Easter 58 NYC 1958 Part 5

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An Interview with singer Johnny Desmond & Evelyn Knight

Notes: Johnny Desmond was born Giovanni de Simone in Detroit, Michigan. He began singing in the St. Joseph's parish choir when he was 11 years old. As a boy he also sang on a local radio station, but at age 15 he quit to work at his father's grocery.

He attended Northwestern High School. He retained a love of music, and briefly attended the Detroit Conservatory of Music before heading to the nightclub circuit, playing piano and singing.

In 1939, he formed his own singing group. The group was first called the Downbeats. After being hired to work with Bob Crosby's big band in 1940, it was renamed the Bob-O-Links. The group appeared on 15 commercial recordings by the Crosby orchestra, including two charted hits, "You Forgot About Me" (which reached No. 15), and "Do You Care?" (No. 18).


NOTES: Evelyn Knight (born Evelyn Davis, December 31, 1917, Reedville, Virginia – September 28, 2007, San Jose, California) was an American singer of the 1940s and 1950s. Damon Runyon, in one of his newspaper columns, described Knight as "a lissome blonde lassie with a gentle little voice and a face mother would not mind having brought home to her."

Knight's father was "head of a geodetic survey for the government". She sang soprano in the young people's choir in a church in her hometown of Reedville, Virginia. After her father's death, Knight and her mother moved to Arlington County, Virginia, in 1926.

When she was 16, she sang in Washington nightclubs billed as Honey Davis. At the age of 18, she married Andrew B. Knight, a war photographer for the Washington Post, and became professionally known as Evelyn Knight.

During a seven-year span in the late 1940s and 1950, Knight had two No. 1 hit records and 13 that made the Top 40. Her debut recording was "Dance with a Dolly (With a Hole in Her Stocking)" for Decca Records in 1945. It became a Top 10 hit.

In 1948, she recorded the million-seller "A Little Bird Told Me" with The Stardusters, which was number one for seven weeks and stayed on the chart for five months. Later that year she recorded "Powder Your Face with Sunshine"; which also reached number one and remained on the chart into the following year.

She had other hits including "Buttons and Bows" in 1948, which Bob Hope also sang in the film The Paleface. A list of some of her hits appears below. In 1950, she released "Candy and Cake", originally sung by Mindy Carson, and "All Dressed Up to Smile" with the Ray Charles singers.

In 1951, she recorded a duet with country singer Red Foley called "My Heart Cries for You", as well as a pair of titles with Bing Crosby.[citation needed]
Television

Knight appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour and a 1951 television appearance with Abbott & Costello.
Radio

Knight began her career in high school when she would sing at Washington D.C.'s Station WRC as “Honey Davis” twice a week over NBC for $16 a broadcast. Knight was the female vocalist on the Tony Martin Show, which began March 30, 1947.

In 1948, she co-starred with Gordon MacRae on Star Theater on CBS. She also was featured on Barry Wood's Million Dollar Band program and starred in a weekly program broadcast over CBS shortwave for Latin America. Knight was also a regular on Club Fifteen, Happy Island, and The Lanny Ross Show.

One of Knight's early bookings was in the King Cole Room in Washington, D.C. An initial two-week contract eventually turned into a five-year stay. Near the end of that span, a Billboard reviewer wrote, "For five years she has held down the entertainment assignment in this spot and in that five years she has grown into a local tradition ... Cool and with plenty of glamour, this girl delivers her stuff in a sophisticated manner".

Knight moved to New York City, where she began headlining at Manhattan nightclubs the Blue Angel and the Plaza Hotel's Persian Room. She launched her recording career in 1945 by signing with Decca records, and moved to Los Angeles in the late 1940s where she headlined at Ciro's and Coconut Grove.