My Happiness (1958) – Connie Francis

This article about Connie Francis’ enchanting version of My Happiness contains extracts from the two Wikipedia references at the end of this post:

Connie Francis – whose favourite song at the age of eight had been the Jon and Sondra Steele version of My Happiness – remade the song in a November 6, 1958 session at the Radio Recorders studio in Hollywood, California. The song almost became Francis’s first number one hit in the first months of 1959, but was kept at number two by another remake of a standard: the Platters‘ version of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

My Happiness was initially made famous in the mid-20th century. An unpublished version of the melody with different lyrics was written by Borney Bergantine in 1933. Bergantine was orchestra leader of “The Happiness Boys“, a Kansas City band of the 1930s.  My Happiness was played by “The Happiness Boys” wherever they performed. It was several years before the song itself, which Bergantine wrote about 1931, was recorded on an independent label.

Connie Francis (born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; December 12, 1937) is an American pop singer, actress, and top-charting female vocalist of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She is estimated to have sold more than 100 million records worldwide. She was the first woman in history to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, just one of her other 53 career hits.
Francis was born to an Italian-American family in Newark, New Jersey. In her autobiography Who’s Sorry Now? published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants, and other neighbourhood festivities from the age of four as a singer and accordion player. During rehearsals for her appearance on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in December 1950, Francis was advised by Godfrey to change her stage name to Connie Francis for easier pronunciation. Godfrey also told her to drop the accordion—advice she gladly followed, as she had begun to hate the large and heavy instrument.

After some early commercial failures and being informed by MGM Records that her contract would not be renewed, Francis considered a career in medicine. At what was to have been her final recording session for MGM on October 2, 1957, with Joe Lipman and his orchestra, she recorded a cover version of the 1923 song Who’s Sorry Now?. Francis has said that she recorded it at the insistence of her father, who was convinced it stood a chance of becoming a hit because it was a song adults already knew and that teenagers would dance to if it had a contemporary arrangement. Francis did not like the song and argued about it with her father heatedly. The single seemed to go unnoticed like all previous releases, just as Francis had predicted, but on January 1, 1958, it debuted on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

Francis watched the show and wrote in her diary:

I heard Dick Clark mention something about a new girl singer. So, what else is new? Another girl singer. There are ninety-five million females in the country, and I’ll bet ninety-five percent of them sing. “There’s no doubt about it”, predicted Mr. Clark. “She’s is headed straight for the number one spot”. I began feeling sorry for myself and a bit envious, too. Good luck to her, I thought. And then Mr. Clark just happened to play a song called “Who’s sorry now” – MY “Who’s Sorry Now”! Well, the feeling was cosmic – just cosmic! Right there in my living-room, it became Mardi Gras-time and New Year’s Eve at the turn of the century!

And on February 15 of that same year, Francis performed it on the first episode of The Saturday Night Beechnut Show, also hosted by Clark. By mid-year, over a million copies had been sold, and Francis was suddenly launched into worldwide stardom.

Evening shadows make me blue
When each weary day is through
How I long to be with you
My happiness

Every day I reminisce
Dreaming of your tender kiss
Always thinking how I miss
My happiness

A million years it seems
Have gone by since we shared our dreams
But I’ll hold you again
There’ll be no blue memories then

Whether skies are gray or blue
Any place on earth will do
Just as long as I’m with you
My happiness

Whether skies are gray or blue
Any place on earth will do
Just as long as I’m with you
My happiness

References:
1. My Happiness (1948 song) – Wikipedia
2. Connie Francis – Wikipedia