Volume Two - Sweet And Simple

On 11th July, 1999, Helen Forrest died of heart failure at the Motion Picture Country Home & Hospital in Los Angeles - she was 82. Thus 'The Voice Of The Big Bands', which sustained many a grieving heart through the later Depression years and the Second World War, was stilled forever. Born Helen Fogel on 12th April, 1918, in Atlantic City, her childhood was not a happy one. Her father had died in the great influenza epidemic which rampaged through America in the year of her birth, and her mother's subsequent remarriage resulted in a stepfather best confined to fiction. Published in 1982, her autobiography (actually co-written with Bill Libby), "I Had The Craziest Dream", chronicles the sad story. The family moved to New York and Helen eventually found refuge with a neighbour. Her natural singing talent surfaced and in her later teens it enabled her to make some kind of living working with local bands and performing on radio.