Joanie Sommers

Joanie Sommers was born Joan Drost in Buffalo, New York in 1941. While barely a teen, her family moved to California where she began to pursue singing. She started singing with the band at her high-school dances at Venice High School. In 1959, she was put under contract by Warner Bros. records. She was put to work singing with Edd Byrnes (replacing Connie Stevens) of the TV series 77 Sunset Strip (1958) and guested on the show. Her first single with Byrnes was "Kookie's Love Song", which was followed by her first solo album, titled Positively The Most, that same year. Critics embraced the jazz-influenced album and she was dubbed "the greatest singing discovery of the last 15 years". She was eighteen years old in 1960 when she released her first solo single, a rendition of "One Boy" from the musical Bye Bye Birdie which charted at #54 on Billboard's 100. In 1962, her biggest hit, "Johnny Get Angry", reached #7. That year she was named "Most Promising New Female Vocalist of 1962" by Cas