Frankie Vaughan

Born as Frank Abelson on 3 February 1928 in Liverpool, Frankie Vaughan grew up the son of Jewish immigrants. He adopted the stage surname Vaughan after his grandmother, whose Russian accent turned the phrase “my little one” into something that sounded like Vaughan. As a youngster he joined the National Association of Boys’ Clubs, an organisation he supported for the rest of his life through repeated donations. At fourteen he received a scholarship to the Lancaster College of Art and began performing with a dance band, though he had initially hoped to pursue boxing; much of his service in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II was in fact spent in the ring.

After the war he resumed studies at the Leeds College of Art, where a prize-winning design for a furniture exhibition stand took him to London. There he entered a radio talent contest that launched his professional career in entertainment. He first appeared in variety theatres, presenting song-and-dance routines while dressed in top hat, tails and carrying a cane—the very picture of an Edwardian gentleman. He toured briefly with the Nat Temple Band before securing a solo contract with Philips Records. His earliest successes were cover versions of American hits—“Istanbul,” “Happy Days and Lonely Nights,” “Tweedledee” and “Seventeen”—each of which reached the top twenty. Although it never became a major seller, “Give Me the Moonlight” turned into his signature number, delivered with an expansive grin and a high kick at the close of every line.

Vaughan finally scored his first substantial hits at the close of 1956, when “Green Door” climbed to number two; the follow-up, “The Garden of Eden,” reached number one in January 1957. Several further singles—“Man on Fire,” “Wanderin’ Eyes,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” and the collaboration with The Kaye Sisters, “Gotta Have Something in the Bank Frank”—kept him in the charts throughout 1957. Unaffected by the rise of rock and roll, he remained one of the decade’s most consistent traditional vocalists and returned to the top in 1961 with his second number-one hit, “Tower of Strength.” His first charting album was the 1959 live recording Frankie Vaughan at the London Palladium. Although he devoted increasing time to non-performance projects during the 1960s, he still registered occasional hits, among them the top-ten single “There Must Be a Way” in the summer of love, 1967.

Those outside interests included work with troubled youths on the Easterhouse estate on the edge of Glasgow. He received the OBE in 1965 and continued mainly theatrical engagements until 1985, when a near-fatal attack of peritonitis struck after he appeared in a Drury Lane revival of 42nd Street. He never fully withdrew from public life, accepting the CBE in 1996, but major heart surgery three years later was followed by his death on 17 September 1999.