Margie Day
| Margie Day | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Margaret Hoffler |
| Also known as | Margie Day Walker |
| Born |
April 6, 1926 Norfolk, Virginia, USA |
| Died | September 18, 2014 (aged 88) Norfolk, Virginia |
| Genres | Rhythm and blues, pop music |
| Years active | 1945-47, 1950-64, 1968-69 |
| Labels | Coed, Dot, Decca, Atlantic, RCA, others |
Margie Day (born Margaret Hoffler, April 6, 1926 – September 18, 2014), later Margie Day Walker, was an American R&B singer who had success in the 1950s and 1960s.
Margaret Hoffler was born and brought up in Norfolk, Virginia, one of the four children of Kemper Hoffler and his wife Ledora. She grew up listening to the gospel, opera, swing and jazz records bought by her brothers or played on the radio, and took piano lessons.
After graduating from high school, she went to Virginia State College to study music, but soon decided that that was not what she wanted. She returned home to work in a cafeteria at a local military base, where she met a soldier who played piano, and occasionally sang with him. He introduced her to local musician Luther Wilson, whose band she joined in 1945. After a few months she relocated to New York City, and began singing at a lounge in Newark, New Jersey. During this period she began using the stage name Margie Day. She joined a vocal quartet, "Four Bars and a Melody", and recorded a single, "Near You", with them on the Savoy label in 1947. Shortly afterwards, she married and returned to Norfolk to have a baby.
In early 1950, she was approached by the Griffin Brothers, a popular local band, and accepted an invitation to join them. She sang with them in Virginia and North Carolina before they received a recording deal with Dot Records. Their first record billed together as Margie Day with the Griffin Brothers Orchestra, "Street Walkin' Daddy" / "Riffin' With Griffin", became a # 7 hit on the Billboard R&B chart in late 1950, with sales reportedly reaching over fifteen thousand copies a week. The follow-up record was "Little Red Rooster" (unrelated to a Willie Dixon song with the same title and, by Day's account, written by Kay Griffin with help from Day herself), which reached # 5 on the R&B chart in early 1951. Billboard's review stated: "Thrush packs a load of oomph in this tangy up blues, with okay combo boogie in back." She toured widely with the group in 1951 and 1952, and they released several other singles on the Dot label including "Sadie Green", "I'm Gonna Jump In The River", "The Clock Song (Let Your Pendulum Swing)", and "Pretty Baby", her last entry in the R&B top ten. The group also featured singer Tommy Brown.
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