Kitty Kallen - Biography

Kitty Kallen (born May 25, 1922) is an American popular singer who sang with a number of big bands in the 1940s, coming back in the 1950s to score her biggest hit, "Little Things Mean a Lot" in 1954.

Career

Born in Philadelphia to a Jewish family, she won an amateur contest as a child doing imitations of some singers of the day. When she brought her prize (a camera) home, her father refused to believe her and thought she had stolen the camera, so he punished her severely. Later, when neighborhood people came to congratulate her father, he realized that her story was true. Subsequently she sang (while still a child) on The Children's Hour, a radio program sponsored by Horn & Hardart, a firm which had a chain of Automats in New York and Philadelphia. As a pre-teen she had her own program on Philadelphia's WCAU, and soon she sang as a vocalist with the big bands of Jan Savitt in 1936 and Artie Shaw in 1938, and Jack Teagarden in 1940. While with the Savitt band, she briefly was a roommate of Dinah Shore. She married Clint Garvin, who played clarinet in Teagarden's band, and when Teagarden fired Garvin, she left as well. The marriage was annulled.

Kallen later married Budd Granoff, a famous publicist, agent, and television producer. They were married over forty-five years, until Granoff's death. Still only a teenager at that time—after a short stay with Bobby Sherwood--she joined the Jimmy Dorsey band, replacing Helen O'Connell. Eventually, in 1944, she appeared as the vocalist for Dorsey's US number-one hit, "Besame Mucho". Most of her singing assignments were in duets with Bob Eberly, and when Eberly left to go into the service toward the end of 1943, she joined Harry James' band.

Kallen became a popular artist on radio, film, and nightclub. In 1954, she appeared twice on Fred Allen's Judge for Yourself variety and game program on NBC.

With the 1954 hit "Little Things Mean a Lot" (voted the most popular record), Kallen was voted most popular female singer in Billboard and Variety polls, this followed by "Chapel in the Moonlight". She also recorded a version of "True Love" for Decca. After those hit recordings and at the height of her career, she lost her voice and did not record again until 1959; first for Columbia where she had a hit version of "If I Give My Heart to You". In 1963, she had the biggest selling version of "My Coloring Book" which appeared on RCA. Her final album was Quiet Nights, a bossa nova based long play for 20th Century Fox Records. Shortly thereafter, following this successful comeback, she was forced to retire permanently due to a lung complication, brought on by an erroneous medical prescription for an infection. Her breathing mechanism, while singing, became stressed obliging her to make the decision to end her career.

A compilation of her hits on various labels is available on the Sony CD set, The Kitty Kallen Story.

During Kallen's height of popularity, there were three imposters who billed themselves as Kitty Kallen. When one of them (Genevieve Angostinello) died, it was reported that Kallen had died, and that is where the mis-information about Kallen's birth name originated.

For her recording work, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2009 she was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

Kallen is known as a one-hit wonder in the UK, as her song "Little Things Mean a Lot", went to number 1 in the UK Singles Chart, but she failed to follow it up.

Hit recordings

Listen

• Big Band Serenade podcast 155 contains information with many recordings of her singing

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