Sunday, 9 July 2023

Diana Trask

Here's a Song Thrush from way down under...If you like your lady singers with a bit of oomph ! and volume then this could be the gal for you !!..She tackles 12 standard classic songs...she certainly doesn't seem to be in the obscure category....even tho' this is the first time I have heard her !
Diana Roselyn Trask (born 23 June 1940) is an Australian-born country and pop singer. In the early 1960s she was a regular pop music performer on United States TV shows, Don McNeill's Breakfast Club and Sing Along with Mitch. From 1968 to 1981 she was a country music singer in the US and in Australia. In the US, she had eighteen singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, where her top 20 hits are "Say When" and "It's a Man's World (If You Have a Man Like Mine)" (both 1973), "When I Get My Hands on You" and "Lean It All on Me" (both 1974). In January 1962 she married Thom Ewen, a Connecticut businessman, to become Diana Ewen. In the 1980s Trask withdrew from performing to look after Ewen, who had had a stroke: he subsequently died in 2009. Trask co-authored her autobiography, Whatever Happened to Diana Trask: A Memoir, with Alison Campbell Rate, on 1 May 2010.
Trask sang from an early age, performing at school functions and for her family. In August 1949 she won the Under 10 Solo Girls category at the Lilydale Eisteddfod. At 16, she received formal vocal lessons from her mother. She became a part of a singing group...Trask won a talent show, TV Quest, in 1957. She signed with Lee Gordon as her promoter. Her first two singles were "Going Steady" (1958) on W&G and "Lover Is Another Name for Fool" (1959) on Gordon's Leedon label. Gordon arranged for her to open for international visitors, including Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., who each toured Australia in early 1959.Acting on encouragement from Sinatra and Davis, Trask relocated to the United States. In August 1959 she debuted as a jazz singer at New York City's Blue Angel club. She became a regular on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club TV show and appeared as a dancer and singer on Jack Benny's TV show. Mitch Miller gave her a recording contract in 1960 with Columbia Records and also a regular spot on his TV show, Sing Along with Mitch.Trask released two albums, Diana Trask (1961) and Diana Trask on TV (1962), via Columbia, which were geared towards the pop market but neither was successful. After Miller's show was cancelled in 1964 Trask and Ewen moved to Melbourne to continue her career. She appeared regularly on In Melbourne Tonight on GTV-9 during that year. In 1965 she hosted her own 13-week TV variety programme, Di Trask Show, with Ewen as producer for the same channel. According to Nan Musgrove of The Australian Women's Weekly it "wasn't all that popular here but sold like hot cakes overseas in 26 countries."

In the 1980s Trask withdrew from performing to look after Ewen, who was incapacitated following a stroke: the couple lived on a yacht and cruised the Caribbean until Ewen's health began to fail in the late 1980s. From 2006 the couple lived in Woodbine GA until Thom Ewen died in 2009, after which Trask resided in nearby St. Mary's. Trask co-authored her autobiography, Whatever Happened to Diana Trask: A Memoir, with Alison Campbell Rate, which was published on 1 May 2010.......( Info Edited From Wikepida )

1. It Might As Well Be Spring
2. Little Girl Blue
3. Spring Is Here
4. My Funny Valentine
5. By Myself
6. Spring Never Comes

1. Hello Young Lovers
2. Let's Fall In Love
3. I Hear Music
4. The Gypsy In my Soul
5. Let's Face The Music And Dance
6. Temptation


         12. Temptation

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