[ PHOTO GALLERY OF JUNE VALLI'S CAREER ]

JUNE VALLI

June Valli, the stage name of petite, heart-faced June Foglia, was born June 30, 1928, on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, New York. Her Italian-speaking parents were musically inclined and it wasn't long before June began singing along. Saxophonist and band conductor James Merchant, married to June from 1966 until her passing, talked about June and her career in a phone interview in February 2006:

June could really sing because her dad, who worked as a plasterer during the day, was a part-time street singer from Naples, Italy. He taught her to sing and they listened to opera together all the time. June could hit double high Cs and go way down below an F and still be clear; she could even sing rock--we did "Proud Mary" in her act later--she had a voice that could sing anything and sound good.

This shy girl from the Bronx was discovered quite by accident. In late 1950, June's mother couldn't attend a friend's wedding, so June went to represent the family. The big Italian wedding was held on the second floor of a rented hall on Fordham Road, just off Arthur Avenue. After the ceremony, someone invited June up to the microphone. Although she was terrified, never having sung in public before, June managed to get through a couple choruses of the one song she knew well enough, "Stormy Weather." Well, that "Stormy Weather" brought a lightning strike. Sid Gilbert, uncle of comedian Abe Burrows, was at the same wedding and was so impressed with June's singing he arranged an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts T.V. show, a program dedicated to discovering talent. June admitted in later interviews that she was flustered by the offer:

I was frightened and nervous. And I felt too embarrassed to refuse. I couldn't turn him down after he went to all that trouble. I just didn't know what to do.

On January 15, 1951, June appeared before the cameras of Arthur Godfrey's show, again singing "Stormy Weather." Harry Salter, one of radio and television's important musical directors, tuned in to the show that night in time to hear June. When the program ended, Salter and his wife drove into Brooklyn and met with June and her parents. They invited her to audition as a possible replacement for Kay Armen, who was leaving Stop the Music, a show for which Salter was musical director. June's husband Jimmy recalls:

June was big then, like 160 lbs, and she had been working as a bookkeeper, making I think $40 a week. And so she goes on Godfrey, and back then, they used to vote by applauding. Well, you were way ahead of the rest if you lived in New York. And she was from New York, so she had a leg up. And she won, this chubby kid. And if you win, you got a week on the Godfrey show, the radio show.

June arrived for her Stop the Music audition looking as frightened as a little bird. However, she sang with such a haunting quality that Salter gave her the job, even though her repertoire consisted of about four choruses of some standard tunes.

Salter also took the unbelieving girl under his wing and began guiding her career. June's professional debut on Stop the Music was greeted with dozens of phone calls backstage calling for her to perform on other TV shows and at nightclub dates. June went from being a $40-per-week bookkeeper to making $250 for a night's work. She was booked for three weeks at Monte Proser's La Vie En Rose nightclub and was a smashing success. A month later, she was featured on the Broadway to Hollywood T.V. show. In November, she appeared on Tallulah Bankhead's The Big Show, alongside performers Sophie Tucker, Morton Downey and Ann Sheridan. Jimmy Merchant recalls:

Harry Salter was like an impresario, he liked to develop people. So one night he goes up to the Bronx and talks to June's parents, but they're ... afraid. They'd lived on one street their whole lives and everyone there spoke Italian, not English. But Harry convinced them, he said, your daughter has a good voice, I'd like to help her.

And he was legitimate, he took her to live with him and his wife down in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue. They got rid of her Bronx accent, showed her how to act upper class, which forks to use, what clothes to wear, and they put her on a diet. It was almost like a finishing school. Harry had an "in" every place, so he got June a show here, a show there, Stop the Music, Name That Tune and then Your Hit Parade.

In July 1951, Salter made an audition record with June and his own orchestra and submitted it to two recording companies. Both offered her exclusive contracts; June signed with RCA Victor and immediately began recording as June Valli. Jimmy explains how June got her stage name:

In those days, you needed a name that sounded show business. So she couldn't be June Foglia. First she tried June Alice, but that was no good. She was told, you got to get a nice name that flows. Well, she always liked animals and the outdoors, so she suggested "Valley." Like a valley, with greenery and animals. And they said to her, well, let's make it Italian - so they spelled it "Valli."

One of June Valli's first records for RCA was "Always Always" (RCA 4298) and then in early 1952, Valli recorded a cover of Johnny Ray's "Cry" (RCA 4388). It was that year Valli had her first charted hit with "Strange Sensation" (RCA 4759), which reached the Top 25 Best Seller list during the summer. "Mighty Lonesome Feeling"(RCA 4900) was a lackluster follow-up, but in late 1952 "A Shoulder To Weep On" (RCA 5017) also made the Top 25 Best Sellers.

