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Rosemary Clooney music biography continued...

1928, Clooney's childhood was marred by poverty and desertion by her alcoholic father. She got her first break in singing as part of a duo with her sister on a local Cincinnati radio station. This work brought them to the attention of bandleader Tony Pastor, who hired Clooney as a soloist, where she stayed until moving to New York at age 21. Clooney's arrival in New York was perfectly timed with the rage for orchestra-backed singers and she was immediately signed to a recording contract with Columbia Records. At Columbia, Clooney met Mitch Miller, who in 1951 convinced her to record a quirky song called Come On-a My House." The song was an immediate and enormous success, topping the charts to become a gold record. Other pop hits followed, including Botch-a-Me (Ba-Ba-Baciami Piccina)," "Mambo Italiano", and "This Ole House," making "Rosie" a star. Clooney was next signed to co-host, with beloved vocalist Bing Crosby, a songfest radio show, which aired every weekday morning on CBS radio. Film roles with Crosby and other stars came next, most notably 1954's White Christmas, for which her vocal performance was lauded. At the height of her fame, Clooney became the star of her own television series, The Rosemary Clooney Show, which ran through 1957, and was syndicated to more than one hundred television stations.



Behind the scenes things were going very wrong for Clooney, who developed an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. She would have a complete mental breakdown after witnessing the assassination of her friend, Robert Kennedy, and would spend the next decade in recovery. In 1976 Clooney's old friend Bing Crosby asked her to join him on his 50th anniversary tour. It would be Crosby's final tour and Clooney's comeback event. The highlight of the show came when Clooney joined Crosby in a duet of "On a Slow Boat to China." The next year, Clooney signed a recording contract with Concord Jazz, taking the next step on her comeback trail—one that would produce a string of more than a dozen successful recordings, inaugurated with Everything's Coming Up Rosie. Rosemary Clooney worked almost until she died on June 29, 2002, having recaptured the joy of performing she had as a young child.