Evelyn's Costly Consonants

After Evelyn Knight's first big-time broadcast (with Paul Whiteman), her singing teacher wired: "YOU NEED ME," After her second broadcast, he wired: "YOU HAVE NO MORE VOICE THAN A GOAT AND A MOUTHFUL OF CONSONANTS."

In the next four years, Evelyn laboriously got rid of all her hard-won vocal habits, learned to bleat so expensively that half a dozen of her consonants will now pay for all the singing lessons she ever took. At 25, she has developed as tricky a style and as tony a claque as any of those quick bright things called "songstresses." Last week Songstress Knight had clinched her success by beginning (at $2,000 a week) her biggest radio series, as Tony Martin's opposite attraction on his new Texaco show (Sun. 9:30 p.m., CBS).

The bright spot of the first program (none too bright despite the high-octane foolishness of guest star Bob Hope) was Evelyn's choice phrasing of The Toorie on His Bonnet, Her mink-soft voice is as calculatedly intimate as a dropped shoulder strap. But voice, as many a supper-clubman knows, isn't the half of Evelyn. The rest is the allure which she exudes as unfailingly as a perfume factory.

Not that Evelyn is a looker. She stands a solid 6 ft. in heels and hairdo, looks a well-seasoned 30 even in kindly after-dinner light. But as she drifts regally between tight-packed tables, cased in her working harness (a high-necked, pink-&-blue job by Sophie of Saks, encrusted from top to toe with 20 pounds of bead-work), Evelyn suggests a youthful Magda Lupescu. And when she finds a suitable ringside male, she manages to convey, crooning to the poor Joe from a good six feet off, that she is twisting her fingers in his hair.

Nose in the Air. Evelyn came to radio a roundabout way that began in Reedville, Va., where she sang in a Methodist choir, played Mabel in a high-school production of The Pirates of Penzance, and acquired an altitudinous nose-tilt that earned her the nickname "Little Miss God." After graduation, she breezed into Washington's Station WRC, asked for a singing job, and got one--a 10 a.m. spot twice a week over NBC. The pay: $16 a broadcast.

After three years of Dark Eyes, Danny Boy, The Rose of Tralee and no raises, Evelyn cut & ran for the King Cole Room at Washington's Hotel Claridge, was hired as a chanteuse. After another three years, she left a "strong Washington following" for Manhattan's leery Blue Angel. Then she recorded Dance with a Dolly for Decca. It sold more than 200,000 pressings. She was spectacularly in.

Evelyn stayed at the Blue Angel for her customary three years, began building a radio name with appearances on the Lanny Ross Show, the Chesterfield Supper Club, the Bourjois Powder Box Theater, et al. Last week, the buildup paying off big, she mused: "I sometimes wonder why I studied singing. I became such a huge success when I stopped using my voice."

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