Eddy Howard

Mild romantic balladeer Eddy Howard was a huge name in the 1940s and early '50s. Reeling off a few dozen hit singles in the post-war years, he rarely went uptempo or derivated from good-natured paeans to heart-to-heart bliss. Howard left Stanford Medical School in the early '30s to join Dick Jurgens' band as a vocalist, and recorded eight hits with Jurgens in 1939 and 1940. During this era, he also made some small-band jazz sides under John Hammond's auspices at Columbia; Teddy Wilson and Charlie Christian were among the musicians who supported him at these sessions. By 1941, Eddy had started his own band, and hit the jackpot with a number one single in 1946, "To Each His Own." "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons," "My Adobe Hacienda," "I Wonder, I Wonder, I Wonder," "Room Full of Roses," "Sin (It's No Sin)," and "Auf Weidersehn Sweetheart" were some of the biggest smashes he enjoyed prior to the mid-'50s, when the emergence of rock & roll displaced him from the airwaves. He was a fixture on the casino circuit when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1963.