Margaret Whiting is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist. Recognized as one of the top selling vocalists (male or female) of the post-war era, Margaret had a long, acclaimed career spanning seven decades. She sang jazz, country and musical theatre. All-around entertainer, star of radio, stage, TV and film, she was known for her vocal clarity, lyrical style and mellow tone. And she taught and encouraged other singers.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 22 March) and two years of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

MARGARET WHITING’S ADVICE FOR SINGERS

If I’m any good at all as a singer, a lot of it is due to something my father (composer, Richard Whiting) taught me…

He once said, ‘Margaret, you have a good voice, you certainly know how to sing. Now spend years in perfecting your craft. I hate to think of it as a craft. It’s something I love to do, but it is a job, it is work, and we work very hard to write a song. You must sing this song with great affection and feeling. It takes the men who write the lyrics a long time. Just believe in their words. Do them simply and honestly. That’s how a singer should interpret a song’.

MARGARET ELEANOR WHITING

Margaret Whiting’s father, Richard, was a composer of popular songs, including the classics “Hooray for Hollywood“, “Ain’t We Got Fun?“, and “On the Good Ship Lollipop“. Her sister, Barbara Whiting, was an actress (Junior Miss, Beware, My Lovely) and singer.

An aunt, Margaret Young, was a singer and popular recording artist in the 1920s.

Margaret Whiting’s singing ability was noticed at an early age and at seven she sang for singer-lyricist Johnny Mercer, with whom her father had collaborated on some popular songs, including “Too Marvelous for Words”.

In 1942, Mercer co-founded Capitol Records and signed Margaret to one of Capitol’s first recording contracts.

CABARET MASTER CLASS TEACHER

Margaret Whiting spent a great deal of her time and energies preserving and promoting the Great American Songbook, and the young performers who were keeping it alive.

From 1989 – 2001, Whiting was the Artistic Director of the annual Cabaret and Performance Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford Connecticut.

With other performers such as Julie Wilson and Anne Francine as well as musical directors like Tex Arnold, she spent 10 days instructing selected professionals and amateurs in the cabaret performance process.

OFFICIAL BIO

Quoting from her International Movie Data Base bio:

Born July 22, 1924 in Detroit, she began singing as a small child and, by the age of seven, signed with Johnny Mercer, the popular songwriter and founder of Capitol Records, for whom her father worked.

She was a popular vocalist in the 1940s and 1950s, recording dozens of hits for Capitol Records, launched by her father and two partners. She was the first artist to be engaged by the label, where she began recording in 1942. She served as President of the Johnny Mercer Foundation, and she continued her work as a performer of Mercer songs.

In the early 1940s, her hits included “That Old Black Magic” (with Freddie Slack), “Moonlight in Vermont” (with Billy Butterfield) and “It Might As Well Be Spring” (with Paul Weston). Between 1946-54, she had more than 40 solo hit tunes for Capitol. After stints with Dot Records and Verve Records and, a brief return to Capitol in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, she recorded for the London label beginning in 1966.

In the late 1990s, she appeared in the Broadway musical “Dream” (1997) and in the PBS broadcast The Songs of Johnny Mercer: Too Marvelous for Words (1997).

Under her own name in late 1945, she recorded the Jerome Kern–Oscar Hammerstein II composition “All Through The Day”, which became a bestseller in the spring of 1946, and “In Love In Vain”, both of which were featured in the film Centennial Summer (1946). She also had hits with songs from the Broadway musicals “St. Louis Woman” and “Call Me Mister” in 1946. Those first recordings under her name were made in New York. In late 1946, she returned to California and began recording there, with Jerry and His Orchestra–“Guilty” and “Oh, But I Do” were the best-selling results of that session. Her hit streak continued in 1948-49.

Due to a musician’s strike in the US, orchestral tracks were recorded outside of the country and vocals added in US studios. Whiting supplied vocals to tracks cut by Frank DeVol and His Orchestra, including “A Tree In The Meadow”, a #1 hit in the summer of 1948, recorded in London. Her next #1 song occurred in 1949 with “Slipping Around”, one of a series of duet recordings made with country/western singer and cowboy star Jimmy Wakely. Also that year, Whiting recorded a duet with Mercer, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.

In 1950, she had a hit with “Blind Date”, a novelty record made with Bob Hope and Billy May and His Orchestra.

Whiting continued recording for Capitol into the mid-1950s, until her run of hits dried up. She left the company in 1958 for Dot Records but achieved only one hit there. She switched to Verve Records in 1960 and recorded a number of albums, including one with jazz vocalist Mel Tormé. A brief return to Capitol was followed by a hiatus, after which Whiting signed with London Records in 1966, where she recorded her last two charting pop singles. Her recordings continued to appear on the easy listening charts into the 1970s. Whiting was still recording in the early 1990s and performing in cabaret and concerts. She died on January 10, 2011 (aged 86) in Englewood, New Jersey.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Burt Richards (updated by R.M. Sieger)

22 MARCH PLAY LIST