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Jane Morgan (born Florence Catherine Currier; May 3, 1924) is an American singer. Morgan initially found success in France and the UK before achieving recognition in the US. She received six gold records. She was a frequent nightclub and Broadway performer, and also appeared numerous times on American television, both as a singer and as a dramatic performer.Early life
Morgan was born Florence Catherine Currier in Newton, Massachusetts on May 3, 1924, one of five children born to musicians Olga (Brandenburg) and Bertram Currier. When she was four years old, the Currier family moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. At five she began vocal lessons while continuing piano lessons. During the summers, she took on child roles and appeared in theater productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine, which her brother had founded. In 1941, she was listed as the Treasurer of the Kennebunkport Playhouse. While attending grade school, Morgan actively engaged in singing and competing against other students throughout Florida and the Southeast. After graduating from Seabreeze High School, she and her multiple musical talents were promptly accepted into New York's prestigious Juilliard School of Music. Intending to become an opera singer, she studied opera by day and performed whenever possible.
Early career
Morgan sang popular songs in nightclubs and small restaurants, and at bar mitzvahs and other private parties, to help pay her tuition expenses at Juilliard. Eventually she was hired as a singer at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan with the house second band for $25 a week, six nights a week. While she was still at Juilliard (1944), orchestra leader Art Mooney heard her perform and hired her. Mooney changed her name to Jane Morgan by taking the first name of one of his vocalists, Janie Ford, and the last name of another, Marian Morgan.
In 1948, French impresario Bernard Hilda selected her to accompany him to Paris. Hilda was a prominent French society bandleader who needed a young singer to perform at a nightclub that he planned to open near the Eiffel Tower. Morgan began to appear regularly at the Club des Champs-Elysées, performing (two shows per night) American songs to mostly French audiences. Her mother had taught her French and Italian, so she quickly became proficient in French, and performed her act in flawless French, singing the classic songs of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, French songs, and standards of the century. Morgan became a sensation in Paris;accompanied by Hilda and his gypsy violin, she quickly became known throughout France. French café society frequented Hilda's upscale club, which was likened to the Copacabana in New York. Many French songwriters, including Charles Trenet, frequented the club, and they wrote several songs that became hit recordings for Morgan. Morgan and Hilda soon opened a new weekly hour-long television show and she began recording in 1949 on the French Polydor label as well as Parlophone, Philips, and others.
In 1952 Morgan went to Montreal, Quebec, Canada and opened at the Ritz Hotel as a soloist with a bilingual act using French and English. She returned to New York with regular performances in upscale nightclubs and her own radio show on NBC, backed by the 50-piece NBC Symphony Orchestra. She also performed at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. She returned to Europe in 1954 to appear in a London West End review with comedian Vic Oliver, and later at the Savoy Theatre and London Palladium.
American succes
Morgan wanted to advance her career in the United States, but booking agents and managers in show business felt she was too specialized and wouldn't make it outside the nightclub circuit. She left her agent and began singing at Lou Walters' Latin Quarter in New York. Walters kept Morgan at the Latin Quarter for a year, when she was noticed by Dave Kapp, who had recently founded a new recording label, Kapp Records. Kapp signed Morgan to a recording contract, and near that same period he signed pianist Roger Williams.
To counter her reputation as a French singer, Kapp had Morgan record "Baseball, Baseball", and her first album release was entitled "The American Girl from Paris". She recorded several additional albums and soon was paired with Williams, who had gained national acceptance with his recording of Autumn Leaves. They recorded Two Different Worlds, which gave Morgan her first significant airplay on US radio. In 1957 Kapp brought The Troubadors, a virtually unknown group of five musicians, to his studio. They had appeared in Love in the Afternoon. Kapp asked Morgan to join The Troubadors and sing "Fascination". Although written in 1904 by F. D. Marchetti as "Valse Tzigane", the song was modified in Paris at the Folies Bergère as a "strip" number. With English lyrics added by Dick Manning in 1932, it had been played throughout the 1957 movie (the French lyric had been created in 1942). Her recording was released in late 1957 and remained on the charts for 29 weeks.
In 1958 Kapp released The Day the Rains Came (a French song by Gilbert Becaud called "Le jour où la pluie viendra") with Morgan singing in English on one side and in French on the other. It reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in early 1959. This led to her first television special, Spectacular: the Jane Morgan Hour in early 1959, the same year she married her first husband, Larry Stith. She was featured on the November 10, 1959 jazz special, Timex-All-Star Jazz III.
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