One of the premier postwar vocalists and actresses, with a strikingly pure voice that sums up American music's glamorous era. Doris Day packed four careers into one lifetime, two each in music and movies. The pity is that all most people remember are her movies, from Teacher's Pet (1957) onward, as the quintessential all-American girl, cast opposite such icons of masculinity as Clark Gable and Rock Hudson. She also transposed this following to television at the end of the '60s with a situation comedy that lasted into the early '70s. If most people remember her as a singer, it's usually for such pop hits as "Secret Love" and her Oscar-winning "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)," which became her signature tune. But before all of that, from 1939 until the end of the '40s, Doris Day was one of the hottest, sultriest swing-band vocalists in music…
Iconic American vocalist of the 1940s and '50s blurred the line between pop and jazz.
Before the rock & roll revolution, Rosemary Clooney was one of the most popular female singers in America, rising to superstardom during the golden age of adult pop. Like many of her peers in the so-called "girl singer" movement - Doris Day, Kay Starr, Peggy Lee, Patti Page, et al. - Clooney's style was grounded in jazz, particularly big-band swing. She wasn't an improviser or a technical virtuoso, and lacked the training to stand on an equal footing with the greatest true jazz singers. However, she sang with an effortless, spirited swing, and was everything else a great pop singer of her era should have been…