THE record industry thrives on facts and figures. Its vital statistics are: collective worldwide sales, golden discs, chart-toppers and hit-parade entries. The aspiration of many a recording act is to be No. 1 in any of the league tables in these categories; the main divisions of which are top male singer, female singer and group. To lead any division is a remarkable achievement; two firsts is extraordinary; three triumphs is staggering in its rarity; and to be champion in all four is to be a record industry phenomenon. Such a phenomenon is Connie Francis, whose success has been achieved with recordings in the fields of rock and roll, Country music, folk, romance, dynamic ballads and film favourites. This collection reflects the myriad of styles that brought about such unparalleled distinction.

Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born in Newark, New Jersey on 12th December, 1938. Her musical talent began to show itself when she was just three years old and learned to play an accordion her roofing contractor father had bought her. The instrument was nearly as big as Connie herself, but she mastered its intricacies and regularly played and sang at family parties, church benefits and social events.

At the age of ten, her appearances had extended to regular spots on a local New Jersey television show and a year later to a networked TV appearance on the 'Arthur Godfrey Christmas Talent Scouts' programme. It was Godfrey who suggested she change her surname to Francis; Concetta became Connie and in 1950, when 12, Connie Francis was signed for the popular NBC Television variety show 'Junior Star Time,' in which she appeared every week for four years.

The show's presenter, George Scheck, took Connie under his wing and at 16 she was signed to a recording contract by MGM. While recording for this label and keeping to her tight television schedule, Connie continued her high-school studies, gaining a four-year scholarship to New York University. She became a member of the National Honor Society, undertook an intensive course in Psychology, became editor of her high-school newspaper and won the New Jersey State Typing Championship!

Her first ten records did little to establish her, despite the added boost of 'ghosting' the voices of leading ladies Freda Holloway and Tuesday Weld in the rock and roll film successes 'Jamboree' and 'Rock, Rock, Rock!' and it was time for Connie to decide between a musical career or the furtherance of her studies.

At her father's suggestion, she took a song twice her age, giving it a touch of Country with a hint of rock and roll, thereby aiming it at more than one market. The result was the celebrated Who's Sorry Now? which earned Connie her first gold disc and sold over five million copies.

In the two years from 1958 to 1960, she set up an unequalled run of chart successes, making her the ONLY recording artist ever to obtain ten gold discs for ten individual titles in a 24-month period. Connie sang pleasantly, and in tune, but despite the vast record sales, could lay no claims to being a GREAT singer. She was THE American girl next door, and her hits reflected the college-campus style of music prevalent in the days between the end of the big rock era and the Beatles sound.

During this same period Connie became a much bigger record star in Britain than in her homeland and regularly visited the UK for television and personal appearances. During one of these visits she recorded a series of ethnic albums which were to change the pattern of her future releases.

One of them was the multi-million seller Italian Favourites, from which a single, Mama was extracted. Mama went gold immediately on release but, more importantly for Connie, it signalled total acceptance by 'the supper club' brigade.

The compilations of Italian, Jewish and Spanish favourites were lushly scored and heavy with sentiment, but their success did not meet with the approval of Connie's younger fans who wanted more bouncy material and resented the long series of LPs with nary a rock track among them.

As if sensing this, Connie adopted a further new vocal approach, fusing the style of her earlier singles with that of her albums. This produced a form of mid-tempo pop Country incorporating the Francis 'sob-in-the-throat', which was to delight both sets of audiences. For the first time in her career, too, she was the girl others sought to imitate and was having a direct effect on the choice of material and presentation by her counterparts like Brenda Lee (I'm Sorry and All Alone Am I) and Alma Cogan (O Dio Mio and The Train Of Love).

The reception given to Everybody's Somebody's Fool and My Heart Has a Mind Of Its Own - both US chart-toppers - generated interest in Connie by Country music fans and she was soon spending more time in Nashville studios in preference to those of New York or London.

The acceptance of her ethnic albums in overseas territories where she had undertaken personal appearances and television specials, prompted the decision by Connie to record her American hits in other languages. Her first venture in this direction was Die Liebe Ist Ein Seltsames Spiel - a German adaptation of Everybody's Somebody's Fool. It became Europe's biggest seller of 1960 and soon the Francis pop Country sound was being heard regularly in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese...with the occasional Swedish, Dutch or Greek vocal thrown in for good measure!

The next major development in Connie's career was her film acting debut in 'Where the Boys Are' in 1961. Her comedy performance earned her a 'Laurel' as 'Best Newcomer to Motion Pictures' from the trade magazine The Exhibitor and Photoplay bestowed upon her its first Gold Medal. It was a good start, but Connie's movie career did not take off in the manner anticipated. She made three more pictures -'Follow the Boys' (1963), 'Looking for Love' (1964) and 'When the Boys Meet the Girls' (1965) - none of which lived up to the promise of her first effort in this medium.

Connie's opinion was brief. "I was lousy in them"... and she resolved not to make any more.

