The “Golden Hits Of The 50s”
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JULIE LONDON
“CRY ME A RIVER”
(Arthur Hamilton)
Liberty 55006
No. 9 December 17, 1955
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“‘Cry Me a River” was an instant smash hit, and I could taste the smell of success,” said Si Waronker,
founder of Liberty Records, to author “Doc Rock” Kelley. “When the disc jockeys got their copies of
that album Julie Is My Name, her debut), they almost invariably talked about the cover. I must say it
certainly was provocative. There was a certain dirty appeal about it. It was cleavage like you never
saw … I’ll never forget Al Jarvis, a popular disc jockey at the time, saying on the radio, ‘Today, I have
a surprise. I’m not going to play Julie’s record. I’m going to play her album cover.”
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Julie’s (b. Sept. 26, 1926, Santa Rosa, CA) parents were vaudeville song-and-dance entertainers, Jack
and Josephine Peck. Between gigs, the couple ran a photographic studio and shopped their tot around.
At age three, Julie Peck made her radio debut singing “Falling in Love Again.” School never agreed with
Julie’s sensibilities; by the age of 15, she was on her way up-and down-as an elevator operator in L.A.
While working in a department store on Hollywood Boulevard, Alan Ladd’s wife spotted the budding
beauty and suggested that Julie attend a screen test for a bit part in something then called The Girl and
the Gorilla.
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For the remainder of the decade, London appeared in a number of minor flicks like Jungle Girl (1944),
Nabonga (1945), A Night in Paradise (1946), The Red House (1947), Tap Roots (1948), Task Force (1949),
Return of the Frontiersman (1950), and The Fat Man (1951). All the while, she kept her $19-a-week job
at the department store. In 1947, she married radio announcer Jack Webb. When Jack came up with
“Dragnet’: a boob-tube success, in 1950, Julie retired to raise two daughters, Lisa and Stacy. The marriage
ended in divorce in 1953.
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The following year, Julie met songwriter (“Daddy,” “Route 66,” “The Meaning of the Blues”) and jazz
musician Bobby Troup. “I met Julie when she came to see me at the Club Golden Celebrity Room; said
Troup, to Liberty Records author “Doc Rock.” “I was stricken. I thought she was wonderful. I thought,
God, I’d like to marry her. I didn’t know who she was, but I thanked her for coming to see me. She said,
‘I didn’t come to see you, I came to see your guitarist.’ “Later that night she sang “Little Girl Blue.” “I just
couldn’t believe it! That anyone that pretty could sing, because beautiful women usually don’t have that
much talent.”
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At the least, Bobby encouraged her singing endeavors and made arrangements with Waronker’s newly
formed Liberty label that would culminate in the haunting “Cry Me a River”–which Julie crawled through
in the rock flick The Girl Can’t Help It (1956)–as well as scads of titillatingly covered, breathy LPs: Julie
Is Her Name (1955), Lonely Girl (1956), Calendar Girl (1956), About the Blues (1957), The End of the
World (1963), and The Wonderful World of Julie London (1963).
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“Julie was a fixture at Liberty Records. She really was Miss Liberty, because before Julie was on it, Liberty
Records was nothin’,” said Troup, to “Doc Rock.” Before her retirement, London recorded and decorated
30-plus albums for Liberty, the only label that would ever legally bear her name. Julie, according to “Doc
Rock” Kelley, “did not get royalties for her record sales. She was on a flat fee for six years. She made about
$50,000 a year, plus any money she made herself in clubs or films.”
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During the’50s and early ’60s, Julie made numerous appearances for such TV fillers as the “Zane Grey
The atre” and “Adventures in Paradise,” fleshing out the role of a dangerous blackjack queen in “Laramie.”
For five years in the ’70s, London was a regular, Nurse Dixie McCall on ABC-TV’s “Emergency,” a notable
Saturday night favorite. Interestingly enough, the series was produced by Jack Webb, her ex-husband,
and co-starred Bobby Troup, her then-current mate, as Dr. Joe Early.
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In answer to the circulating Triva Pursuit question: Only two musicians are heard accompanying Julie on
her hit: Barney Kessel (guitar) and Ray Leatherwood (bass). Each was paid the minimum session fee of
$10 an hour, for the three hours needed to create “Cry Me a River, “S’ Wonderful,” and two other tunes.
As for, who was Arthur Hamilton, the songwriter of “Cry Me a River”–the answer: an old school chum of
London’s who later wrote GLORIA LYNN’s one-moment, “He Needs Me,” and Peggy Lee’s “Sing a Rainbow,”
a tune introduced in Jack Webb’s Pete Kelley’s Blues (1955).