If you follow my posts (and work) you know I have started The Pop 40 Project. You can get the rundown here.
The short version is I am listening to every top hit in the US and UK from 1969 to 2016. And starting in 1960 the charts were very much dominated by males and especially teen male idols. However, there are two female MVPs. Well, technically they THE MVPs, period. They just happen to be female.
“Little Miss Firecracker” (AKA Brenda Lee) and Connie Francis (who recently passed this July) were logging more top 40 hits than most of the men going. The only other woman to come close during the first wave of rock ‘n’ roll was Ruth Brown in the 50s. These to women were pelting more hits out of the park than even Elvis at this time and not just in the US but in the UK and much of Europe as well.
It wouldn’t be so utterly stunning if the people penning the music history hadn’t ignored them. But the music history I inherited did leave out almost all women of this era outside of Patti Page while name dropping one male teen idol after another, including Bobby Darin who was dating Connie Francis at the time. So it is stunning when you see just how many hits these two women were logging. And not just cutesy milquetoast songs most girls were given to sing like, “Johnny Angel”.
Fiery rockers – Lipstick on Your Collar
Real Heartbreakers – My Heart Has A Mind Of It’s Own
Songs calling out boys for their cheatin’ ways and wandring eyes – Who’s Sorry Now
There were even songs with sexual undertones or songs meant to induce a little foreplay. One of my favorites of the entire era and maybe even of all time at this point is “Fallin’”. It’s surface sounds so simple and yet the arrangement and the way Francis sings it all hot ‘n’ bothered and carnal is just divine.
And then there is what I have dubbed a feminist anthem, “Robot Man”, which was pretty radical for a woman to be singing about she wouldn’t have to deal with all the male BS if she had a robot. Made cooler by the fact that it was actually written by a women, Sylvia Dee. Fun Fact: Not many of the great female anthems were written by women.
The music of Connie Francis may seem somewhat wholesome now in the age of Sabrina Carpenter and “Smell The Glove” but Francis’ entire career at the time was pretty radical for the buttoned up and pleated skirts of the later 50s and early 60s. To have a female who was not singing in the usual pristine tone of a Julie Andrews or the aforementioned Patti Page and who was wearing hip-huggers instead of a poodle skirt among other things.
She also recorded several albums in other genres, notably country records where she did a duets album with a young Hank Williams Jr. and several albums in Italian (becoming a major icon in Italy). But also albums and extended plays in Swedish, German, French, and Spanish. Ultimately recording albums in seven different languages. For comparison, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Little Richard only sang in English. Hell, even the The Beatles only ever really sang in English outside a few singles.
It is unfortunate that this era of rock ‘n’ roll is fading further into history and that these songs are being lost to the march of time. Songs that, I think should now be part of the great US rock ‘n’ roll songbook. It is also unfortunate that after her peak chart years from 1957 to 1963 Connie Francis would endure major hardships and emotional trauma despite still being a somewhat popular touring act. And it seems that those stories the tabloids devoured would overshadow the over 30 top 40 singles she logged in the US alone in that short time. Becoming one of the few visible female rock stars of her era showing other girls that it could be done.
But in 2025 thanks to of all things tik-tok, not long before Francis passed, her recording of, “Pretty Little Baby” a song now over sixty years old became a viral hit. People have been filming videos of themselves wearing retro outfits and singing to their babies and pets, specifically these lines:
You can ask the flowers
I sit for hours
Telling all the bluebirds
The bill and coo birds
Pretty little baby
I’m so in love with you.
And I hope these music fans dive deeper into the legacy of Connie Francis I hope they discover the other female fireballs of the era like Etta James, Lavern Baker, Janis Martin, Tina Turner and Brenda Lee and Wanda Jackson who are still with us.
But if you need a place to start I HIGHLY recommend the anthology
Connie has left us but the music remains and now a whole new generation of young people are discovering Connie Francis not as a tabloid trauma story survivor but as a trailblazer for female singers and a true rock ‘n’ roll rebel. Rest in power Ms. Francis.