In addition to recording, June continued making guest appearances on television shows like Cavalcade of Stars, The Arthur Murray Show, The Ezio Pinza Show, Songs for Sale and The Saturday Night Dance Party. Then came her biggest break, a position with the long-running Your Hit Parade, with its cast of Snooky Lanson, Russell Arms, Dorothy Collins and the orchestra of Raymond Scott.

June sang with the Lucky Strike-sponsored show from 1952 to 1953, but within a year's time left and was replaced by Gisele MacKenzie. It is speculated that co-star Dorothy Collins, who had considerable clout on the show (being married to Raymond Scott, orchestra leader and show co-producer), felt threatened by June's popularity so that Valli was soon given poor sets and lighting, and all the novelty songs to sing. Even so, NBC continued to be inundated with fan mail according to Jimmy:

June had the biggest voice on the show and that didn't set well with Dorothy. All of a sudden, they're letting her sing less and less. They gave her the worst songs, the worst costumes, everything. And all this fan mail was still coming in, from New Yorkers, saying "Let her sing more songs" -- she was getting more mail than the rest of the cast.

June finally quit the program and had a "lucky strike" of her own--a few weeks later, "Crying in the Chapel," her newest RCA release, shot into the Top 10.

Earlier in 1953, June's recordings "Congratulations To Someone" (RCA 5177) and "Many Are The Times" (RCA 5280), although fine records, were poor sellers. Valli returned to the studio with the Joe Reisman orchestra and a song first recorded by country singer Darrell Glenn and covered by The Orioles in the R&B field.

That song was "Crying In The Chapel" (RCA 5368) and June's dramatic treatment of the tune was an immediate hit, topping at #4 on the Best Seller chart during the summer of 1953 and remaining on the charts for more than four months (the song would again chart in 1965 when recorded by Elvis Presley). The flip was a bouncy tune called "Love Every Moment You Live." "Crying," easily the biggest hit June ever had, eventually sold more than two million copies, but Jimmy says recording it was a fluke:

June was doing her session and they were almost done but needed another song. Well, this guy comes in and says, "I got a song this hillbilly recorded down in Nashville. It's called 'Crying in the Chapel,' you ought to look at it." So they play it for June and ask, "How do you like it?" And June says, "It sounds okay." You know, nice, but no big deal. So they had Joe Reisman, a great arranger, write an arrangement real fast and she recorded it and that became the hit. It wasn't supposed to be anything, it was an afterthought. Shows you really never know with these things.

The follow up to "Crying in the Chapel" was "Don't Forget To Write" RCA (5488), which charted briefly in the Top 25 late in the year.

June Valli was now in demand for appearances everywhere. In fall 1953, June began a four-month tour across the United States and Canada. Audiences in Chicago, Reno, Washington, Montreal and Toronto hailed the pretty entertainer's arrival. In September, June appeared with the Stan Kenton Orchestra on four National Guard radio shows from the NBC studios in New York City, filling in for June Christy. She also did a patriotic turn, appearing on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town T.V. show on May 22, 1955, which that day was broadcast from the deck of the USS Wisconsin.

1954 began with the release of "Old Shoes And A Bag Of Rice" (RCA 5653) which was not a big seller, but "I Understand" (RCA 5740), recorded with the Hugo Winterhalter Orchestra, was a solid seller through the spring of 1954; it reached the national Top 10 and had a three month stay on the charts. Late in the year, Valli recorded with RCA's other big pop orchestra leader, Henri Rene, on "Tell Me, Tell Me" (RCA 5837). "Tell Me" was a decent seller, charting in the Top 20. "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong" (RCA 5924) in the fall of 1954 was not a fast mover, but June's cover of "Unchained Melody" (RCA 6078) sold very well in early 1955.

Through 1956, her recordings for RCA Victor were mostly light sellers swamped by the rock 'n roll tide. Among these were "While There's Time" (RCA 6402), "Shangri-La" (RCA 6464), "I've Got Something In My Eye" (RCA 6552), "Beauty Isn't Everything" (RCA 6662), "Will You Love Me Still" (RCA 6852), and "Baby Come Home" (RCA 7032). Lack of a manager, claims Jimmy, was a problem for June's career:

June didn't get the best material because she never had a manager to fight for her and get her the good songs. And she didn't have a manager because nobody could convince her parents they weren't out to steal her money. Her folks just didn't speak English so good and didn't trust anyone who wasn't selling provolone up on Arthur Avenue. But you cannot be in this business without a manager; that's like throwing a kitten into a pool of piranhas.

Anyway, the A&R guy that RCA gave her owned his own publishing company. He started giving June all the songs he and his friends were writing, songs that were duds, so he could get a piece of the publishing. And without a manager, what is she gonna do? Sometimes, June could be too nice; if someone asked her to go sing in Beijing for $48, she'd say "okay."

