clifton a. feddington
Clifton began at WHK in Cleveland in the much acclaimed children's program , Let's have lunch with Mr. Cliff. Then,radio audiences tuned in n In 1935 with seed money from sixteen sponsors, Mr. Feddington landed a fifteen minute musical variety show called Stars in Heaven which featured recent singing discoveries, Ann Collier and Johnny Cantone, The Zoot Doubleman Quartet, and Neal Tilden. In 1936, Mutual expanded the show to a half hour and renamed it The Mutual Half-Hour of Singing Stars ant the team added it's first Gibson brother, Bobby. ust last January, through a deal with New York's WOV Radio, the show became the hour-long Cavalcade we love today and tonight's show is the last in our first season. Mr. Feddington also is President of Clifton Records (The Signature Series), Which will be into production as soon as the ASCAP strike is settled.
Ray Owen
has a long career of seemingly endless talents. From the critically acclaimed “third quizmaster” on KFJ’s Question, Please, to the corny magician of WBAL’s Vaudeville at Noon. And who can forget WTAM’s Live from Cleveland? Ray also co-starred with Nigel Nooley in RKO short Shelby’s Millions. But possibly Ray’s greatest gift is his interpretation of “the ballad” and it is there that Ray becomes an indispensable member of the Cavalcade.
Johnny cantone
Johnny opened in the '39 Pro-Am Duckpin Tourney with his version of the Star Spangled Banner. Since then he has sung "The Anthem" at hundreds of sporting events (including his own unsuccessful attempt to unseat the defending welter-weight champ Eldon Dwight). Now "feature vocalist" with WOV's Cavalcade, Johnny has come a long way from those clubs in Jersey where he fronted bands for five years. "The Tone" hopes to begin his acting career with his upcoming engagement to read Odets with Harold on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club in March. He also hopes to be able to spend more time with his wife, Angel. Soon.
Ginger Brooks
moved everything to New York in the fall of 1940. It was only a year until she landed the coveted position of microphone monitor at WACL But it wasn’t long before she was cutting records for Arite Shaw. But her real forte was singing so she left the technical position and became an overnight success as the only singing waitress and stacker at Romeo’s Spaghetti House, where our stage manager and choreographer, Lou Cohn, discovered her. Ginger’s favorite color is red.
Geneva Lee Browne
began her show business career at the Cotton Club in The Hot Chocolate Revue, and later, with Earl “Fatha” Hines. In 1939, she moved to Kansas City where she formed her own jazz quintet, The Kansas City Browne Boys, and until this fall, entertained listeners there nightly at the Chesterfield Club. Since September, she has recorded for Victor, Okey, and Vocalion Records and has just signed a contract to sing with Jimmy Lunceford’s Orchestra. She was also been offered a film short with Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters to be shot at The Cotton Club where she began singing six years ago which will feature a song she ahs written and performed as part of her set with her nightly at the Onyx Club.
Ann Collier
was singing with her sisters in Montclair, New Jersey when she was only seven. When she went away to school, she worked on WJSV’s Dr. Pepper Parade on Sunday nights and was offered tours with Claude Thornhill and the King Biscuit Entertainers. In 35, she returned to her native Montclair and sang with dance bands there where she was discovered by WOV’s own Clifton Feddington and swept into New York and into the limelight of his Cavalcade where she was “featured vocalist” for three years. She has been with the show for six years now and we hope she’ll be here for six more. Ann lives with her four year old son Matthew on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
B.J. Gibson
is the youngest of the singing Gibson Brothers, who began their musical careers in New Orleans in 1932 (B.J. was fourteen) in an act their father named Three boys and a Harmonica. With his brothers “over there,” B.J. packed Bobby’s harmonica, Buddy’s sweater, and his father’s arrangements and went up to New Haven where he is a Senior English major at Yale’s Branford College. He comes to New York every week though to do the show, keeping up the Gibson tradition, and is now singin’ and dancin’ and smilin’ his way into the hearts of radio listeners everywhere. “Welcome aboard, B.J.”
Connie Miller
comes all the way from Ogden, Utah where she studied tap, ballet, and ballroom at Madame Stephen’s Dance Academy. At age ten, she and her mother lived in Los Angeles and while she was working as a script girl for Columbia Pictures she kept the crews entertained with her imitations of Shirley Temple and Margaret O’Brien. After not being cast as Robert Young’s daughter in Joe Smith, American, Connie and her mom came to New York and auditioned for Clifton at WOV. Now the youngest member of the Cavalcade, Connie hopes one day to become a Rockette.
Neal Tilden
has had a career with some of the greats and many of the near-greats that is pretty much history now. The grueling singing lessons, the one-night stands, until exploded on the vocal horizon with Nestor Nugent’s Tornadoes at Tarrytown’s Cafe O’Ola. On to greater heights, and the fabled nine-week tour of ‘34 with the late, great Wes Westerley, who after losing Neal, Lamented, “It was losing a horn.” Neal has been with the Cavalcade since before it was even a twinkle in Clifton’s eye, and he still keeps a hand in club singing, and a hand in radio singing, and a hand in stage acting too (he was recently up for the role of the understudy to Gil Strutton, Jr. in the Broadway smash Best Foot Forward). But his first love is the Cavalcade, and he says he’s delighted to be handling vocal chores with an “O.K. outfit” like ours “Thanks, Neal!”