June Christy—”Fine Fine Deal”

In the spring of 1938, Bill Oetzel’s Society Dance Band, playing in Decatur, Illinois, found themselves without a girl vocalist. Among the eager aspirants requesting auditions was a thirteen-year-old hopeful, Shirley Luster, who also had childhood dreams of movie stardom. The boys in the band exchanged smiles and picked up their instruments to accompany this 5-foot-2 “baby of song.” Thirty-two bars later, Shirley was hired, and the fresh and sweet singer who was one day to become known to us as June Christy was on her way.

The orchestra of Stan Kenton (1911-1979) with June Christy (1925-1990) singing the bandleader’s composition “Fine Fine Deal,” recorded in Hollywood. Next to vocalist June Christie, Kenton’s 1947 band included: 5 trumpets: Buddy Childers, Ray Wetzel, Chico Alvarez, Al Porcino and Ken Hanna; 5 trombones: Eddie Bert, Harry Betts, Milt Bernhart, Harry Forbes and Bart Varsalona; and 5 saxophones: George Weidler and Art Pepper-alto; Bob Cooper and Warner Weidler-tenor; and Bob Gioga-bariton. The band was completed by a four-piece rhythm section with Stan Kenton-piano, Laurindo Almeida-guitar, Eddie Safranski-bass, and Shelly Manne-drums.

The story of Springfield (IL)-born Shirley Luster is all the more remarkable not only because there was complete absence of any musical or theatrical family background but because music was all but ignored in the home.

In Decatur, Illinois, where she grew up, Shirley is remembered by fellow graduates at the Roosevelt Junior High School as being a dancer before becoming a singer. She obviously loved anything related to music “She bounced like a ball when the music came on. She loved music. It was in her; that’s all there was to it.”

Shirley, whose mum was reluctant at first to let her daughter sing with ten male musicians, remained with Oetzel’s band for several years, singing for local school dances and sock hops, and her love for music just grew. “They were a real fine group of fellows,” she later recalled, “and though we leaned to the sweet side of music when playing engagements, in our free time they introduced me to the recordings of the classics as well as of the great jazz artists of the day. I’ve always been very grateful to them.”

The time came when Shirley Luster decided to broaden her scope, to see if she could cut it with a jazz band. She also wanted tot travel with a band. And after graduating from high school, she moved to Chicago, where she sang with society bands. Finding that her tastes leaned to jazz, Shirley, who by now had changed her name to Sharon Lesley, joined a band led by bass saxophonist Boyd Raeburn. When the Raeburn's band moved to New York, Shirley, stricken with scarlet fever, was unable to accompany them and had to stay behind.

When Shirley had recovered she worked with Benny Strong and the Nicky Bliss combination. For some time now, Shirley’s favorite orchestra and vocalist had been Stan Kenton and Anita O’Day, then the lead singer for the Kenton band, and Shirley lost no opportunity to hear them perform in Chicago. When she learned that Anita was leaving the Kenton crew to go out on her own, Shirley sought an audition with Stan which resulted in a very happy association for them both.

Anita O’Day later recalled hearing June Christy at a Chicago club called the Three Deuces and recommending her to Stan Kenton as her replacement. Kenton helped Shirley to find her own sound, which perfectly suited the cool and restrained jazz voicings that were to come in the late 1940s.

It was Stan Kenton who first introduced Shirley Luster to the public as June Christy -- the name was his idea -- and working with this great aggregation, June quickly developed the style which has won admirers and fans for her throughout the world.

“Stan and I would sit at the piano and we would find a comfortable key for me to sing a certain tune in,“ she said in an interview looking back on the days when she joined the band as an 18 year old girl. “And then he would raise it. At least a tone, where it would be almost uncomfortable for me to sing with just piano. But I learned, after some time, that he knew what he was doing.”

The volume of the large Kenton orchestra was one of the reasons that Stan worked that way with June Christy. By raising the keys for her to sing in, June explained, “he enabled me, when I did hear that tremendous volume behind me, to have the strength to sing up to it, and even sometimes over it.”

Within a week June Christy made her first recording with the Kenton orchestra for Capitol Records. It was a noisy novelty called “Tampico.” It was released in May 1945 and sold a million copies and June’s career was made.

For four times between 1946 and 1950, June Christy was voted top place as favorite band vocalist in the polls conducted by Downbeat magazine.

Among the Kenton band’s most famous lead singers June Christy worked with the band the longest, six years. When Stan Kenton disbanded his orchestra in 1949 June was earning $300 as week. When Kenton reformed his unit for a nationwide tour in early 1950 June Christy was back for a cool $1000 a week, making her the highest paid band vocalist in the world. She lasted with the band through several complete changes of lineup, finally leaving in 1951, although she and the band reunited on occasion afterward.

As a solo artist June Christy, who meanwhile had married Kenton’s tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper for life, became very established as a star in her own right, recording more than 20 Capitol albums during the 1950s and 1960s, including a solo album accompanied only by Stan Kenton on the piano.

“Her breathy, husky sound and narrow vibrato,” the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz noted, “were ideally suited to the cool jazz of the 1950s.”

When June once was asked how does she like singing, she replied: “That’s all I want to do.” In order to continue her career as a songstress, June Christy had turned down numerous motion picture offers because “I made three movies with Stan and they were enough to cure any childhood dream I had.”

In the late 1950's, June Christy toured once again with Stan Kenton’s orchestra and in 1972 she reunited for the final time with the Kenton band at the Newport Jazz Festival in New York City.