SHAN’T USE THE CHANTOOSE OBIT

The great Margaret Whiting died on January 10th and I became exasperated waiting for The Guardian to notice this major loss so I submitted an unsolicited obituary last night. This was not quite as presumptuous as it might seem. I have written several obits for the paper in the past, both at their and at my own instigation. I was particularly stung into action yesterday morning when the paper carried a sizeable vale to Gladys Horton, lead singer of the Marvelettes. Whiting, I proposed, deserves at least the equivalent consideration.

The obits editor demurred. “She didn’t have an original hit, and didn’t make much impression in Britain” he wrote. “At a time when we’ve got 50 obits waiting to appear, we can’t, sadly, feature every figure that readers would like us to, and we reckon that more readers are interested in Motown artists”. Rather than smother this response with the contempt that it so richly deserves, I propose instead to immortalise my notice herebelow, where I know it will be appreciated by my discriminating readers.

MARGARET WHITING

Margaret Whiting, who has died at 86, was one of the finest of the singers who led American popular music through most of the four middle decades of the twentieth century, performing songs that overlapped Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood and that were apt to be known as “the standard repertoire”. Her style – a light but firm, clear but creamy mezzo, not as sensual as most of the black women vocalists of the period, nor indeed as the likes of Lee Wiley, Peggy Lee or Julie London – rather bracketed her with such variously serviceable performers as Jo Stafford, Dinah Shore, Rosemary Clooney, Keely Smith, Abbe Lane and Barbara Cook, all of whom laboured in the long shadow of their senior, Ella Fitzgerald, whose racially neutral timbre set the benchmark.

Whiting's first LP

Whiting’s understated, deftly wry delivery was especially suited to the dreamy, beguiling sort of number that married a caressing melody to intelligent lyrics: Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields’ ‘Make the Man Love Me’, Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke’s ‘But Beautiful’, Ted Shapiro, Jimmy Campbell and Reginald Connelly’s ‘If I Had You’, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’, John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorf’s ‘Moonlight in Vermont’, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ or ‘Guilty’ by Harry Akst, Gus Kahn and her father. Lyricists must have greatly appreciated the Fred Astaire-like respect with which she always treated their work.

She was born in 1924 in Detroit, the elder daughter of a pianist and jobbing songwriter. With the coming of the talkies, new songs were suddenly required in industrial quantities and the Whitings promptly moved west. Richard A. Whiting had a particular gift for jolly, rousing numbers and he was soon well-known for penning ‘Ain’t We Got Fun?’, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ and ‘Hooray for Hollywood’ among many others. Margaret was only 13 when he died but she was already a Hollywood kid and her vocal talent was known. Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern were among those who took her under their wings. At 17, she was signed to Capitol Records by her father’s great pal and frequent collaborator, lyricist and sometime singer-cum-executive Johnny Mercer.

As was usual for young vocalists in the early 1940s, her first sessions were anonymous, fronting big bands. But in 1947, she cut a long-player of her own, a selection from the songbook of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Though she could not quite be said to have pioneered the ‘songbook’ format (Lee Wiley was doing it in the ‘30s), Whiting was certainly in the van of such collections. Thirteen years later, she made a memorable double-album selection from the Jerome Kern songbook.

Mercer and Whiting record 'Baby, It's Cold Outside'

The Rodgers and Hart repertoire was always grateful to the thoughtful performer and it was subsequently raided for dedicated albums by, among others, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Barbara Cook, Bobby Short, Frank Sinatra and, some time later, the Supremes and Dawn Upshaw. Nine years after Whiting’s LP, Ella Fitzgerald began her Songbook series with Cole Porter, closely followed by Rodgers and Hart, a series that is probably the most valued of all Fitzgerald’s work.

Whiting was soon recording regularly under her own name and quickly became a radio favourite. In 1948, she cut a cover version of a British hit for Dorothy Squires, Billy Reid’s ‘A Tree in the Meadow’, and it topped the American charts. Soon after this, she took an unexpected but lucrative detour into country music and the single she made with Jimmy Wakely, ‘Slippin’ Around’, also got to number 1. In 1949, she recorded a duet with her mentor Johnny Mercer of Frank Loesser’s larky ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ which became a Christmas chart fixture for several years.

In the ‘50s, she was a regular guest on the kind of television variety shows that lasted well into the ‘60s. For three mid-‘50s seasons, she and her kid sister Barbara were showcased as college co-eds in Those Whiting Girls, a summer sitcom seat-warmer for the production company Desilu’s banker, I Love Lucy.

Never one to allow changing times to deny her any chance to work, Whiting gladly joined the 1970s touring circuit in the best roles for those mature singing women who could act – Pal Joey, Call Me Madam, Gypsy. In later years, she made her home in New York and often performed in Manhattan supper clubs to lifelong fans and new enthusiasts alike. Her delicious version of Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn’s ‘Time After Time’ enjoyed a new lease of life when used in the 2009 movie Julie & Julia.

Mr & Mrs Wrangler

After a long and significant affair with the movie star John Garfield, Whiting’s first three marriages – to producer Hubbell Robinson, pianist Lou Busch and cinematographer Richard Moore – ended in divorce. In 1976, she met John Stillman in a nightclub. He was 30, she 52. He was enthralled by her glamour, she by his looks. He told her frankly that he was gay and that he worked as a gay porn star under the name Jack Wrangler. Nevertheless, they figured out an accommodation, based on Stillman/Wrangler’s contention that he felt “less competitive” with a woman than with a man. But the relationship was punctuated by public slanging matches, one involving an exchange that became legend: “I’m gay, damn it!” “Only around the edges, dear”.

Bogglingly, they married in 1994 and remained so until Wrangler’s death fifteen years later. There surely must be a BBC4 drama to be carved out of their story.

Whiting in later years

Margaret Whiting’s only appearance on Broadway was in a 1997 tribute to Johnny Mercer, produced by Jack Wrangler. She died in the actors’ home in New Jersey to which she moved last March. Her daughter by Lou Busch, Deborah, survives her.

Margaret Eleanor Whiting, singer; born 22 July 1924; died 10 January 2011