''Connie Francis sings Jewish Favorites'' is a studio album of

Jewish songs Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

recorded by American entertainer

Connie Francis Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero (born December 12, 1937), known professionally as Connie Francis, is an American pop singer, actress, and top-charting female vocalist of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Called the “First Lady of Rock & Roll” ...

Background

After the success of her 1959 album ''

Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites ''Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites'' is a studio album recorded by American singer and entertainer Connie Francis. Background The album consists of traditional Italian and Neapolitan songs (e. g. '' Santa Lucia'') as well as then-current ...

'' (which remained on the album charts for 81 weeks and peaked at number four), Francis decided to release more albums which appealed to immigrant communities in the United States. In July 1960, Francis was in Hollywood for the interior shots of her first motion picture ''

Where The Boys Are ''Where the Boys Are'' is a 1960 American CinemaScope comedy film directed by Henry Levin and starring Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, and Frank Gorshin. It was written by George ...

'' which made it impossible for her to record the album during live sessions at

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

's famous Abbey Road Studios in London, as she had done with ''Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites''. Hence, the playbacks to these songs were pre-recorded in London under the supervision of Francis' British producer

Norman Newell Norman Newell (25 January 1919 – 1 December 2004) was an English record producer, who was mainly active in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also the co-writer of many notable songs. As an A&R manager for EMI, he worked with musicians such as Shi ...

, and were conducted by Brian Fahey. The tapes containing these playbacks were shipped to Hollywood, where Francis

overdubbed Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

her vocals. According to Ron Roberts, all the recording dates and titles included in the 1975 edition of his series of Connie Francis discographies were faithful copies of sessions logs compiled at the time by Connie herself. The entire Jewish album was recorded at EMI's Abbey Road studios, together with her preceding release, ''Connie Francis Sings Spanish & Latin American Favorites'', and the subsequent album ''More Italian Favorites''. It was the last album that could not be completed during the July sessions, and final tracks by Connie were cut in September 1960. Francis, who had grown up in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood in

Newark Newark most commonly refers to: * Newark, New Jersey, city in the United States * Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey; a major air hub in the New York metropolitan area Newark may also refer to: Places Canada * Niagara-on-the ...

, spoke

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

fluently and was familiar with songs in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, which prompted her to record the songs either entirely in Yiddish or Hebrew or bilingually, with a few lines sung in English.Connie Francis: ''Who's sorry now'', St. Martin's Press, London 1984 The album was originally released in October 1960 under the catalogue numbers E-3869 (mono pressings) and SE-3869 (stereo) on MGM Records. The album consisted of 12 songs, although 13 playbacks had been produced. However, conflicts with Francis' busy schedule of filming, recording for other markets and public appearances led to her not overdubbing vocals for her rendition of " Eli, Eli". According to Ron Roberts, Francis did record "Eli Eli" in London during the Jewish album sessions and it had not been deferred because of other schedules. The backing track to this and several tapes of Connie's London sessions were discovered in the EMI vaults when the MGM Records label was taken over by Polydor. Francis eventually utilised the backing track in 1983 when she recorded a new vocal.

Track listing

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Connie Francis sings Jewish Favorites Connie Francis albums 1960 albums MGM Records albums Jewish music albums Hebrew-language albums Yiddish-language albums Yiddish-language mass media in the United States Albums conducted by Brian Fahey (composer)