At the height of her career in the late 1950s and early 60s, Connie Francis, who has died aged 87, occupied a unique slot in the American record industry as she amassed sales that comfortably outstripped most of her male contemporaries. She scored her first big hit with Who’s Sorry Now? in 1957, and by 1967 had amassed 35 Top 40 hits in the US and sold 35 million records worldwide.
She was blessed with a voice that could handle everything from amusing novelties such as Stupid Cupid (1958) or Pretty Little Baby (1962) to intimate ballads, tales of heartbreak and even full-blown epics such as the flamenco-flavoured Malagueña (1960).
She was also versatile enough to embrace the Nashville sound, and her performances of songs such as When the Boy in Your Arms (1963) or Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You (1962) carry echoes of country artists such as Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn.
Having grown up in an Italian-Jewish neighbourhood in New Jersey, she was fluent in Italian and Yiddish and familiar with Hebrew, and recorded several albums of Italian songs as well as a disc of Jewish favourites and other recordings in German, Italian and Spanish. Her theme song for the 1960 film Where the Boys Are was recorded in six languages, while Die Liebe Ist ein Seltsames Spiel, her German translation of her 1960 US chart-topper Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool, sailed to the top of the West German chart.
Mama, her version of Cesare Andrea Bixio’s evergreen Italian classic Mamma – covered by Beniamino Gigli, Luciano Pavarotti and many more – gave her a deliciously lachrymose Top 10 hit in 1960. Francis’s success with that song helped her to broaden her audience from teenagers to the more sophisticated adult audiences in upmarket nightclubs in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe. Elvis Presley came to see her perform at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas not long after his mother had died, and when she sang Mama he burst into tears and had to leave the theatre.
She was born Concetta Franconero in the Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey, to George and Ida (nee Ferrari-di Vito). Her father was the son of Italian immigrants and worked as a docker and roofer. He was also a keen musician, and he gave his daughter an accordion when she was three.
Her parents encouraged her musical progress, and she made her performing debut at four, singing Anchors Aweigh at the Olympic Park in Irvington, New Jersey, to her own accordion accompaniment. She appeared regularly on the TV show Startime, with the show’s producer, George Scheck, acting as her manager, and featured in Marie Moser’s Starlets, Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. It was Godfrey, struggling to pronounce her surname, who suggested she change it to Francis.
Scheck secured her a recording contract with MGM in 1955, and she was employed to overdub her singing voice for film actresses, including for Tuesday Weld in the movie Rock, Rock, Rock! (1956) and for Jayne Mansfield in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958). However, her efforts under her own name were initially unsuccessful, and she recorded 10 singles for MGM that all flopped.
She had been contemplating giving up music in favour of a pre-med scholarship at New York University when opportunity knocked with her 11th release, Who’s Sorry Now?, a song dating back to 1923. She disliked it and recorded it only as a favour to her father, who took a robust guiding interest in his daughter’s career. However, his instincts proved correct. Boosted by exposure on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV programme, it shot into the US Top 10 and sold a million copies. It also topped the British charts.
That lit the fuse on a run of hits which would see her scoring nearly 30 Top 40 successes on both sides of the Atlantic over the next six years, including Stupid Cupid (which reached No 4 in the US and No 1 in the UK), My Happiness (1958), Lipstick on Your Collar (1959), Among My Souvenirs (1961) and Mama.
She notched up her first US chart-topper with Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool, and repeated the feat with My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own (both 1960) and Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You (1962). In addition, Stupid Cupid marked the start of her long and fruitful collaboration with the songwriters Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, based in New York’s songwriting mecca, the Brill Building. Also working there was Bobby Darin, who wrote several songs with Francis in the course of the pair becoming lovers. However, they split up after Francis’s father threatened Darin with a shotgun.
The latter part of Francis’s career was marred by a succession of tragedies. In 1974, after she had performed at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, she was raped at knife-point at the hotel where she was staying. She won a $2.5m award in court (reduced in a later settlement) after suing the hotel for failing to offer adequate security, but the event triggered years of depression during which she rarely left her New Jersey home. In 1981 her brother George, an attorney who had testified against organised crime, was murdered by the Mafia. Though Connie tried to resume her recording and touring career, she was diagnosed with manic depression, and in 1984 she attempted suicide.
She eventually made a comeback in the 90s, appearing in Las Vegas and making several recordings, including the album With Love to Buddy (1996), a tribute to Buddy Holly. In 2018 she retired to her new home in Florida. She wrote two autobiographies, the New York Times bestseller Who’s Sorry Now? (1984) and Among My Souvenirs (2017).
Married and divorced four times between 1964 and 1985, Francis was in a relationship with the psychologist Tony Ferretti from 2003 until his death in 2022. She adopted a baby son, Joey, during her third marriage.
• Connie Francis (Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero), singer and songwriter, born 12 December 1937; died 16 July 2025
