'Symbol of good American music' returns
By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor
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| Rosemary Clooney, who will perform with the Honolulu Symphony today and tomorrow, says she has been singing all her life and retirement is not on her mind. "As long as it's fun and I'm able to, I'll sing," she says.
Rosemary Clooney Singing with the Honolulu Symphony in a pops concert conducted by Matt Catingub 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday Blaisdell Concert Hall $15-$55 792-2000 |
"I don't know when or where they labeled me a jazz singer," said Clooney, in a chat from her Beverly Hills home.
"I sing the melody, I love jazz, but I can't improvise the way that Sarah (Vaughan), Ella (Fitzgerald) and Mel (Torme) could. But I listen to a lot of Joe Williams, more than any other singer, and I respect the songs I sing. I mean, even though I don't live next door to Ira Gershwin, I respect what he's done — for a singer not to respect the lyrics would be disrespectful."
Clooney, who remembers singing at the Waikiki Shell the day Hawai'i became a state and regularly vacations here with family, is returning to Honolulu for a pair of Honolulu Symphony pops concerts tonight and tomorrow at Blaisdell Concert Hall.
"She's the finest interpreter of song," said Matt Catingub, a longtime fan, friend and colleague of Clooney, who will be at the baton. "When you hear her sing lyrics, she sounds like she's speaking them to you. That's what makes her an incredible singer: her sincerity."
Frank Sinatra once said, "Rosemary Clooney has that great talent which exudes warmth and feeling in every song she sings. She's a symbol of good modern American music."
Clooney said she was a singer well before she became a wife and mother.
"I've been singing practically all my life," she said. "I don't think I can change careers. Retirement is not on my mind. As long as it's fun and I'm able to, I'll sing."
Clooney sang on Catingub's first CD with his Big Kahuna and the Copa Cat Pack, but their professional lives crossed many years ago partly because his late mother, Mavis Rivers, also was a singer.
"I was a fan before becoming a friend," Catingub said. "My mother introduced me to her music, and I've admired her so much since. We've been touring together regularly for the past few years."
"It's a wonderful homecoming," Clooney said of hooking up with Catingub again. "He's a wonderful talent and his success is long overdue. I'm proud of him; we did three weeks in New York together, and he was sensational. He was really doing it; reminded me of my own life at 25 or so, working with Tony Pastor (the band leader who give her a career boost). It's a wonderful feeling to revisit at 73."
She said a combination of lyrics and melody is a factor in her decision to adopt a song to suit her style. She loves tunes that tell a story she can share, but she's open to a lot of options.
And having five children, now grown, enabled her to get exposed to a myriad of musical styles. "I lived through rock 'n' roll and everything else the kids were listening to," Clooney said. "I listened, so I got inducted rather early, in some of the changes over the years. It's all been so different from my taste, but it's no different from what my mother loved: Music is generational."
She doesn't put down today's hip-hop, though she may wince at some of the bawdy, if not flagrantly offensive, lyrics.
"But I have to tell you something," she said. "As we were all growing up, we all had wonderful associations with all the songs we liked — and it's something today's kids don't have. First of all, the songs don't stay with you forever these days; and because they're not, for the large part, romantic, it's hard to get associated with the music. And that's a shame. Music is about associations, a song linked to a special moment in your life."
Clooney's career was launched in 1945, when she sang duets with her sister Betty, on a radio station in Cincinnati. Band leader Pastor took notice; by 1947, the Clooney Sisters were chirping with his big band at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.
When her sister decided to bow out of road tours, Clooney persevered and landed a recording contract with Columbia Records at an opportune time, when she and other girl singers with orchestras, Doris Day and Peggy Lee among them, started emerging as true vocal stars.
Mitch Miller, of "sing along with ..." fame, was a record producer at Columbia, and he suggested that Clooney record a tune she originally despised but has become one of her early signatures: "Come On-a My House." That made her a bona fide recording star.
Her fame and talent yielded her two network TV shows, a string of films and working gigs with some hotshots of the era: Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye.
As a pop chanteuse, Clooney hit the charts with such tunes as "Half as Much," "This Ole House," "Hey, There," "Botch-A-Me," "Mambo Italiano" and more. She starred in "White Christmas," a holiday film classic, and has maintained a recording career in recent years with Concord Records.
In recent times, Clooney has achieved fame as a notable aunt: Her nephew is former "ER" co-star George Clooney, a Hollywood hunk.
"Isn't that true," she laughed. "George came to live with me some years back, and we treated him like one of my own. It was sort of the Lost Boys session, because when you have five of your own kids, and they each invite a friend or two to have meals with you or sleep over, you're talking big crowd.
"I'm pleased that George has done really very well, because he's serious about his acting and he's worked hard. With his schedule, I don't spend as nearly as much time as I used to with him, but I do spend a lot of family time together with my brother and my sister-in-law, who are George's dad and mother. In fact, they'll be in Hawai'i with me for a vacation."
