#304: Mr. Songwriter by Connie Stevens
Peak Month: August 1962
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube: “Mr. Songwriter”
Lyrics: “Mr. Songwriter”
Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia was born in 1938 in New York City. Her father, Teddy Stevens, was born Pietro Ingoglia. Teddy Stevens was a jazz musician in Manhattan, and adopted an anglicized name. In 1950, at the age of 12, she witnessed a murder in Manhattan. Her parents decided to send Concetta to rural Missouri to live with relatives. Three years later in 1953, she moved with her father to Los Angeles, after her parents got a divorce. She enrolled at the Sacred Heart Academy for Girls, and later transferred to the Hollywood Professional School when her talents as an actress looked promising. In the mid-50s Concetta Ingolia formed a vocal quartet called “The Foremost” where she was joined by three men: Tony Butala, Mike Barnett, Dick Stewart. (Butala and Barnett and went on to form the close-harmony group The Lettermen which Barnett left after 1958). Concetta’s first professional acting job was early in 1957 when she was featured in a TV commercial for a local Los Angeles bakery.