Connie Francis

With a string of worldwide hits like Stupid Cupid, Who's Sorry Now and Heartaches, Connie Francis was one of America's greatest early pop stars. Her yearning voice caught the imagination of pop fans as she sold huge amounts of records in the late 1950s and early 1960s, bridging the rock'n'roll and beat boom eras. From Italian parentage, she performed regularly at talent shows in Newark, New Jersey, winning a spot on the NBC variety show Startime Kids between 1953 and 1955. It led to a contract with MGM and her first single, Freddy. It flopped - as did all her subsequent singles - and she was about to abandon music in favour of a career in medicine when, in 1958, her cover of a 1920s song Who's Sorry Now was played on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. It went on to sell a million, reaching Number 1 in the UK and Number 4 in the US and launched a run of success unparalleled at the time. She achieved her second UK Number 1 with Neil Sedaka's Stupid Cupid, with other major hits appealing to lovelorn teen audiences, including Lipstick On Your Collar, My Happiness, Among My Souvenirs and Where The Boys Are. She had her own TV specials all over the world and while the hits dried up in the late 1960s, she continued to be a popular concert performer. Connie struggled with illness and depression through much of the 1970s and 1980s, but returned to re-record her old hits in 1989 and continued to perform in cabaret through the 1990s and 2000s.