Day auditioned and got the job at age 17. In 1939, however, she was told of an opening for a vocalist in the band of Bob Crosby, Bing's brother and a star bandleader in his own right. She ultimately took the name Doris Day, owing to the popularity of "Day After Day," and while the gig didn't last, the name did.
She was still known as Doris Kappelhoff when she got a job singing at a local club, but when a chance for radio broadcasts from the club was brought up. Raine arranged for Doris to appear on the Cincinnati radio station WLW on an amateur showcase the song that she sang was Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz's "Day After Day," from 1932, which earned her a featured spot on the station. Music became a new aspiration, and the timely intervention of voice coach Grace Raine helped her develop the approach to song that was to characterize her career. She also started singing along with Ella Fitzgerald's records and tried to develop her own style. Her recuperation, living above the Cincinnati tavern owned by an uncle, gave the young teenager access to a jukebox that played the hits of the day and by the time she was 14, she had developed a taste for swing stars such as Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers, among numerous other bands. Her hopes for a career in dance were shattered on the trip out West in an automobile accident that severely injured her right leg. The family decided to pursue stardom in Hollywood for their young child. In 1937, when she was 13, she and a young male partner won a $500 prize in an amateur dance contest. From age six, she had taken dancing lessons, and that was the career she ultimately intended to pursue. Her parents divorced when she was 12, and Day lived with her mother and older brother in College Hill, Ohio. Her mother loved popular music, especially (surprisingly) country music. Her father was a music teacher, choir master, and church organist. She was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Moreover, before those late-'50s comedies, Day had a film career that included adaptations of Broadway musicals (The Pajama Game), classic thrillers (The Man Who Knew Too Much), and searing social drama (Storm Warning). That body of work - which contains at least one unabashed, classic early-'40s recording, "Sentimental Journey" - is one of the most impressive in the fields of swing and popular jazz, and deserves to be heard far more than it is. If most people remember her as a singer, it's usually for such pop hits as "Secret Love" and her Oscar-winning "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)," which became her signature tune.īut before all of that, from 1939 until the end of the '40s, Doris Day was one of the hottest, sultriest swing-band vocalists in music. She also transposed this following to television at the end of the '60s with a situation comedy that lasted into the early '70s.
The pity is that all most people remember are her movies, from Teacher's Pet (1957) onward, as the quintessential all-American girl, cast opposite such icons of masculinity as Clark Gable and Rock Hudson. Doris Day packed four careers into one lifetime, two each in music and movies.