Joni James

 Joni James, born Joan Carmella Babbo (September 22, 1930 – February 20, 2022)

As an adolescent, she studied drama and ballet, and on graduating from Bowen High School, located in the South Chicago neighborhood, went with a local dance group on a tour of Canada.
After doing a fill-in in Indiana, she decided to pursue a singing career. Some executives at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) spotted her in a television commercial, and she was signed by MGM in 1952. Her first hit, "Why Don't You Believe Me?", sold over two million copies. She had a number of hits following that one, including "Your Cheatin' Heart" (a cover of Hank Williams' hit) and "Have You Heard?". She was the first American to record at London's Abbey Road Studios, and recorded five albums there. She was also very popular across parts of the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the Philippines where she performed at Manila's now defunct EM Club in 1957. She also scored a big hit in Manila with composer Salvador Asuncion's work titled "In Despair".

James married composer-conductor Anthony "Tony" Acquaviva at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York in 1956. In 1964, she retired from the music industry in part because Acquaviva was in bad health and needed her attention. She cared for him until his death in 1986. In October 2001, just a few weeks after 9/11, she appeared at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, accompanied by the Count Basie orchestra. The streets of the city were still lined with armed soldiers, and she was a guest of honor at the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Tribute to Barbra Streisand. With her renewed popularity, nearly her entire body of work was released on the Capitol-EMI, DRG and Taragon labels under her personal supervision, and, in 2000, she released a new recording, Latest and Greatest. James died at a hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, on February 20, 2022, at the age of 91.