artemisboy
06-03-2005, 02:47 PM
Q - Connie, you used to perform in Syracuse at a club called Three
Rivers Inn.
A - Yes, the Three Rivers Inn. It was owned by a man named Dom Bruno
who was a very, very close friend of ours. I used to work there every summer. Dom's sister became my hairdresser and traveled with me for seven years on the road. So, Syracuse and I go way back. It was a great club.
Q - Did you ever have the chance to get out and see a little of
Syracuse?
A - No, because it (Three Rivers Inn) was out in the country. There
wasn't much around. After the shows, we would go to an Italian restaurant that a friend of ours owned and so I didn't get a chance to see much. Actually, that holds true of most places I've been. There are some cities that I did take time out to study, 'cause I love history and one of them was Boston, and of course Rome and all of those places like that. But, in Syracuse or Rochester, or any of those places, no. All I've seen is the nightclub and the menu.
Q - You don't remember the name of the Italian restaurant do you?
A - No.
Q - I consulted a couple of books about you. One of them was called The Encyclopedia of Rock 'n Roll by Brown and Freddrich. They write "Before
long, Connie became an adult favorite too, and probably more than anything else, this is what turned off the kids to her singles." Would you agree with that?
A - No. That was far from the truth, very much like Bobby Darin had
"Queen of the Hop" and "Splish Splash" and songs like that when he did "Mack The Knife", I remember Dick Clark saying to him "Don't release the song, Bobby, as a single, because it's going nowhere. The kids on American Bandstand will hate it." When I did "Mama", and I played it for him, and told him I was releasing it as a single he said, "Absolutely not. It'll be turn-off." Well, what it did was to allow Bobby and I, for the first time, to play the Copa and to play Las Vegas and Harrah's and Reno and Tahoe and all the spots that considered us Teenage X. We didn't lose our teenage audiences, because right after "Mama", I don't remember the hit that exactly followed it, but it was a
real bubble of a song. What it did was expand our audience, not exchange it.
Q - Was Arthur Godfrey the gentleman who suggested you change your name
to Connie Francis?
A - Yeah. He said "Little girl, come over here with your accordion. How
do you pronounce your name again?" And I said, as if speaking a foreign
language "Franc-o-nero." He whistled and said "That's a toughie. Why don't we give you a nice, easy to pronounce old Irish name like, let's see, Francis." I said "Oh, Mr. Godfrey, please, please let me be Connie Franconero just for tonight. My father will have a fit." So, he struggled through it and said Connie Franconero, which incidentally, my name has never been legally changed. After that, my father said "Yeah, Connie Francis. That has a nice sound to it. That's not too bad. We'll use that."
Q - Did you like the name Connie Francis?
A - Yeah. I thought it was cute. (laughs) Easy.
Q - I read you autobiography "Who's Sorry Now". The one thing I'll
always remember is the role your father played in your career. If Elvis had the Colonel and the Beatles had Brian Epstein, Connie Francis had her father.
A - That's right.
Q - I'm just wondering. If your father hadn't been in the background,
pushing and promoting all the while, maybe you wouldn't have had a
career.
A - It wouldn't have happened. He had insisted on "Who's Sorry Now" for
a year and a half. I had gone through 18 bomb sides, nine releases on
MGM. We were down to our last recording. My father said "Look, dummy," he had this great, but very elusive charm, "You picked out 18 duds. Let me pick one song. Sing this song. For a year and a half I've been trying to get you to sing this song." I said "Don't tell me it's Who's Sorry Now again." I said "Please Daddy. It was 1923. The kids will laugh me right off American Bandstand." He said, "Unless you do this song, sister, the only way you'll get on American Bandstand is if you sit on top of the TV set." (laughs)
Q - He had a great feel for what people liked, didn't he?
A - For me, anyway. He just knew what the public would accept from me,
and what they wouldn't accept from me. For instance, my first few Italian albums, I didn't speak Italian. I just remembered songs my grandmother taught me, and songs that I learned for the recordings. But, then I learned to speak Italian. When I was there, I hired a professor who stayed with me 24 hours a day. She wouldn't let me speak a word of English. I learned Italian in three months. So, I was very keen on all the new Italian music that was being written. I wanted to introduce it to the American public. So, I did an album called "Connie Sings Modern Italian Hits". He wasn't at the session. It took place in
Italy. When he heard it, he said "That record is gonna sell." I said
"Do you think so Daddy?" He said "Yeah. Like five copies in Brooklyn. It's going nowhere." And he was absolutely right, because the people who came to this country from Italy were immigrants. They were Neapolitan people. They were Sicilian people. They were people who spoke with a dialect. They didn't understand perfect Italian. And, the album did not sell, and he was right about that. He was right about country music. He used to listen to this disc jockey, Jerry Brenner in New York, who would play country music once a week. We'd drive in the
car and I'd say "Daddy, please, that Ozark stuff is killing me." I'd
get a headache. He said "The Ozark stuff is going to beat pop music one of these days."
Q - He was right about that.
A - Right. I said no way. The purists won't let them use strings. He
said "It's going to make it and it's going to make it big. It's gonna take over the pop charts." I was probably one of the, if not the first American popular artists to record in Nashville. It was like a really weird experience. I was used to recording in L.A. and New York. Every session started at 12 o'clock. If you went one minute past four hours, you had to pay for the next four hours. So I walked into the studio and there were musicians with beards and jeans and plaid shirts and suspenders and they were drinking beer. They were eating hot dogs and pizza. I said "Hi everybody. I'm Connie Francis. Let's go. It's two minutes after twelve." They said "Please, Miss Connie, we're all waiting on Grady. Grady's wife is feeling poorly. So, we're just waiting for Grady to come. Now relax, 'cause we gotta get your mind right." (laughs)
Q - That's straight out of Hee-Haw isn't it?
A - (laughs)
Q - I wonder if it's the same today.
A - Oh, yeah, it is, 'cause I recorded a Buddy Holly album for the UK
about six months ago, and it's exactly the same way.
Q - How long did it take you to record "Who's Sorry Now?" Did you get
it on the first take?
A - The second take. The first take was bad because there was something wrong with the orchestra. We did it on the second take, in 16 minutes.
I finally agreed with my father to do "Who's Sorry Now?" Usually we could do three songs on a session. We didn't attempt to do four songs. I placed "Who's Sorry Now?" fourth, so we wouldn't get to it. So there were 16 minutes left. I was in the control room and I pressed the button and said to the musicians "Sorry guys, there's no time for "Who's Sorry Now?" Lipton said, "Get in the god-damn studio and record the tune before I kill you." (laughs) So I marched into the studio and recorded "Who's Sorry Now?". It was the first time that I ever recorded that I didn't try to imitate somebody else. I was doing demos when I
was 14 years old. I was earning ten dollars for four hours, which went
a long way in those days. Each of the publishers would have a particular artist in mind that they wanted to gear this song to. So they'd say, "C'mon Connie, give it a Rosemary Clooney sound. Give it that great Patti Page or Jo Stafford sound." And so I would do it, and sound like them. But I didn't have a style of my own yet. On "Who's Sorry Now?" I hated the song so much that I didn't care what I sounded like. So I just sang it.
Q - And sang it so convincingly. You really sounded sorry.
A - I was sorry I had to do the song. (laughs)
Q - How many records did that sell?
A - Oh, well over a million.
Rivers Inn.
A - Yes, the Three Rivers Inn. It was owned by a man named Dom Bruno
who was a very, very close friend of ours. I used to work there every summer. Dom's sister became my hairdresser and traveled with me for seven years on the road. So, Syracuse and I go way back. It was a great club.
Q - Did you ever have the chance to get out and see a little of
Syracuse?
A - No, because it (Three Rivers Inn) was out in the country. There
wasn't much around. After the shows, we would go to an Italian restaurant that a friend of ours owned and so I didn't get a chance to see much. Actually, that holds true of most places I've been. There are some cities that I did take time out to study, 'cause I love history and one of them was Boston, and of course Rome and all of those places like that. But, in Syracuse or Rochester, or any of those places, no. All I've seen is the nightclub and the menu.
Q - You don't remember the name of the Italian restaurant do you?
A - No.
Q - I consulted a couple of books about you. One of them was called The Encyclopedia of Rock 'n Roll by Brown and Freddrich. They write "Before
long, Connie became an adult favorite too, and probably more than anything else, this is what turned off the kids to her singles." Would you agree with that?
A - No. That was far from the truth, very much like Bobby Darin had
"Queen of the Hop" and "Splish Splash" and songs like that when he did "Mack The Knife", I remember Dick Clark saying to him "Don't release the song, Bobby, as a single, because it's going nowhere. The kids on American Bandstand will hate it." When I did "Mama", and I played it for him, and told him I was releasing it as a single he said, "Absolutely not. It'll be turn-off." Well, what it did was to allow Bobby and I, for the first time, to play the Copa and to play Las Vegas and Harrah's and Reno and Tahoe and all the spots that considered us Teenage X. We didn't lose our teenage audiences, because right after "Mama", I don't remember the hit that exactly followed it, but it was a
real bubble of a song. What it did was expand our audience, not exchange it.
Q - Was Arthur Godfrey the gentleman who suggested you change your name
to Connie Francis?
A - Yeah. He said "Little girl, come over here with your accordion. How
do you pronounce your name again?" And I said, as if speaking a foreign
language "Franc-o-nero." He whistled and said "That's a toughie. Why don't we give you a nice, easy to pronounce old Irish name like, let's see, Francis." I said "Oh, Mr. Godfrey, please, please let me be Connie Franconero just for tonight. My father will have a fit." So, he struggled through it and said Connie Franconero, which incidentally, my name has never been legally changed. After that, my father said "Yeah, Connie Francis. That has a nice sound to it. That's not too bad. We'll use that."
