I’m writing this blahg which will be incomplete. I’ve been trying to find more information about the subject but my research has come up short. Be forewarned, this is yet another blahg inspired by continued interest and research on Frank Sinatra. This harkens back to 1939 and forward in time but I can’t find an end date. Confused? So am I.
Yes, the topic at hand today is Miss Regina Hassock of 1947 but her true name is Marie Carroll or Margie Carroll or Marion Carroll depending on what you read and when you read it. I’ll get into a bit of an explanation soon enough but after almost two months of research here are the bullet points I’ve managed to put together:
Marie Carroll (aka Marion Carroll and Margie Carroll)
from Charleston, WV
sang with Jan Savitt, Johnny Long, Bob Strong, Bob Chester
March 1939 torch singer
1939 limited time with Harry James
December 3, 1943 married Jack Cancelmi – she was with Art Farrar Orchestra
March 1944 with Maurice Spitalny’s Orchestra & married to Jack Cancelmi (drummer in Brad Hunt’s band) but separated by June 1944
March 14, 1944 Marie Carroll no longer with Spitalny but article on March 21, 1944 said they had patched up differences and were together again
June 1944 no longer with Spitalny
October 1944 solo
December 1944 with Bob Strong
January 1945 with Bob Strong – Victory Spotlight of Bands
April 1946 still with Bob Strong
March 1947 voted Miss Regina Hassock
So, how did I get onto Marie Carroll? Part of it starts with a photo. This photo:
That photo is really just an illustrated version of this photo:
(At right: Frank Sinatra sings on a James broadcast from Roseland Ballroom in New York – July 1939. The girl seated on the bandstand is vocalist Margie Carroll.) (2)
Note the (2) after the description. Here’s what that references:
(2) Identification of the girl singer, Margie Carroll, who is also in the picture with James and Sinatra from Roseland Ballroom comes from George T. Simon’s review of the James band at Roseland in Manhattan in the summer of 1939. That review appeared in the September 1939 issue of Metronome. Bernice Byers, sang with the James band before Ms. Carroll, and Connie Haines, who joined the James band in early May of 1939, performed in that role after that. Ms. Carroll was evidently subbing for Ms. Haines at the time this photo was taken.
George T. Simon had referred to her again as “Margie” Carroll. The following excerpt is from the book “Simon Says The Sights And Sounds Of The Swing Era 1935-1955″ The Best Writing of George T. Simon”:
MONDAY – Interesting visitors at the office today. Guy Smith and Jimmy Campbell of Jan Savitt’s band dropped in to say hello. Then came Terry Allen, who’s now singing with Clinton, with a very pretty Miss Parker. Romance Dept.? Wonderful guy, modest as they come, that Allen! Just before closing Bud Elliot and Dave Faulkner of the Modem Rhythm Corp. stepped in with some ideas anent a radio show. Sounds good. Discussions of records, etc., on small stations. . . . Then supper and to a preview of Columbia Record Corp. radio show. Harry James featured. Some good ideas. Johnny Hammond supposed to m. c., but he was on coast making Goodman records. Afterwards a whole bunch of us went to Roseland to catch more of Harry. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a gal got up on the stand and started to sing with the band. Sounded fine. Everybody impressed. Found out her name was Margie Carroll; she’d been singing with Paul Martel at the Arcadia. Wouldn’t be surprised if Harry took her. That Harry Gomez name, by the way, is beginning to stick! . . . Before going to bed I dropped in at the New Yorker to see Seger Ellis and wife (Irene Taylor) and band, there on a one-nighter. That Choir of Brass idea is fine. Banifs rhythm section was weak, but Seger was already looking for a new drummer and pianist.
The fact that Simon referred to her as Margie Carroll doesn’t help us. I wanted to learn more about Marie or Margie Carroll but information is very sparse. I tried turning to the BandChirps website, https://bandchirps.com/, but they have no entry for Marie Carroll. The only mention of Marie Carroll on the BarndChips site is in the entry on Harry James, https://bandchirps.com/band/harry-james/:
James and his new orchestra debuted in February 1939 at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia. Bernice Byres served as its first female vocalist. Byres remained with the band until at least early April, with Connie Haines having taken over by June. James had heard Haines rehearsing at a music publishing office and hired her. He soon became dissatisfied with Haines, however, and she was gone by September, replaced by Marie Carroll, who herself was gone by the end of that month. James didn’t immediately hire anyone to replace Carroll, telling Down Beat magazine “we do not use a girl singer because everyone we’ve had yet has been unsatisfactory, and until we find one who stacks up as strong as the band, we won’t worry.”
So who was Marie Carroll? Where did she come from? What happened to her? Those are questions that remain to be answered. All of the bullet points I listed earlier come from newspaper and magazine articles. We know she was with Harry James in the summer of 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in New York and for a short period of time with James at the New York World’s Fair in August of 1939. The only listing I could find for her prior to being with Harry James in 1939 was an entry in The Miami Herald from February 15, 1939 where she was appearing at the Sweepstakes Club and being billed as a “Torch Singer”:
I’m assuming that the Torch Singer is the same Marie Carroll. There was also an actress and a dancer around that time with the same name but are definitely not the same person. I couldn’t find any other entry for Marie Carroll for 1939 or even before that year.
