from a young age and joined her sisters to form a trio called The Stafford Sisters. They had moderate success on radio and on film including appearing in Alexander's Ragtime Band. It was during production of that film that Stafford met the future members of the band The Pied Pipers . She became the lead singer and the group had several hits in the 1940s. They also worked regulalry with Frank Sinatra between 1940 and 1942. Stafford left the group in 1944 and began a solo career. She perfomed duets with Gordon MacRae and Frankie Laine and her work during World War II earned her the nickname 'GI Jo'. She regulalr hosted the NBC radio show The Chesterfield Supper Club and had several TV specials as well as two series of The Jo Stafford Show . She later formed
The Context Whilst the Official Charts Company wasn't founded until 1969, versions of the chart existed from 1952 onwards and these are considred 'canon' by the company. The very first chart was founded in 1952 by Percy Dickins of the magazine New Musical Express (NME). He phoned twenty record shops and asked them what their top ten selling singles were that week. He then aggregated the results into a top 12 hit parade which was published each week in NME. The Artist Al Martino was an Italian-American singer born in Philadelphia with the name Jasper Cini. His parents were immigrants from the Italian town of Abruzzo and ran a construction business. While growing up Cini worked alongside his brothers as a bricklayer. He aspied to become a singer with his inspirations being the likes of Al Jolson and Perry Como and family friend Mario Lanza who was a Hollywood star. His career as Martino took off when he came first place TV show Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in 1952,