When The Beatles made their impact on the USA many of the big names of the late Fifties fell by the wayside. Connie was not one of them and continually hit the US charts with each consecutive release. Vocally, she was hitting a peak and in the mid-Sixties was producing some of her finest material on albums devoted to Country, movie selections and the inevitable Italian product. The basic formula of easy listening LPs and more contemporary singles had been continued, but the world markets were changing.

No longer was it necessary for US hits to be translated into foreign tongues to ensure a record's success in overseas territories, and a US chart entry did not necessarily give a record a plus factor in Europe. Connie's record career continued to flourish in Germany, Italy and Latin America...areas where she had long been established as all-time best-selling female record star...but despite the worthiness of her performances, this was in all probability due to the delay of pop music evolution in those lands.

At about this time, Connie's style of music was transferred to 'middle-of-the road' divisions together with that of other artists once classified as 'pop'. The occasional tour abroad left hit records in its wake, but American commitments, involving lengthy seasons at the nation's top nightspots, reduced these in number.

From an artistic point of view, it was the finest thing that could have happened to Connie. The girl next door had developed into an excitingly glamorous woman, more in keeping with a sophisticated cabaret artist than a pop-singer. Consistently nominated one of America's Ten Best Dressed Women, she also possessed a voice that had matured, adding depth and character to the individual Francis style.

The dwindling number of hits were replaced by an increasing number of quality songs for which Connie had provided the inspiration to composers like James Last, Tony Hatch, James Van Heusen and Don Black. Most notable of these were movie themes which were later recorded with resounding success by other artists: Strangers in the Night, Born Free, and Somewhere My Love. Connie Francis had become the composers' singer and her transition from pop queen to leading female song stylist was complete.

In the late 60s, Connie deliberately slowed down the pace of her career, concentrating on her domestic life and charitable activities. By this time she had reached the point where her main objective was to make good recordings, and a hit was more by accident than design.

Nevertheless, 1967 saw Connie receive a special award from MGM Records, commemorating her outstanding achievement of over 60 US chart entries in ten consecutive years as a hit record artist. Her supreme accolade came that same year, too, at the Montreal Expo '67 World Fair when she was declared 'Female Entertainer of the Century'.

Connie has always considered charity work one of the most rewarding aspects of her career and some of the acknowledgements she has received include the American Heart Association's 'Queen of Hearts' award and the Variety Club honouring her 'Outstanding Service on Behalf of Deserving Children All Over the World'. These were capped in 1969 when she was made Chairman of Overseas Combined Charities which includes CARE, UNICEF and USO.

MGM, with whom Connie had been under exclusive contract since 1956, was taken over by the Polydor group in 1970 and Connie chose not to sign with the company. It was ironic that coinciding with this decision she should have issued her one and only totally innovative album, The Wedding Cake, featuring hard rock/Country material written specially for her. The title track was an immediate US success and the last MGM hit for Connie, hut she persistently declined the floods of offers from other labels for her signature.

Since that time, however, she has witnessed re-issues of her recordings selling at unprecedented rate all over the world. In 1975 she sold over one million albums in America alone, while in Britain, two years later, she gained her first Platinum Award for selling over £1 million worth of LPs.

In the last few years Connie's desires to resume her glittering career have been beset by personal misfortunes, but recently she has taken her first positive steps to return to the world of records.

Connie's long absence from the record scene has coincided with girl singers being more popular with the record-buying public than at any time in the industry's history. Even with a top ten record having to sell more than twice as many copies as were required to achieve a similar chart placing two decades ago there are, as yet, no serious contenders for any of Connie's crowns.

In the last three years alone, Connie Francis has been marketed in over 60 different countries, including such far-flung lands as Chile, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Jamaica, Turkey, USSR, Israel and Guatemala. To date, the 2,000 titles she has recorded have been packaged in a huge variety of forms and compilations of LPs, singles and cassettes, conservatively put at 10,000 in number. Her total sales of all these discs and tapes are equally staggering. Latest counts place these at OVER 100 MILLION.

An outstanding figure by an outstanding lady and singer of our time.

Connie's Golden Hits requires no further description. The titles assembled here comprise all her major Australian, British and American chart hits.

Who's Sorry Now? and Stupid Cupid were 1958 chart successes which helped to establish Connie's name throughout the music world. Stupid Cupid was also the first rock and roll record by a girl to top the U.K. charts and it launched the then unknown composer, Neil Sedaka, on the way to stardom. Sedaka was also responsible for the title song from Connie's motion picture 'Where The Boys Are'.

Among My Souvenirs and My Happiness were very successful revivals of oldies in harmony vocal style, while Lipstick On Your Collar and Robot Man confirmed Connie's ability to place female rock - albeit 'soft' by today's standards - high in the hit parade.

The sentimental Mama, recorded in England and partly sung in Italian, displayed a new Connie and, with it, an end to the soda-pop queen image.

