Jackie Ward
| Robin Ward | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jacqueline McDonnell |
| Also known as | Jackie Ward |
| Born | 1941 (age 75–76) Hawaii, USA |
| Genres | Pop, TV theme songs |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Voice |
| Years active | 1954–1979 |
| Labels | Dot Records |
| Associated acts | Ray Conniff Singers |
Robin Ward (born 1941) is an American singer, regarded as a "one-hit wonder" due to her 1963 million-selling smash "Wonderful Summer"; however, she was also a session singer under her real name, Jackie Ward. Her voice can be heard in several popular U.S. television series and motion pictures since the 1950s.
Jacqueline McDonnell was born in 1941 to a military family in Hawaii (her father served in the US Navy) and raised in Nebraska. Her first public singing performances were with her two sisters in a Nebraska church - she was eight years old at the time. After the trio won a national talent search run by Horace Heidt, they moved to Los Angeles to look for work in the music industry.
At the age of 13 she was hired by television station KTLA to sing on a Your Hit Parade-like program, Bandstand Revue, in which she sang popular hits for four years as part of the house singing ensemble. After she parted ways with KTLA, she started a career of singing in demo recordings for various LA-based songwriters and session singing for several California-based record companies and producers. One result of her session work was the recording for her voice singing the "La la la" parts in Pat Boone's last million-selling single, "Speedy Gonzales", in 1962 (Elton John stated that the "hook" in his best-selling single "Crocodile Rock" was inspired by his listening to Ward's vocal on "Speedy Gonzales").
In 1963, songwriter-producer Perry Botkin, Jr. needed a session singer to make a demo recording of "Wonderful Summer", a song that he wrote with his co-writer and co-producer, Gil Garfield. Botkin may have been looking for a Lesley Gore sound-alike, and he found her in Jackie. A now-married Ward agreed to record it in Gold Star Studios. After an experiment in which Botkin sped up the recording by wrapping splicing tape around the capstan of the recorder, he and Ward agreed that the finished recording (with bird and surf sound effects added) would not be just a demo but a recording to be released as a 45 revolutions-per-minute single.
...
Wikipedia