2: You Belong to Me by Jo Stafford (16/1/53)

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 a comedy routine with her second husband Paul Weston where they played an incompetent pair called Jonathan and Darlene Edwards where they would parody well-known songs. In 1961 they released an album called 'Jonathan and Darlene Edwards' in Paris which was very successful, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album and being the first commercially successful parody album. 

Stafford largely retired from the mid-1960s but had a brief resurgence in the late 70s when she recorded a cover of the Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive'. Her work across radio, TV and film earned her three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and had a long life, dying at 90 in 2008. 

The Song

'You Belong To Me' was a popular ballad in the 1950s. It was orginally written by Chilton Price, a songwriting librarian at the radio station WAVE Radio Louisville under the title 'Hurry Home to Me'. He envisoned it as an American woman's plea to a sweetheart serving overseas during World War II.Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart, who are created as co-writers, made a few adjustments to the music and lyrics including shifting from the wartime focus now that the war was over and changing the title.

The song was recorded by many different artists including Patti Page, Ella Fitzgerald and Dean Martin. In the UK it was recorded by Larry Cross, Alma Cogan with Jimmy Watson on trumpet, Monty Norman, Dickie Valentine with Ted Heath and his music (no, not the prime minister), Victor Silvester and his Ballroom Orchestrea, Jimmy Young and, Wally Fryer and his Perfect Tempo Dance Orchestra. All of these and more were around at the same time but it was only Stafford's version that appeared in the singles chart and her version was by far the most popular in both the UK and the USA, remaining in the UK charts for 19 weeks though only topping it for one.