Musicians

Sue Raney

As a fifteen-year-old singer-entertainer, Sue Raney burst into the radio scene in 1956 to become a regular on the Jack Carson Show. Carson was a popular Warner Brothers actor, and his radio show needed a teenage singer. As a result of numerous visits to Los Angeles with her mother, Mildred, for auditions, the young singer had impressed Frankie Laine, who, one day, was playing golf with A & R man, Mitch Miller, and actor Carson. Laine’s recommendation got her the job with Carson.

Says Raney, “Hy Averback was the announcer. He was the guy who said, ‘And now, from Hollywood, the Jack Carson Show!’ I was the young girl singer that Jack was able to talk to about being a teenager and all that stuff. That was my very first job (in Los Angeles). So we moved out there from Albuquerque, and I went to Hollywood Professional School.”

She soon became the sweet-voiced favorite of Nelson Riddle, Michel Legrand, Med Flory, Alan Broadbent and scores of other musicians with whom she worked over the years.

Born in McPherson, Kansas, some 60 miles north of Wichita, Raney is one of four children. When she was five, the family moved to Wichita and shortly thereafter, to Albuquerque, where she lived until the moved to Hollywood. The family soon followed her west and continued to live in the Los Angeles area.

For Raney, singing began early. She recalls, “My mom heard me singing in the basement with my sister, Carole. We were playing with dolls. Actually, my mom was waiting for one of us to sing, I think because she used to sing with my uncle’s band. She worked around Nebraska. So that was the beginning of that. She took me to a teacher, and I actually started working when I was a kid. I had my own TV show when I was fourteen.” In true show business fashion, her mother changed her daughter’s name as a performer to Sue Rae. Later, because it sounded “too country,” for the Carson radio show, Sue chose Raney for the last name.

Subsequently, Raney worked on the Ray Anthony Plymouth Hour TV show, as well as with the Anthony band at the Palladium. When she was at rehearsal, an A & R man from Capitol Records came to listen to her. She said, “Those were the days, mind you, that you could get somebody to come out and listen to you. This is why my hear breaks for people that are trying to be heard and seen now. We might have gotten signed and we might not, but this man cam over to rehearsal, listened to me and signed me to Capitol. I was just 17 years old.” Given her then budding popularity, her first record was top-drawer. She sang with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra on a record entitled, “When Your Lover Has Gone,” which presently is in process of being re-released.

She did two more albums for Capitol. One was Songs for a Raney Day with the Billy May Orchestra, and All by Myself, conducted and arranged by Ralph Carmichael, who worked extensively with Nat “King” Cole. She joined him again on the Philips label in a recording entitled Happiness Is a Warm Sue Raney. These other Capitol albums also are being re-released.

“I wish I could do it over again,” she stated. “Nelson Riddle was the conductor, and it was a record full of wonderful standards.”

She had just finished and was waiting for the release of her third album when, in 1964, she was struck by a car at Selma and Cahuenga in Hollywood. It was a painful and difficult time for her, but blessed with youth and good health, she healed well. While still on crutches, she appeared on the Johnny Carson TV show when it visited in Burbank. It was her second appearance with Carson, having been on his show in 1962 while doing other gigs in New York.

She was in demand on many of the popular TV shows of the time: Bob Hope, Joey Bishop, Mike Douglas, Red Skelton and Dean Martin.

In 1983, she was nominated by the Grammys as best jazz vocalist for her recording of Johnny Mandel songs, which was the same year that The L.A. Voices, with whom she sang, was nominated in the jazz group category. In 1984 and 1986, she again received Grammy nominations for Ridin’ High and Flight of Fancy. In 1996, the L.A. Jazz Society saluted her for her contributions, as a jazz vocalist, to the American Art Form, Jazz. Also, she’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame for her recording of Dave Frishbert’s “Dodger Blue” and “Van Lingle Mungo.” --L.A. Jazz Scene, July, 2002, Bob Agnew

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