Jane Morgan

Jane Morgan (born Florence Catherine Currier; May 3, 1924) is an American former singer and recording artist of traditional pop. Morgan initially found success in France and the UK before achieving recognition in the US, receiving six gold records. She was a frequent nightclub and Broadway performer, and also appeared numerous times on American television, both as a singer and as a dramatic performer. Early life Morgan was born Florence Catherine Currier in Newton, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1924, one of five children born to musicians Olga (Brandenburg) and Bertram Currier. When she was four years old, the Currier family moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. At five she began vocal lessons while continuing piano lessons. During the summers, she took on child roles and appeared in theater productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine, which her brother had founded. In 1941, she was listed as the Treasurer of the Kennebunkport Playhouse. While attending grade school, Morgan actively engaged in singing and competing against other students throughout Florida and the Southeast. After graduating from Seabreeze High School, she was accepted into New York's Juilliard School of Music. Intending to become an opera singer, she studied opera by day and performed whenever possible. Early career Morgan sang popular songs in nightclubs and small restaurants, and at bar mitzvahs and other private parties, to help pay her tuition expenses at Juilliard. Eventually she was hired as a singer at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan with the house second band for $25 a week, six nights a week. While she was still at Juilliard (1944), orchestra leader Art Mooney heard her perform and hired her. Mooney changed her name to Jane Morgan by taking the first name of one of his vocalists, Janie Ford, and the last name of another, Marian Morgan. In 1948, French impresario Bernard Hilda selected her to accompany him to Paris. Hilda was a prominent French society bandleader who needed a young singer to perform at a nightclub that he planned to open near the Eiffel Tower. Morgan began to appear regularly at the Club des Champs-Elysées, performing (two shows per night) American songs to mostly French audiences. Her mother had taught her French and Italian, so she quickly became proficient in French, and performed her act in flawless French, singing the classic songs of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, French songs, and standards of the century.