Connie Francis, ‘The place the Boys Are’ Pop Singer, Lifeless at 87

Connie Francis, the pop singer who launched a string of hit singles throughout the late Fifties and early Sixties together with “The place the Boys Are” and “Who’s Sorry Now?,” died on Wednesday on the age of 87.

Francis’ dying was confirmed on Thursday by Ron Roberts, her good friend and president of her Concetta Data (Francis’ beginning identify was Concetta Franconero). “It’s with a heavy coronary heart and excessive unhappiness that i inform you of the passing of my pricey good friend Connie Francis final evening,” Roberts wrote on social media in an announcement that was reposted on Francis’ personal regularly up to date Fb account. “I do know that Connie would approve that her followers are among the many first to study of this unhappy information.”

Whereas no reason for dying was offered, Francis revealed earlier this month that she had been hospitalized resulting from “extreme pain,” which compelled her to overlook a Fourth of July radio broadcast with host Cousin Brucie.

Francis’ music profession started within the mid-Fifties with a sequence of unsuccessful singles for MGM Data; nevertheless, she was enlisted to supply the singing voices for actresses Tuesday Weld and Jayne Mansfield in 1956’s Rock, Rock, Rock and 1958’s The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, respectively.

After MGM Data dropped her, Francis was inspired to re-record Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby’s Twenties track “Who’s Sorry Now?,” which in 1958 would change into the singer’s first large hit, peaking at Quantity 4 on the Billboard Scorching 100. The only would launch each Francis’ music and film profession, as she turned the best-selling feminine singer of the period and the primary feminine artist to high the Billboard 200, along with her 1960 Quantity Ones “All people’s Any individual’s Idiot” and “My Coronary heart Has a Thoughts of Its Personal.”

The next yr, Francis recorded her hit “The place the Boys Are,” which peaked at Quantity 4 and leant its title to a 1960 movie additionally starring Francis. In 1962, Francis scored her third and last Quantity One single, “Don’t Break the Coronary heart That Loves You.” The singer additionally regularly re-recorded her personal hits in overseas languages, making her a world music star all through the flip of the Fifties and Sixties.

Nevertheless, by 1963, Francis’ reputation started to wane as music shifted towards the British Invasion and rock & roll, although she continued to document all through the Sixties. The next decade was marred by a sequence of tragedies for Francis: She was sexually assaulted in a lodge room in the beginning of a deliberate comeback tour — an incident that left her battling PTSD for many years — and a nasal surgical procedure in 1974 left her unable to sing till the early Eighties. Her brother was additionally killed in a mob capturing in 1981, and Francis spent a lot of that decade in psychiatric hospitals.

By the Nineties and the a long time that adopted, nevertheless, Francis resumed her profession, returning to touring and infrequently recording earlier than her retirement in 2018. Earlier this yr, Francis was surprisingly again within the highlight when her 1962 single “Fairly Little Child” became a viral hit on TikTok, the place it topped that service’s music charts at Quantity One with greater than 1.3 million posts utilizing it as a sound in Could alone. A video for the track additionally has over 32 million views on YouTube, by far Francis’ hottest video:

“I’m thrilled and overwhelmed on the success of ‘Fairly Little Child,’” Francis mentioned in an announcement in Could. “I recorded that track 63 years in the past and to know that a complete new era now is aware of who I’m, and my music is thrilling to me. Thanks a lot everyone, thanks TikTok.”

From Rolling Stone US.