We have also included in this section several recordings which will be of particular interest to avid collectors. In 1962 Connie met up in the studio with the about to become legendary producer Phil Spector. The result was two titles, Second Hand Love (written by Spector) and the rocker Gonna Git That Man. A single featuring both songs reached #7 in the USA charts in May of that year. Baby's First Christmas the ''B'' side of When The Boy In Your Arms (Is The Boy In Your Heart) was a cute example of the Christmas schmaltz very fashionable during the late fifties and early sixties. Everybody's Somebody's Fool (Connie's only Australian #1) and My Heart Has A Mind of Its Own both stormed to the top of the US charts in 1960. With Many Tears Ago and Breakin' In A Brand New Broken Heart they established the Country side of Connie which was to become a significant-factor of her vocal career in the years ahead.

The Country Side of Connie

The country tracks listed here are fine examples of the pop country sound that became so popular in the early rock era. All the titles scored in both country and national hit parades but, unlike most of the pure pop material of the same period, the quality of the songs has stood the test of time.

Connie was merely influenced by the country sound and was not one of its exponents. The area she covered is probably best described by the title of one of her own albums - Country Music Connie Style.

Her introduction to C & W took place before Who's Sorry Now when two fellow unknown singers,horrified to hear Connie confess that country music left her cold, ''programmed'' her with the sounds of Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells and other high-ranking country stars. Her indoctrinators were the Everly Brothers and Connie later recorded Bye Bye Love as a tribute to them.

The majority of her country selections, in fact, are a reflection of Connie's personal favourites in this field. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Heartaches By The Number originally sung by Guy Mitchell should have found favour with her. Similarly the effect Johnny Cash had on her is displayed with I Walk The Line.

Her undoubted ''feel'' for music in this idiom is heard to good effect on Hank Williams' Cold Cold Heart, Don Gibson's Oh Lonesome Me and Hank Snow's I'm Movin' On. Her lack of complete originality in presentation in no way detracts from the merits of her own performance. It was indeed, Country music Connie style and was to stay in demand for many years.

Connie At The Movies

In addition to her own starring vehicles, Connie also provided the singing of Jayne Mansfield in the spoof Western ''The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw'' (1958) and introduced the romantic ballad Senza Fine in the 1966 production 'Flight of The Phoenix'. Throughout her recording career she held strong links with the movies and the selections in this section illustrate the variety of styles adopted by Connie during each stage of her vocal development.

Her 'ethnic' era is displayed with Anniversary Song sung in English and Yiddish - a fine example to illustrate the sound that captivated older listeners when Connie was in her golden hits period - while her pop country stage is in evidence with Around The World, Tammy and Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing, all recorded in Nashville, and lending themselves admirably to this treatment.

Connie's maturity as an interpreter of song can be heard in the manner in which she gently caresses every ounce of meaning out of True Love and switches to dramatic, full-bodied voice on Born Free and I Will Wait For You.

No Connie Francis Collection is complete without the sample of her ability to captivate an audience and reproduce her unique sound 'live'. Sunrise Sunset not only succeeds in illustrating this, but also provides a perfect example of the versatility and skill that makes Connie such an 'all-round' singer.

Connie Sings The Great Hits of The '50s & '60s

Although the '50s and '60s are perhaps better known for rock'n'roll, there were also a remarkable amount of ballads that broke through into the upper reaches of the world's music charts.

Connie Francis was truly an all round singer and this is clearly illustrated by the performances in this section of our Reader's Digest set. Songs like Henry Mancini's Moon River and Frank Sinatra's All The Way and Call Me Irresponsible were the perfect vehicle for Connie to demonstrate her wide ranging vocal abilities. Her recordings of classics like La Vie En Rose, Quando, Quando, Quando, I Can't Stop Loving You and Fascination showed her affinity with all types of music, from European hits to country-pop and romantic ballads. She was no longer simply a ''pop'' music singer but rather an entertainer who appealed to teenagers, their parents and possibly even their grandparents. Her talent for singing in a variety of languages meant that she was equally famous in Italy, France, Germany and Japan as she was to English-speaking audiences and sales of her albums soared to even greater heights.

Romantically Connie

The songs in this section have as their common theme the Connie Francis speciality of romance.

They include some of the world's most recorded titles like You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You, (I'll Be With You) In Apple Blossom Time, Stardust and Nevertheless, sung by Connie in a manner that would suggest they were specifically created for her.

Among the newer songs are three by England's Les Reed, for whom Connie has great regard and affection - Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, The Last Waltz and It's Not Unusual. Connie's individual ending of It's Not Unusual most certainly IS.

Another great composer of our time is Burt Bacharach who with Hal David declared: "We are proud that Connie has recorded an album devoted to our songs. She has always been one of our favourites." Listening to the wide range of vocal styles Connie employs on Make It Easy On Yourself, Walk On By, Alfie and the upper-register What The World Needs Now, it is easy to understand why she became such a firm favourite, not only with them but with over 100 million record buyers too.

Ron Roberts

London, 1981