Gogi Grant
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Gogi Grant
<tr style="text-align: center;"><td colspan="3"> Gogi Grant on the cover of her 2002 collection Her Very Best </td></tr>
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| Background information
<tr><td>Birth name</td><td colspan="2">Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg</td></tr><tr><td>Born</td><td colspan="2">September 20, 1924, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States</td></tr><tr><td>Genre(s)</td><td colspan="2">Traditional Pop</td></tr><tr><td>Years active</td><td colspan="2">1955-1967</td></tr><tr><td style="padding-right: 1em;">Label(s)</td><td colspan="2">Era, RCA Victor</td></tr> |
Gogi Grant (born Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg, September 20, 1924) was an American popular singer.
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[edit] Life and career
She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of twelve she moved to Los Angeles, California. In California she won a teenage singing contest and appeared on television talent shows. In 1952 she began to record, using first the name "Audrey Brown" and later "Audrey Grant". She was given the name "Gogi" by Dave Kapp, the head of Artists and Repertory at RCA Records, who liked to patronize a restaurant called "Gogi's LaRue."
In 1955 she signed with a small record company, Era Records, and had her first top ten hit with "Suddenly There's a Valley." The next year, she had an even bigger hit (reaching Billboard magazine's number one spot) with "The Wayward Wind" and she was voted most popular female vocalist by Billboard magazine.
In 1957 she supplied the vocals for Ann Blyth in the movie portrayal of Helen Morgan's life. The soundtrack occasioned her return to RCA (the soundtrack album climbed to #25 in the Billboard album chart), where she also had a minor hit the following year with "Strange Are the Ways of Love".
Although she made albums and appeared on television into the 1960s, her popularity declined and she retired from singing in 1967, nevertheless an album of her's was released in England some twenty years later.
[edit] Hit recordings
- "Suddenly There's a Valley" (1955)
- "The Wayward Wind" (1956)
- "When The Tide Is High" (1956)
- "Who Are We" (1956)
- "You're In Love" (1956)
- "Strange Are the Ways of Love" (1958)
[edit] Album discography
- Suddenly There's Gogi Grant (1957)
- The Helen Morgan Story (original soundtrack) (1958)
- Welcome To My Heart (1958)
- If You Want To Get To Heaven, Shout (1959)
- Torch Time (1959)
- City Girl In The Country (1964)
[edit] External links
- Gogi Grant bio on The Iceberg site
- Gogi Grant bio on Tom Simon site
