|
 Spend
a few evenings this month with a great lady and a grand
singer on WVXU as we are pleased to present Rosie
All The Way: The Rosemary Clooney Story. The
four-part series from the British Broadcasting Corporation,
Rosie All The Way: The Rosemary Clooney Story,
will be aired on four consecutive Sunday evenings in
January on 91.7 WVXU. The half-hour programs can be
heard at 8 pm on January 7,14, 21, and 28.
The programs will follow her career from her start in Cincinnati, what made her a star in the 1950s, why personal pressures led to a breakdown, and how she finally achieved unexpected happiness. London stage star Ruthie Henshall, who claims Rosemary Clooney as an inspiration, narrates.
Among the interviewees are Tony Bennett, Linda Ronstadt, Diana Krall, Miguel Ferrer (Rosemary's son), and the terrific jazz musicians John Pizzarelli and Scott Hamilton.
After being broadcast late last year on BBC2, Rosie's brother Nick Clooney wrote about the programs in The Cincinnati Post on February 15, 2006. Here are a few comments from that article. Nick recalls:
"As I listened to Tony Bennett say 'No one sang as good as Rosie,' my mind flashed back to a small CBS radio studio in the late 1940s. Two young singers were doing a 15-minute summer replacement radio show with a quintet headed by the respected jazz pianist Johnny Guarnieri. The singers were Tony and Rosemary. Neither had a major hit yet for Columbia, but insiders believed it was only a matter of time, so the executives sent them out on all kinds of radio and TV appearances.
"Tony recalled that he and Rosemary were put on a TV show called Songs for Sale. The idea was that amateur songwriters would send in their songs and the producers would select several for the show. The singers had to learn two or three new songs a week. And that wasn't the only problem.
'Sometimes they'd pick the worst songs that were sent in and throw them at Rosie and me. Then they'd have the cue-card holders turn the lyrics upside-down so we couldn't read them and had to make them up. They wanted to give the audience a laugh, but those songwriters didn't know that. They thought their songs were great and it was just Rosie and me keeping them from fame and fortune. We had to sneak out the back door before they could get hold of us for ruining their songs.'
"I was there, and Tony's memory is on target."
To learn more about Rosemary Clooney, visit the Rosemary Clooney Palladium at www.rosemaryclooney.com
| 
