Jonathan and Darlene Edwards

Jo Stafford and Paul Weston

Considering Jo Stafford’s stellar career and her versatile singing talent, it’s somewhat ironic that she won her only Grammy for a comedy record. Jonathan and Darlene Edwards were the alter egos of Jo and her husband Paul Weston. They were a dreadfully earnest — or earnestly dreadful — lounge act, with Jo’s perfect pitch helping Darlene with her tin ear utterly destroy songs with stunning off-key precision.

You’ll find a wonderfully awful collection of Jonathan and Darlene here on MySpace. The link to Jo’s label, Corinthian Records, is wrong. Use this one instead.

3 thoughts on “Jonathan and Darlene Edwards”

  1. TIckling the ivories upside-down minus index fingers? Or maybe I’m not quite making that out? Anyway, the liner notes are hysterical! Finally, some urbane humour (nod to Brian) around here.

  2. Everyone interested in Jo Stafford should definitely check out the family run Corinthian web site. It is clean and simple, but it has info on all of the cd’s – and albums – they have released, along with bio’s of Jo and Paul Weston. I would suggest starting with “The Columbia Hits Collection”, which showcases Jo’s versatility during the Fifties. The “Happy Holidays” collection is great for fans of Christmas albums – and – Winter albums. Many of the songs feature “The Voices of Jo Stafford” – she becomes a one woman multi-tracked group!

    If you click on the Jonathan and Darlene Edwards Greatest Hits cd, you can read a great “interview” with them! Here’s a short bit:

    And I must say, Darlene, that your delivery, your phrasing, allows you to dwell on some of those lyrics we might otherwise miss.

    DE: I do, I really do, dwell on them, too.

    JE: Darlene really does handle those sophisticated words well, and in the future it might be a good idea for her to do a whole album of Noel Coward. But I personally am so pleased with all the five albums that I couldn’t be restricted to any one choice. We were really bitter about the Sing Along with Jonathan and Darlene album, though, which is one of the best technically we’ve done, but Mitch Miller’s “singalong” craze went right down the tubes right after we put the album out, and that destroyed its sales.

    I’ve read that Mitch Miller blamed your singalong album for killing the craze.

    JE: Oh, he’s just being vengeful and petty. It was his baby, and he blew it.

    Well, that clears that mystery up! I also realized how Jonathan came up with his distinctive style of piano playing. Take a close look at the cover and you will see that he possesses a very rare physical attribute.

  3. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been at one of their infamous dinner parties? Can’t you see her tossing her head back and laughing? Look at that widow’s peak! And he looks just like D.F. Rogers, very deceptive, like you wouldn’t know he had a wicked sense of humor, but he does! Man, to have been a fly on the wall. Guess I’ll be putting one of their records on my Wish List for Christmas.

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