Details such as her having sung with Jan Savitt, Johnny Long, Bob Strong came from later articles in 1943, 1944 and 1946. The following article references an appearance of Marie Carroll with King Cole’s Orchestra in Shamokin, Pennsylvania in March of 1946. It mentions some of the other bands she has been with before that :
I had to work backwards from this article and try to pick up even earlier threads. From March of 1944, I found a reference to Marie Carroll getting married:
So she was married and was with the Maurice Spitalny Orchestra. I worked back a little more and found reference to the marriage and a few more details:
The above article was from December 2, 1943 and at that time she was with Art Farrar’s Orchestra and we learned that she’s from Charleston, West Virginia. Obviously, Marie left Art Farrar after that to take the position of singer with the Maurice Spitalny Orchestra. Here’s an article from January 31st, 1944 that explains how she ended up with Spitalny:
The marriage to Jack Conselmi and her association with Spitalny ended by summer of 1944. By June 26th, 1944 it was being reported that Conselmi and Marie Carroll had separated and she was no longer with Spitalny’s band:
Two articles ran a week apart in March of 1944, the first on the 14th and the second on the 21st, suggesting there was a problem in the Spitalny Orchestra with Marie Carroll. The first detailed the split:
The second article, the following week, suggests they’ settled their differences:
As we know, from the June 1944 article announcing her separation from Cancelmi, she was also gone from Spitalny’s orchestra.
We next pick up Marie Carroll’s information in December of 1944 with an advertisement for the Bob Strong Orchestra at Lakeside Park in Dayton, Ohio on December 9th of that year. And guess who his female vocalist is?
Her stint with Bob Strong can be tracked from this December 1944 advertisement to listings with Bob Strong into April of 1946. It’s with the Bob Strong orchestra that we are able to now hear Marie Carroll sing. A month after the December 9th appearance at Lakeside Park, the Bob Strong Orchestra, with Marie Carroll, appear on the The Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands broadcast of January 9, 1945. This radio program survives and from it are three vocals of Marie Carroll with Bob Strong’s band, “Strange Music”, “Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”, and “Embraceable You”:
Strange Music:
Her Tears Flowed Like Wine:
Embraceable You:
I do not believe that Marie Carroll went into the studio and recorded any vocals with Bob Strong or any other orchestra with which she had been associated over the years. At least I couldn’t find any. In addition to The Victory Parade of Spotlight Band broadcast there are some other remotes that have survived of Marie Carroll with Bob Strong. These have been collected on the CD “Bob Strong & His Orchestra 1944-45” on the Circle Records label:
I have ordered a copy of this CD but it hasn’t arrived yet so I don’t have any liner notes to post here. Someone has posted Marie Carroll’s tracks on YouTube but they are referenced to “Marion Carroll,” which is how she might have been listed on the CD. Marie/Marion’s songs are “You Was Right, Baby!”, “This Is It”, “Love Letters”, “I Wish I Knew”, and “Out of This World”:
The above five songs plus the three from The Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands are all of the available vocals I have discovered for Marie/Margie/Marion Carroll. It’s really a shame because she has a nice voice and really sells her ballads and can really swing on songs like “This Is It.”
The only other highlight of her time with the Bob Strong Orchestra was that she married again in July of 1946. DownBeat magazine noted her marriage:
I could find nothing else about Marie Caroll’s marriage to Al Yost. The only other significant item about Marie Carroll during her time with Bob Strong was a report in the February 15, 1945 DownBeat that Marie Carroll was being courted by Hollywood:
I tried to run this down but there’s no reference to any Hollywood activity our output by Marie Carroll. Maybe the screen test didn’t amount to anything.
The next, and final piece of information, that I could find about Marie Caroll was a report that she had become Miss Regina Hassock of 1947. This article appeared in the Radio & Appliance Journal of April 1947. You can click on it to view a larger article.
In March of 1947, the Radio Retailing magazine had also mentioned that Marie Carroll was Miss Regina Hassock for that year:
That same edition of Radio Retailing also featured a full page spread with a photo of Marie Carroll as Miss Regina Hassock:
The only other take away from this is that at some point she had been with the Bob Chester Orchestra.
That’s it! Any other information I could find related to advertisements of appearances with the Bob Strong Orchestra but nothing to say what happened after being crowned Miss Regina Hassock! I could find no obituary or anything else detailing her later life. I even tried searching for Al Yost who we know was a tenor saxophone player. There was an Al Yost who ran Yost Home Improvements in Pittsburgh after retiring as a tenor saxophone player. Is this the same Al Yost? You can learn about Al and his company, which continues on, even after his death, from the following website: https://yosthomeimprovements.com/yost/our-story/?utm_source=al%20yost%20music%20page&utm_medium=our%20story%20link&utm_campaign=yosthomeimprovements.com. Here’s a significant excerpt:
Our story first began in 1961 when Albert Yost Sr. retired from the Coast Guard Band after playing the tenor saxophone for 20 years. Albert, originally from Pittsburgh, and his wife Catherine, from Brooklyn, decided to stay in the area and grow roots for themselves and their five children. With Albert’s knack for home repairs, opening a home improvement company was a natural choice.
The Yosts quickly turned their home into company headquarters. During the early days, Albert oversaw projects while Catherine fielded calls and stayed on top of paperwork. It also wasn’t unusual for Catherine to prepare full course meals for the crew. Soon the Yost’s two sons Albert Jr. and George joined the company, eventually taking it over in 1983.
I use the word “significant” because these notes say his wife’s name was Catherine and she was from Brooklyn. If this is the same Al Yost then Marie Carroll had moved on from him at some point and Al Yost made a great life with Catherine.
So what happened to Marie Carroll? I don’t know!!! Maybe the CD I’ve ordered might have some details in the liner notes but beyond that, I’ve exhausted myself trying to find out what happened to her. If anyone knows or if anyone wants to take up the search and continue where I left off, please let me know. If I find out more, you know there’s going to be another blahg.
I’m writing this blahg which will be incomplete. I’ve been trying to find more information about the subject but my research has come up short. Be forewarned, this is yet another blahg inspired by continued interest and research on Frank Sinatra. This harkens back to 1939 and forward in time but I can’t find an end date. Confused? So am I. 
