By Jason J. Marchi, Courier Correspondent:
Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Harry James. Any of these names ring a bell? To Beatrice McCarten, those names are as close to her as those of her own family, for she’s been singing their songs since she was a girl.
Although Bea is 86 today and her voice is a bit “husky” as she describes it, when she grabs the microphone and sings the pop tunes of the swing era like “It Had to Be You,” “Don’t Blame Me,” and “I’ll Be Down to Get You in a Taxi Honey,” she still has a voice that can light up the room.
“I never smoked, so maybe that has something to do with it,” Bea says.
And of those old tunes, she still has the lyrics of hundreds of them stored in her head, ready to spill out when the band strikes up.
“Someone asked me, ‘How can you remember all those song lyrics?’ I don’t know. I just do,” she says with a simple shrug of her shoulders. “It’s my passion. Music is my life.”
Bea’s love for music began when she acted in school plays while growing up in Fair Haven.
“When I was 12, my father was in minstrel shows, so asked him if I could join him and he said, ‘Do you think you’ll be able to sing with all those people?’ I said, ‘I think so,’” Bea explains.
After a successful debut singing an Alice Faye number, Bea’s father introduced her to local swing bandleader Guy Masella.
“After Guy heard me sing he invited me to join his band. It didn’t pay much money in 1947, probably $8 a night. And that’s how I started,” Bea recalls.
The more Bea sang before live audiences, the more she knew she’d found her purpose in life and when she found herself singing with Guy’s band at the Seven Gables Town House on Crown Street in New Haven, she felt she’d arrived.
“Oh, this was the big time, we got three nights a week,” she says with a laugh. “We [the band members] got $39 each for three nights, and we thought that was really something in 1947 and ‘48. I was just thrilled to be singing.
“I sang once with Guy’s big 12-piece orchestra at the Goff Street Armory for a Yale graduation dance,” she continues, “and I had on a blue knit gown with my blonde hair. I said to myself, ‘Doris Day, it doesn’t get any better than this.’ I figured I’d arrived, because when you sing with a 12-piece orchestra, it’s like heaven.”
Never one to read sheet music, Bea says she worked closely with Masella and pianist Freddy Beans to find her key, memorizing all the standard songs of the time, and when she learned that Bing Crosby couldn’t read sheet music either “I felt much better,” she says.
After nearly a decade with Masella’s band, “I semi-retired when I had my daughter in 1954,” Bea says, yet she never lost her desire to sing with a band again.
That chance arrived in the 1970s when Masella made plans to start playing again.
“He called me up and asked me if I was ready to go back. I said ‘I sure am!’ But then he got a brain tumor and died so it never materialized.”
Bea says she misses the fellows from the band, having lost touch over the years. And while the piano player, Freddie Beans, passed on some years ago, Bea hopes she’ll be able to reunite with the other members: Marty Ferro on saxophone, drummer Joe Gans, and bass player Sam.
“I can’t remember Sam’s last name,” Bea admits.
As beautiful a voice as Bea has, she has advice those whose who can’t sing on key.
“Sing anyway,” she says. “Don’t think you have to be me or anybody else. If you want to sing a song that sounds good to you, sing it. If you’re off key, who cares? I think everyone should sing. I tell everybody to sing in the shower, nobody will hear you anyway.”
Even though Bea has sung the songs of the great bandleaders from the 1930s and 1940s all her life, the only famous band leader she met in person was Tommy Dorsey when she was in New York City to hear Frank Sinatra sing.
“I was one of the original Bobby Soxers,” she says of the term used to describe the young, female fans of Old Blue Eyes.
Yet Bea’s greatest inspiration was the great Sammy Davis, Jr.
“He said he felt so good giving through his songs, and I feel blessed to have been able to bring that kind of joy to others,” she says. “I couldn’t live without that. I think if the music were gone, I’d be gone. Music has been my whole life.”
Pictured: After 74 years singing in front of audiences, East
Haven resident Beatrice McCarten still sings for her fellow seniors at
the East Haven Senior Center every Monday–“I’m like Sammy Davis, Jr.
Just turn on a light and I start singing,” she says.
Photo by Jason J. Marchi
To nominate a person of the week, contact Jason Marchi at j.marchi@shorepublishing.com or call 203-245-1877 x 6166.