"Like the singer and songwriter Bobby Darin, with whom she was romantically involved until her father chased him off with a gun when she was in her late teens..."

"... Ms. Francis reached out beyond her teenage audience, recording material that made her a natural in Las Vegas as well as in nightclubs like the Copacabana in New York. She was also a sought-after entertainer on television variety shows. She briefly tried performing before teenage audiences, but she found that she did not care for the experience. 'I always remember receiving much more applause from teenagers when I was introduced than at any other time during the show — especially after my closing number,' she wrote in her memoir. 'After my name was announced and the squeals of delight subsided, it was downhill all the way.'"

From "Connie Francis, Whose Ballads Dominated ’60s Pop Music, Dies at 87/Ms. Francis, who had a natural way with a wide variety of material, ruled the charts with songs like 'Who’s Sorry Now' and 'Where the Boys Are.'"

Here she is, sublimely out of style in 1969 (on "The Ed Sullivan Show"):

It's perfectly lovely to be square. She was adored on TikTok just this past year.

"Sixty-four years ago, Connie Francis recorded 'Pretty Little Baby' as one of dozens of songs in a marathon recording session..."

"... that yielded three albums within two weeks. It did not, at the time, feel like a song that had the makings of a hit, so it landed on the B-side of the 1962 single... that was released in Britain. Since then, it was more or less overlooked. Then came TikTok... Over the last few weeks, 'Pretty Little Baby' has been trending on the social media app — it has been featured as the sound in more than 600,000 TikTok posts and soared to top spots in Spotify’s Viral 50 global and U.S. lists — bolstered by celebrities and influencers, like Nara Smith, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian and her daughter North, who have posted videos of themselves lip-syncing to it. The ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog used the song for a clip on TikTok in which she said Ms. Francis had long been her favorite singer...."

From "As ‘Pretty Little Baby’ Goes Viral, Connie Francis Is Joining TikTok/With a forgotten song becoming an unlikely hit, the 87-year-old singer is happy to be back in the spotlight" (NYT).

Interviewed, Francis said she didn't even remember recording the song, but, listening to it now, she pronounced it "cute." I remember when that kind of thing was the current music...

"Like, there's two old white dudes... the latter of whom I've *never* heard of...."

I want to quote something written by Christopher Adams, "Court Jester of CrossWorld," guest-blogging this morning at Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, but I've got to put it after the jump because it reveals answers — who are these old white dudes? — that you won't want to know if you've not yet completed the Saturday puzzle and you care about it.

I don't know how old Adams is, but it's the usual stance over there, guest-blogger or no, to disparage the puzzle for skewing to the knowledge base of the old. Anyway, here's a (long!) sentence that focuses on the long answers in the middle of the puzzle:

Like, there's two old white dudes (LON CHANEY and DAVE CLARK, the latter of whom I've *never* heard of, and doubt most solvers my age or younger will know) anchoring those downs, along with PUNISHERS, which...eh, it's not the worst as far as roll-your-own -ER(S) forms go, and by definition *something* has to be the worst entry here, and it's perfectly serviceable in terms of holding the rest together (especially the across entries, which were much more fun comparatively speaking), but nobody's writing home about PUNISHERS.

The clue for "punishers" was "Disciplinarians, at times." The problem with that is that it's not much of a word, just one of those concocted words you can make with the power of the suffix "-er." And when you do that, you're a concocter! See how easy — and dumb — it is?

Now, let's get to the old white dude that Christopher Adams has never heard of. The clue was: "British pop star with more 'Ed Sullivan Show' appearances than the Beatles." Now, the clue tips you off that this performer is going to be at least mildly surprising. The Beatles are supremely famous, and their going on "The Ed Sullivan Show" is the most famous thing about "The Ed Sullivan Show." But Ed had his favorites, his repeat performers, and they were a lot more available than The Beatles.

If you were to ask me to name a performer who was on Ed's show more than The Beatles, I'd be the exclaimer of the name of a mouse: Topo Gigio. I looked it up and see that Topo Giogio comes in second only to a comedy duo I barely remember, Wayne & Schuster. W&S were on the show 58 times. The cute little mouse puppet was on 50 times. The musical performer who was on the most was an opera singer, Roberta Peters (41 times).

But the crossword clue narrows it down to British pop stars. It wouldn't really take that much to beat the Beatles, who were very conspicuous but only did the show 9 times. The answer was tricky for me because, even though I loved the British invasion and watched Ed Sullivan every week in those days, the clue suggests a solo performer, and the act was called The Dave Clark Five. Consequently, even when I had "CLARK" filled in and 4 blanks in front, I was racking my brain trying to think of a British pop star with the last name "Clark." (Petula Clark has too many letters, and Gene Clark was not British.)

So the clue was misleading. When it comes to groups, of course, I know The Dave Clark Five. There was a time when people discussed the question whether The Dave Clark Five were better than The Beatles — kind of a warm-up to the decades-long question whether The Rolling Stones were better than The Beatles. Anyway, The Dave Clark Five were on "The Ed Sullivan Show" 18 times, and NPR informs us that this was "more than any other rock, pop or R&B artist."

I question that assertion. Was Connie Francis not a pop star? She was on 26 times. Here she is doing "You Make Me Feel So Young" (in a way that might make you feel so old).

And here are The Dave Clark Five in one of their "Ed Sullivan Show" appearances. That's Dave on the drums, the only one of The Five who didn't have to do that ridiculous wide-stance bounce for the entire song: