Connie Francis. Photo:
Popsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Connie Francis, the pop singer who released a string of hit singles across the late Fifties and early Sixties including “Where the Boys Are” and “Who’s Sorry Now?,” died on Wednesday at the age of 87.
Francis’ death was confirmed on Thursday by Ron Roberts, her friend and president of her Concetta Records (Francis’ birth name was Concetta Franconero). “It is with a heavy heart and extreme sadness that i inform you of the passing of my dear friend Connie Francis last night,” Roberts wrote on social media in a statement that was reposted on Francis’ own frequently updated Facebook account. “I know that Connie would approve that her fans are among the first to learn of this sad news.”
While no cause of death was provided, Francis revealed earlier this month that she had been hospitalized due to “extreme pain,” which forced her to miss a Fourth of July radio broadcast with host Cousin Brucie.
Francis’ music career began in the mid-Fifties with a series of unsuccessful singles for MGM Records; however, she was enlisted to provide the singing voices for actresses Tuesday Weld and Jayne Mansfield in 1956’s Rock, Rock, Rock and 1958’s The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, respectively.
After MGM Records dropped her, Francis was encouraged to re-record Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby’s 1920s song “Who’s Sorry Now?,” which in 1958 would become the singer’s first big hit, peaking at Number Four on the Billboard Hot 100. The single would launch both Francis’ music and movie career, as she became the best-selling female singer of the era and the first female artist to top the Billboard 200, with her 1960 Number Ones “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.”
The following year, Francis recorded her hit “Where the Boys Are,” which peaked at Number Four and leant its title to a 1960 film also starring Francis. In 1962, Francis scored her third and final Number One single, “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.” The singer also frequently re-recorded her own hits in foreign languages, making her an international music star throughout the turn of the Fifties and Sixties.
However, by 1963, Francis’ popularity began to wane as music shifted toward the British Invasion and rock & roll, though she continued to record throughout the Sixties. The following decade was marred by a series of tragedies for Francis: She was sexually assaulted in a hotel room at the start of a planned comeback tour — an incident that left her battling PTSD for decades — and a nasal surgery in 1974 left her unable to sing until the early Eighties. Her brother was also killed in a mob shooting in 1981, and Francis spent much of that decade in psychiatric hospitals.
By the Nineties and the decades that followed, however, Francis resumed her career, returning to touring and occasionally recording before her retirement in 2018. Earlier this year, Francis was surprisingly back in the spotlight when her 1962 single “Pretty Little Baby” became a viral hit on TikTok, where it topped that service’s music charts at Number One with more than 1.3 million posts using it as a sound in May alone. A video for the song also has over 32 million views on YouTube, by far Francis’ most popular video:
“I am thrilled and overwhelmed at the success of ‘Pretty Little Baby,’” Francis said in a statement in May. “I recorded that song 63 years ago and to know that an entire new generation now knows who I am, and my music is thrilling to me. Thank you so much everybody, thank you TikTok.”
From Rolling Stone US.
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