Q - Did you like the name Connie Francis?
A - Yeah. I thought it was cute. (laughs) Easy.
Q - I read you autobiography "Who's Sorry Now". The one thing I'll
always remember is the role your father played in your career. If Elvis had the Colonel and the Beatles had Brian Epstein, Connie Francis had her father.
A - That's right.
Q - I'm just wondering. If your father hadn't been in the background,
pushing and promoting all the while, maybe you wouldn't have had a
career.
A - It wouldn't have happened. He had insisted on "Who's Sorry Now" for
a year and a half. I had gone through 18 bomb sides, nine releases on
MGM. We were down to our last recording. My father said "Look, dummy," he had this great, but very elusive charm, "You picked out 18 duds. Let me pick one song. Sing this song. For a year and a half I've been trying to get you to sing this song." I said "Don't tell me it's Who's Sorry Now again." I said "Please Daddy. It was 1923. The kids will laugh me right off American Bandstand." He said, "Unless you do this song, sister, the only way you'll get on American Bandstand is if you sit on top of the TV set." (laughs)
Q - He had a great feel for what people liked, didn't he?
A - For me, anyway. He just knew what the public would accept from me,
and what they wouldn't accept from me. For instance, my first few Italian albums, I didn't speak Italian. I just remembered songs my grandmother taught me, and songs that I learned for the recordings. But, then I learned to speak Italian. When I was there, I hired a professor who stayed with me 24 hours a day. She wouldn't let me speak a word of English. I learned Italian in three months. So, I was very keen on all the new Italian music that was being written. I wanted to introduce it to the American public. So, I did an album called "Connie Sings Modern Italian Hits". He wasn't at the session. It took place in
Italy. When he heard it, he said "That record is gonna sell." I said
"Do you think so Daddy?" He said "Yeah. Like five copies in Brooklyn. It's going nowhere." And he was absolutely right, because the people who came to this country from Italy were immigrants. They were Neapolitan people. They were Sicilian people. They were people who spoke with a dialect. They didn't understand perfect Italian. And, the album did not sell, and he was right about that. He was right about country music. He used to listen to this disc jockey, Jerry Brenner in New York, who would play country music once a week. We'd drive in the
car and I'd say "Daddy, please, that Ozark stuff is killing me." I'd
get a headache. He said "The Ozark stuff is going to beat pop music one of these days."
Q - He was right about that.
A - Right. I said no way. The purists won't let them use strings. He
said "It's going to make it and it's going to make it big. It's gonna take over the pop charts." I was probably one of the, if not the first American popular artists to record in Nashville. It was like a really weird experience. I was used to recording in L.A. and New York. Every session started at 12 o'clock. If you went one minute past four hours, you had to pay for the next four hours. So I walked into the studio and there were musicians with beards and jeans and plaid shirts and suspenders and they were drinking beer. They were eating hot dogs and pizza. I said "Hi everybody. I'm Connie Francis. Let's go. It's two minutes after twelve." They said "Please, Miss Connie, we're all waiting on Grady. Grady's wife is feeling poorly. So, we're just waiting for Grady to come. Now relax, 'cause we gotta get your mind right." (laughs)
Q - That's straight out of Hee-Haw isn't it?
A - (laughs)
Q - I wonder if it's the same today.
A - Oh, yeah, it is, 'cause I recorded a Buddy Holly album for the UK
about six months ago, and it's exactly the same way.
Q - How long did it take you to record "Who's Sorry Now?" Did you get
it on the first take?
A - The second take. The first take was bad because there was something wrong with the orchestra. We did it on the second take, in 16 minutes.
I finally agreed with my father to do "Who's Sorry Now?" Usually we could do three songs on a session. We didn't attempt to do four songs. I placed "Who's Sorry Now?" fourth, so we wouldn't get to it. So there were 16 minutes left. I was in the control room and I pressed the button and said to the musicians "Sorry guys, there's no time for "Who's Sorry Now?" Lipton said, "Get in the god-damn studio and record the tune before I kill you." (laughs) So I marched into the studio and recorded "Who's Sorry Now?". It was the first time that I ever recorded that I didn't try to imitate somebody else. I was doing demos when I
was 14 years old. I was earning ten dollars for four hours, which went
a long way in those days. Each of the publishers would have a particular artist in mind that they wanted to gear this song to. So they'd say, "C'mon Connie, give it a Rosemary Clooney sound. Give it that great Patti Page or Jo Stafford sound." And so I would do it, and sound like them. But I didn't have a style of my own yet. On "Who's Sorry Now?" I hated the song so much that I didn't care what I sounded like. So I just sang it.
Q - And sang it so convincingly. You really sounded sorry.
A - I was sorry I had to do the song. (laughs)
Q - How many records did that sell?
A - Oh, well over a million.