"Without really realizing it, Annette had become one of America’s
first recording teen idols even though she wasn’t really a teenager and
had simply been marketed as one. To adolescent boys who bought her sheet
music just to get her image in color she was the girl next door. Her
songs featured her singing the melody calmly without a lot of scat
singing or interpolation and then the incredible backing musicians would
cut loose whenever possible and jazz up the record. She was a quick
study and learned to keep to the melody or bend it a little to fit the
complex orchestrations but she never considered her work to be of the
significant merit of a real musician such as Connee Boswell of the
Boswell Sisters, a prominent contemporary of Annette.
By sticking
as much as possible to recording and minimizing her personal appearances
and not appearing on Broadway or in the movies, Annette developed an
aura of mystery about herself. In her recordings one can hear that she
is being urged to put more emotion into her vocals but they come across
as laid-back, as if the music swirling around her in all directions
doesn’t concern her at all. The laid-back sound was hot in the later
twenties and early thirties and it is no accident that the number one
male recording star was seemingly easy-going Bing Crosby and the number
one female recording star for a time was Annette."
Somebody asked me recently what do I think about the people out there who are seen as failures by their peers. (The definition of failure can be different from one person to another). I know that there are people who are being very patient while working on themselves, or an important project that hopefully will result in them achieving their dreams. They do this silently and diligently. They may appear to be failing but, they the are far from failing and diligently working towards their goal.
Beware of judging others. Because you never how things will turn out. I have seen this happen so many times. May I leave you with this, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race ” Calvin Coolidge.
