Maysville Kentucky Blog

During the Art in the Garden Festival in Augusta Kentucky this weekend (Saturday, June 3rd) visitors to the Rosemary Clooney House Museum will be able to see the two-piece red Victorian dress Rosemary wore when she co-starred with Bob Hope in Here Come the Girls, according to an article published recently in the Ledger Independent. The piece is on loan from a private collection and will make its premier at 11 am on Saturday. The Rosemary Clooney House will be open 10 am - 5 pm on Saturday for the festival.

We also found a nice article about the start of Rosemary Clooney's solo career in the blogs at Tribe.net (can't link to it because of not-so-family-friendly advertisements over there). It was posted by a blogger named "Jeff" (hopefully we're good on the credits).

From "Jeff" at Tribe.net:

On an early spring day in 1949, a 21 year old girl singer stepped up to the microphone at the Columbia recording studios on New York's 30th Street, alone.

For the final time, she was recording with Tony Pastor and his Orchestra, under whose protection she had been since she began touring with them as a teenager recently out of high school. Her younger sister, Betty, was there wth her in the studio to record, the Clooney Sister's last official number as a team, and to lend moral support.

A few weeks earlier, Rosemary had decided to leave the band and strike out on her own and had turned in her notice. As a final act of generosity, Tony Pastor had arranged that the last recording of the day would be just for Rosemary - to be released under her own name, a means to launch her solo career.

Nervous about the recording, about moving to New York, about whether, in fact, she would have any future at all, Rosemary stood before the microphone as the orchestra, with a shout of brass and weary vamp, began to play 'Bargain Day', a rueful been-around-the-block song of the Billie Holiday kind.

And in the fresh alto with its familiar husky catch, the youngster from Maysville, Kentucky started her lament,

It's bargain day,
want to buy a heart?
It's bargain day,
mine is torn apart.
I'll sell it cheap
Or maybe I could trade it in
On a happier mart::

And that is how Rosie began her solo career!

Thanks Jeff!