New Pop Crop on Top

Pop singers are usually singers before they know it, but they do not become pop without effort. Among the newest names close to the top are three who got there through extraordinary efforts.

Pat Boone, 22, was just another hillbilly singer from Nashville 18 months ago. Today, nobody who hears him in person ever hears the first or last few robust notes--they are always drowned in squeals of bobby-sox delight. Boone simply opened his mouth and sang when he was ten. "People just got to asking me to sing, and I sang," he says. Pat studied dramatics and speech at North Texas State College, finally landed a few TV spots, then got the call from Dot records. Such tunes as Two Hearts, Ain't That a Shame and, most recently, I Almost Lost My Mind, became smash hits, thanks largely to Boone's hearty, warm voice and mountain-style sentiment.

Today, as a regular on Arthur Godfrey Time and a practically permanent fixture on bestseller charts, Pat Boone is still not convinced that his success is real or permanent. He is a high-mark senior at Columbia University, is still planning to become a teacher. Last week, on a swing through the Midwest, he wound up eleven shows in 14 days. A Baton Rouge disk jockey, determined to get Boone to town by some means or other, climbed a pole and announced his determination to sit there until the hero arrived. "He's gonna sit there until I come down," sighs Pat, "so I suppose I'll have to go."

Eydie (pronounced Ee-dee) Gorme, 25, had a solid record hit in Too Close for Comfort (ABC-Paramount), and another is coming up strong in one of those too-innocent-for-comfort ditties called Mama, Teach Me to Dance. She has also accumulated three years of experience on Steve Allen's Tonight. As she sings, her rather long face looks vaguely troubled, and a slight, pathetic wave ruffles her smooth voice. In sweet songs, she sounds reedy and controlled. When she lets go, she squeezes her eyes in a kind of happy passion, and bounces discreetly, until the crowd thinks it knows just what she means.

Six years ago, Bronx-born Songstress Gorme had reached the eminent position of export manager for a theatrical-equipment company, reached TV via dance-band and nightclub jobs. On TV she has sung while sitting on a bough overhanging the Niagara River hard by the falls, and with a high wind snatching the notes from her throat atop the RCA Building. Last winter, just before an 8 o'clock TV rehearsal, a call came: Would she appear on the 9:30 show at the Copacabana that night? The regular star, Billy Daniels, had been accused of shooting somebody in a saloon row, and couldn't get sprung in time. "When I got to the club, they didn't want to let me in. I had on a leather jacket and black wool slacks. I looked like a motorcycle kid. I had eight minutes to dress and get on the floor. It wasn't until I'd finished that I realized what had happened. Then I started to shake, and I passed out and started to cry." Last month Eydie was back at the Copa as a headliner.

Al Hibbler, 41, has been a professional singer for 20 years, including an eight-year stretch as vocalist with Duke Ellington, but it is only in the past year that he has caused mass ecstasy. He has a thick, almost syrupy voice with both a hint of maudlin sentimentality and a dash of satirical humor. He is a Negro and has been blind from birth. Al's blacksmith father sent him to the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock, where he sang soprano until he was 17. Long before he graduated, in 1936, he had memorized every nuance of all the pop singers of the day. One fellow named Pha Terrell, who was featured with Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy, used to let Al sing with the band sometimes when it hit Little Rock. In 1943 Al made the Ellington band, but "I was in the band for two weeks before I knew it." He kept singing as a guest, night after night, until he finally complained that he had to earn a living. "Why," drawled Duke casually, "you can pick up your pay any time."

Even then, Hibbler used to panic the teen-agers by his sudden, disconcerting swoops from a high note to a sub-basement tone. His second big break came a year and a half ago, when Decca signed him up and he recorded a song called Unchained Melody. It became a No. 1 hit. Now he asks $3,000 and up a week for appearances, plays the gaudiest spots in the biggest towns. Between dates he stays at home in Teaneck, N.J. with his wife, listening to the radio. "They tell good stories, those soap operas," he says. "Songs have good plots too, sometimes. If they do, that's when I like them. When I sing, I like to tell the plot."

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