A workers’ quarter in a multi -ethnic city called Newark: Connie Franconero made her first eyelash strokes on December 12, 1938 in the state of New Jersey. American rays of light and Italian folk songs sound through the family apartment. As for many children of their time, the father becomes a formative figure. When the roofer gives his three -year -old girl an accordion, he sets the first course for his daughter’s career. The girl finds her early stages at neighborhood festivals, at talent competitions and under church roofs.
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Connie Francis blends to Starlet on a television show – but after a few years the removal of “Startime Kids” follows. After all, she wants to know with the hit parade: the father scratches some money for a handful of demo recordings, on his wink she copies the vocal style of Patti Page or Rosemary Clooney. In 1955 she finally signed the first record contract: ten singles, nine flops. When she has already become a medical student with a future, there is still a shot in the Colt: “Who’s Sorry now”. “I hated the song so much that I didn’t care how I sounded. So I just sung,” she said once. For the very first time, she recorded music at the time without trying to imitate someone. The song sells over a million times within six months.
Afterwards Connie Francis with heartbreaking pop elegia for teenage idol: “Stupid Cupid”, “Everybody’s somebody’s fool”, “Where the Boys are”. She sings pubescent storms and urges in an era of supposed innocence. However, their pieces can also be read as an emancipatory premonition on what the sixties had. In any case, under graceful orchestrated ballads, it boiled with unfulfilled longing or bitter sweetness. The voice consoles, complains, dreams – permeating love and suffering.
She took up many of her titles in various languages: Irish, Italian, Yiddish. The eternal timeless melodrama “Love is a strange game” and the adorable, atmospheric slot piece “Beautiful stranger” they also made them a star in this country. With the rise of the Beatles, Connie Francis finally disappeared from the charts.
Her life afterwards shaped blows of fate: in 1974 she was attacked, raped and almost suffocated in a motel room – the perpetrator has not been caught until today. From the motel, she fought $ 2.5 million compensation, a compensation amount from the time that was unimaginable at the time. After a failed beauty surgery on her nose, she finally lost her voice and fought back to the microphone within several years. From then on they accompanied anxiety disorders and suicide thoughts. Today one would have diagnosed post -traumatic stress disorder and no manic depression.
Just a few weeks ago, her largely unnoticed song “Pretty Little Baby” succeeded as the global Tiktok hit for decades. At first she didn’t understand a word when she learned about the Internet phenomenon: “I thought my computer had a virus or something.” Then she was very happy about her rediscovery. She explained the popularity of the former B-side with her carefree in the middle of these chaotic times.
She saw intoxicating peaks and abysmal valleys, said Connie Francis once. “I don’t want to be remembered because of the heights I have reached – but because of the depths from which I worked up again.”