Who’s Sorry Now · Connie Francis · 1958

  Play the song.

I think Connie Francis was the greatest female vocalist from the late fifties through the mid sixties. (True: I was a young boy then, and in love with her voice.) But it wasn’t just my opinion, it was much of America’s (and the world’s) too.

Of course, it wasn’t that way from the beginning. She had had a whole string of flops. Her first ten singles had failed to make Billboard’s chart, and her next recording session was going to be her last for MGM.

At that last four-hour session she reluctantly squeezed in one last song, and did it in about 15 minutes.

MGM released the song, and it lingered for three-and-a-half months without any sign of becoming a hit. It was “Who’s Sorry Now.”

“It was going nowhere,” Connie recalls. “And then it was January 1st of 1958, and about four o’clock in the afternoon we were all seated down to one of those monstrous Italian meals with all the family there. I got up and like 8.5 million other American teenagers, I turned my black-and-white TV set to ‘American Bandstand.’ And I heard Dick Clark mention something about a new girl singer and that she was going right to the top and I said, ‘well, good luck to her’–sour grapes–and then all of a sudden he played ‘Who’s Sorry Now.’” Source: The Billboard Book of #1 Hits

It became Connie’s first chart record, peaking at number four in America, and going all the way to number one in Britain.

Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool   After that she had a whole string of hits. In 1960, she had two number one hit singles in America. The first was “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool“.   My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own   Her second number one single—peaking just a few months later—was “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own“. Connie Francis CDs Connie Francis items at DeeJay’s on eBay

A few months later, Connie made her film debut in MGM’s spring break movie Where The Boys Are. She found it difficult to convince Hollywood film executives that two New York songwriters, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield (Greenfield, by-the-way, had been a co-writer, along with Jerry Keller for both of her 1960 chart toppers) should write the title song. She called Howard Greenfield anyway, and told them they had four days to come up with a suitable tune. He said it was impossible, but four days later he and Neil had written two songs called “Where The Boys Are“. One they loved and one they hated.

Producer Joe Pasternak picked the latter and it went to number four on the Hot 100.

  Where The Boys Are