Sweet & Simple [ORIGINAL RECORDINGS REMASTERED]

Sweet & Simple [ORIGINAL RECORDINGS REMASTERED]

• Music

On 11th July 1999, Helen Forrest died of heart failure at the Motion Picture Country Home & Hospital in Los Angeles, she was 82. Thus 'the voice of the big bands', which sustained many a grieving heart through the later depression years and the Second World War, was stilled forever. Born Helen Fogel on 12th April 1918 in Atlantic City, her childhood was not a happy one. Her father died in the great influenza epidemic which rampaged through America in the year of her birth, and her mother's subsequent remarriage resulted in a stepfather best confined to fiction. Published in 1982, he autobiography (actually co-written with Bill Libby) 'I Had The Craziest Dream', chronicles the sad story. The family moved to New York and Helen eventually found refugee with a neighbour. Her natural singing talent surfaced and in her later teens it enabled her to make some kind of living working with local bands and performing on radio.