Buddy Clark

Buddy Clark

Buddy Clark (July 26, 1911 - October 1, 1949) was a popular singer in the 1930s and 1940s.

Clark was born Samuel Goldberg to Jewish parents in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He made his Big Band singing debut in 1934 with Benny Goodman on the Let's Dance radio program. In 1936 he started to perform on the show, Your Hit Parade, and lasted until 1938. In the mid-1930s he signed with Vocalion Records, having a top-20 hit with "Spring Is Here". He did not have another hit until the late 1940s, but continued recording, appearing in movies, and dubbing other actors' voices.

In 1946 he signed with Columbia Records and scored his biggest hit with the song "Linda" recorded in November of that year, but hitting its peak in the following spring. Linda was written especially for the six-year-old daughter of a show business lawyer named Lee Eastman, whose client, song-writer Jack Lawrence, wrote the song at Lee’s request. Upon reaching adulthood and becoming famous as a photographer, Linda was, for a while, something of a musician, later becoming a prominent spokeswoman for vegetarianism and animal rights, and broke a generation of teenage girls' hearts when she married Beatle Paul McCartney.

1947 also saw hits for Clark with such titles as "How Are Things in Glocca Mora" (from the musical Finian's Rainbow), which made the Top Ten, "Peg O' My Heart", "An Apple Blossom Wedding", and "I'll Dance at Your Wedding". The following year he had another major hit with "Love Somebody" (a duet with Doris Day, selling a million and reaching #1 on the charts) and nine more chart hits, and extended his success into 1949 with a number of hits, both solo and duetting with Day and Dinah Shore. A month after his death, his recording of "A Dreamer's Holiday" hit the charts.

On October 1, 1949, just as the 38 year old was reaching new heights of popularity, Clark and five other friends rented a small plane to attend a Stanford vs. Michigan college football game. On the way back to Los Angelesafter the game, the plane ran out of fuel, lost altitude and crashed on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Clark didn't survive the crash.

Hit songs

• "An Apple Blossom Wedding" (1947)
• "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (1949) (Duet with Dinah Shore)
• "Ballerina" (1948)
• "Confess" (1948) (Duet with Doris Day, flip side of "Love Somebody", Columbia 38174; also a hit for Patti Page)
• "Don't You Love Me Anymore" (1947)
• "A Dreamer's Holiday" (1949) (bigger hit for Perry Como)
• "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" (1947) (bigger hit for Dick Haymes)
• "I'll Dance at Your Wedding" (1947) (flip side of "These Things Money Can't Buy")
• "I Love You So Much It Hurts" (1949)
• "It's a Big Wide Wonderful World" (1949)
• "Linda" (1947)
• "Love Somebody" (1948) (Duet with Doris Day)
• "Matinee" (1948)
• "May I Have the Next Romance?" (1936)
• "My Darling, My Darling" (1948) (Duet with Doris Day)
• "Now Is the Hour" (1948) (bigger hit for both Bing Crosby and Gracie Fields)
• "Peg O' My Heart" (1947) (bigger hit for Jerry Murad and the Harmonicats)
• "Powder Your Face with Sunshine" (1949) (Duet with Doris Day)
• "The Rhythm of the Rhumba" (Duet with Joe Host and the Lud Gluskin orchestra) (1936)
• "Serenade" (1948)
• "She Shall Have Music" (1936)
• "Spring Is Here" (1938)
• "Take My Heart" (1936) (flip side of "These Foolish Things")
• "These Foolish Things" (1936)
• "These Things Money Can't Buy" (1947) (flip side of "I'll Dance at Your Wedding")
• "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" (1948)
• "Until Today" (1936)
• "Where the Apple Blossoms Fall" (1948)
• "You Are Never Away" (1948)

External links

• Buddy Clark biography on Yahoo! site
• Buddy Clark biography by Frank Dee
• Buddy Clark biography on the Interlude Era site