It’s ironic that Connie Francis unwittingly reached a new generation when this song went viral on Tik Tok in May – two months before her death at the age of 87.
Less surprising that she knew nothing about her new-found fame (or social media). When reached for comment, living out her retirement in Florida, she admitted she had even forgotten the song she’d recorded during a marathon four-day studio session when she was 24.
To be honest, I didn’t know any of her songs either; at least not knowingly: she was just a name from the past. But those songs have somehow seeped into my consciousness in the decades since they were recorded.
As is so often the case, it is only when reading her obits that I discover what a huge star she was. The biggest in the world around the time I was born, she was the first woman to top the US singles chart – and the first to have three No.1 singles.
The first of those came in 1960 with Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool, followed by My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own and Don’t Break The Heart That Loves You.
In all she had an astonishing 53 hits and sold an estimated 100 million records and only Elvis had more Top Ten hits in America before the big hits dried up after 1963 following the “British Invasion” which made old-skool singers like Connie surplus to teen requirements.
Concetta Franconero was born in Newark and raised in the mixed Italian-Jewish neighbourhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, becoming fluent not just in Italian but Yiddish and Hebrew.
A childhood prodigy, performing in talent shows with an accordion, she sang on demos and won a recording contract in her teens, but after a series of flops she was about to give up on music and study medicine.
Her father convinced her to give it one more go, singing a cover of an old 1927 song that she hated called Who’s Sorry Now? By the end of 1958 it had sold a million copies, topping the UK chart and hitting No.4 in the USA. Connie was officially a star.
She came to London to record an album of Italian songs at Abbey Road Studios and had another huge hit with Mama, going on to record several more albums of old Jewish, German and Irish songs.
Meanwhile the Top Ten hits kept coming: Breakin’ In A Brand New Broken Heart, When The Boy In Your Arms (Is The Boy In Your Heart) – how she loved a long song title! – Second Hand Love and Where The Boys Are.
The last of those was also the title of her first film, which led to the trend of the Spring Break, centred on the formerly sleepy town of Fort Lauderdale in Florida; followed by her first chart topper, Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.
The hits kept on coming as she recorded in multiple languages, topping charts all over Europe as her portfolio of foreign recordings expanded to a remarkable 15 different tongues.
I had no idea she had been the victim of a knifepoint rape in her mid-30s, being attacked in her motel after a performance in upstate New York, sidelining her career and sending her into deep depression for several years.
A few years later she lost her voice following a nasal operation and endured more tragedy in 1981 when her brother, an attorney who testified against mob activity and refused witness protection, was murdered by Mafia hitmen.