Patti Page, 1927–2013

For her detractors, honey-voiced Patti Page summed up everything that was wrong with the sentimental pop music of the early 1950s. “A couple of critics back then said my voice was like milquetoast,” she said in 2003. “My music was called plastic, antiseptic, placid.” American record buyers didn’t share those opinions. Her 1950 single “Tennessee Waltz” sold more than 10 million copies—at the time, only Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” had sold more—while her 1952 novelty hit “(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window” spent more than two months at No. 1. Her records were played so frequently on the radio, Time said in 1951, that “only the deaf and the dead have escaped the big, plain, healthy voice of Patti Page.”

Page was born Clara Ann Fowler in the small town of Claremore, Okla., “one of 11 children of a railroad laborer,” said The New York Times. As a teenager, she took a job in the art department of the Tulsa radio station KTUL. When an executive there heard her sing, he asked her to take over a country music show called Meet Patti Page, sponsored by the Page Milk Co. She adopted the fictional radio host’s name for what soon became a full-time singing career.

The newly named Page broke away from radio to sign with Mercury Records, which released her first single, “Confess,” in 1948. She created a distinctive sound by overdubbing her own voice, as Mercury wasn’t prepared to pay for any backup singers, said the Associated Press. “Confess” was enough of a hit that Mercury decided to let Page try overdubbing a full four-part harmony. The result was “With My Eyes Wide Open, I’m Dreaming.” The credits read, “Vocals by Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page, and Patti Page.”

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Her star faded in the late 1950s with the arrival of rock ’n’ roll, said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). But Page’s good-girl image endured. “I’m sure there are a lot of things I should have done differently,” she said in 1988, at age 60. “But I don’t think I’ve stepped on anyone along the way. If I have, I didn’t mean to.”