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Connie Haines, a popular dark-haired "Big Band" singer, was petite (under 5 feet tall) but had a powerful voice that won over many fans during the swinging war years. She performed alongside Frank Sinatra in the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands, known for her cool, doll-like vocals, trembling vibrato, and lively, rhythmic style. Of her more than 200 recordings, 25—including "Let's Get Away From It All" and "Friendship"—sold over 50,000 copies. Her classic singles ranged from the torchy "Stormy Weather" and "My Man" to the sweet innocence of "Snooty Little Cutie" and "Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy," as well as the vibrant "Let's Choo Choo Choo to Idaho."
Born Yvonne Marie Antoinette JaMais on January 20, 1921, in Savannah, Georgia, she adopted the stage name Connie Haines to fit better on theater marquees when she joined Harry James' band. Raised in Jacksonville, Florida, from age five, she began performing encouraged by her mother, a music and dance teacher. After winning a dance contest, she performed for Rotary and Kiwanis clubs and, by age nine, was known on radio as "Baby Yvonne Marie, the Little Princess of the Air," accompanied by her own 30-piece orchestra. Around this time, she survived a near-fatal case of rheumatic fever.
As she won more talent contests, she became a teenage sensation and appeared on Fred Allen's radio show. At 18, she joined Harry James, then Tommy Dorsey's band in 1940. During this era, she famously duetted with Sinatra on songs like "Oh, Look at Me Now" and "You Might Have Belonged to Another." By 1942, she secured a regular singing role on the Abbott and Costello radio show, where her initial 13-week contract was extended to four years. She was in demand on many popular radio programs, including those hosted by Kay Kyser, Hoagy Carmichael, and Skitch Henderson.
During World War II, Connie and other popular vocalists entertained film audiences with specialty numbers in lighthearted musicals designed as escapist or patriotic morale boosters. In 1944's Moon Over Las Vegas and Twilight on the Prairie, she sang alongside singer-songwriter and later adult "Mousketeer" Jimmie Dodd, co-starring in the latter musical western. That year, she also appeared in A Wave, a WAC and a Marine, performing "Time Will Tell" and "Gee, I Love My G.I. Joe." In 1950's Duchess of Idaho, starring Van Johnson and Esther Williams, she acted and delivered a memorable rendition of "Of All Things."
Her final film appearance was in the 1954 romantic musical short Birth of a Band, where she performed standards like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "I've Got the World on a String." A deeply religious woman, she formed a gospel quartet in the 1950s with singer Beryl Davis and Hollywood stars Jane Russell and Rhonda Fleming, scoring a hit with the 1954 song "Do Lord."
Connie continued performing in nightclubs, cabarets, and revivals for decades, despite facing serious health challenges, including cancer that led to a double mastectomy in 1984 and a 2002 car accident causing two broken vertebrae in her neck. She retired in 2006 at age 85. Throughout her career, she performed for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.
Known as the "Nightingale from Savannah," she was married and divorced twice. Her first marriage, to WWII flying ace Robert De Haven in 1945, produced a son, Robert Jr., and a daughter, Kimberly. Her second marriage was to bandleader Del Courtney from 1966 to 1972. Connie passed away at 87 in Clearwater, Florida, from myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disease. She was survived by her children and her mother and manager, Mildred, who was 109 at the time of Connie's death on September 22, 2008.