In the summer of 1957, Ms. Valli began a long association with United Fruit Company as the singing voice for Chiquita Banana ads and she co-hosted the Andy Williams & June Valli Show, a television replacement show. By 1958, June Valli moved to Mercury Records and made a return to the charts in Spring of 1960 with "Apple Green" (Mercury 71588), a Top 30 seller.

In December 1958, June Valli appeared along with Fats Domino on teen America's center stage, the Dick Clark Saturday Night show. She made a return appearance (co-guesting with Dion & The Belmonts) in 1960 to support "Apple Green." In the early 60s, Valli recorded three LPs: "Boy Meets Girl" with Mel Torme; "June Valli Today" for Audio Fidelity; and the "Do It Yourself Wedding Album" with violinist Florian Zabach for Mercury. Valli continued to perform in concerts throughout the country and the world and continued work in commercials.

June Valli met Jimmy, her second husband, in 1966 and they remained fast in love for 27 years. She had previously married Howard Miller, a Chicago disc jockey known as "the voice of the Chicago Bears," but that marriage was short-lived. Jimmy remembers meeting June for the first time:

I met June in Pittsburgh, where I played in a relief band at a big nightclub; just a quartet that played between sets, but we thought we were hot stuff, with our big collars like Dean Martin. Well, June came to work at this club.

She was back in the coffee shop one night and she heard us playing and asked, "Who's playing that saxophone, that guy's great." And the waitress says, "Oh, that's Jimmy Merchant." It was our last set, right before quitting time, so there weren't many folks left. I look out to the back of this big place, it held about 2,000 people, and I see her standing in the doorway light. And I wondered who she was and why she was listening to us.

Well she came up and said, "I was listening to you, you're very good, you should go to New York." And I said, "Well, I got a job here in Pittsburgh, I'm not going any place." But we sat down and we had coffee a couple times and I got to know her, and she was just as nice and sweet in person as she was on stage, which is unusual in this business.

Anyway, soon she says, "Well, I'm going back to New York." And I say, "Yeah? Well ... you should call me sometimes," you know, kind of kidding. And she says, "Okay, where?" I'm game--I say, "How about that phone booth over there, I'm off at this time and that time each night."

And one damn night I'm sitting there and the waitress says "There's a call for you, Jimmy" and I say "Where?" She points over at the payphone; and it was June.

June and her new husband moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey from New York City in 1967 to escape the city bustle. He remembers her soft nature and how she used to chat with everybody, right down to the man who shined shoes at The Tonight Show.

Who talks to the shoe shine guy? But she did, she made everyone feel important. Peter LaSalle, who had been a producer on Godfrey's radio show, became a producer on The Tonight Show. You see, before he moved to California, Johnny Carson used to live a couple blocks from us. So, any time we had a convention in Reno or San Francisco, we'd call and say "Pete, we're coming out that way and if you've got a spot available ..." And he'd always say "Let me work on it." And most of the time, he'd put June on the show. And she was good, so she got invited back, that's how Johnny worked.

The nostalgia boom in the 1980s kept June busy at big band concerts and company conventions for Ford and General Motors, where she was a popular draw. In 1988, June even appeared at a pre-Super Bowl party held by then-NFL Commissioner Pete Roselle.

She worked the conventions after getting a couple of breaks and cruise ships before conventions, especially the Royal Caribbean. We always went first class on her shows, got Torry Zito and Nick Perrito as arrangers, would spend $4,000 on a gown from Larry Martino, because that kind of class matched her voice. And June got jobs from being nice, the way she always was to people, even people most stars wouldn't pay attention to.

Here's a good example. When June was a fairly big name, she starred at the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami. Well, one of the bellhops was named Ed Stephen. While she was there, she was very nice to Ed, courteous and all, and gave him a good tip as she left. That lowly bellhop became the CEO of the Royal Caribbean line. Any time we wanted work, we could call Ed; he remembered how kind June was to him.

Sadly, in late 1991, June was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At first, treatment seemed positive and June began making plans to perform again. But it was not to be, the cancer returned.

Oh, when June got sick, she taught me to cook and bake. She couldn't get out of bed and cook. But if you're Italian, you know, you have to have macaroni, at least on Sunday. So I'd go in the bedroom and she'd tell me "Get the tomatoes, put the garlic in, add the oil" and I'd go back to the kitchen and do what she said. Back and forth, bedroom, kitchen and back.

June Valli passed away at her home in Fort Lee on March 12, 1993. 64 years old, June was survived by her husband. Jimmy says June kept singing until nearly the end:

She enjoyed working. To her it wasn't anything glamorous, it was just a job. She liked home life even better and after a show always wanted to take the first plane home. You know what she liked best? When she was off, she liked to go into our backyard and plant flowers. And she liked the Yankees, being from the Bronx.

-- Rex Strother (2006)

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