Kitty Kallen | Phila.-born singer, 94

Kitty Kallen, 94, the silken-voiced pop singer who sang with some of the most popular big bands of the 1940s - including groups led by Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, and Harry James - and who achieved her biggest success as a solo artist with the 1954 chart-topping hit "Little Things Mean a Lot," died Thursday at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

A onetime child radio star in her native Philadelphia, Ms. Kallen grew into a singer who evinced an expressive style on both sweet and bluesy numbers. Her rise was also propelled by a comely appearance, and she was often introduced as "Pretty Kitty Kallen."

She was in her teens when she was touring and recording with the venerated trombonist-bandleader Jack Teagarden, whom she regarded as her most important mentor.

After she replaced Helen O'Connell as Dorsey's thrush in 1943, Ms. Kallen became one of the best-known female singers in the nation.

Ms. Kallen, who was Jewish, left for the James outfit in early 1944, in part because of what she told James biographer Peter J. Levinson was Dorsey's anti-Semitism.

She counted her years with James, a celebrated trumpeter, as some of the most rewarding of her professional life. "Working with Harry wasn't work," she told Levinson.

She also performed in nightclubs such as the Copacabana in New York and concert halls including the Palladium in London, and she appeared with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour TV variety show.

The ascendance of rock-and-roll and her struggles with a vocal-cord problem largely sidelined her by the late 1950s. One of her last songs in the top 20 was "My Coloring Book" in 1962.

She began singing publicly at 12 or so, when she won first prize - a camera - in an amateur-hour singing contest. She said her father refused to believe that she had won and punished her - until neighbors came around to congratulate her.

She did commercial jingles and sang on The Children's Hour, a popular radio program sponsored by the Horn & Hardart cafeteria chain. Ms. Kallen soon had her own program on the Philadelphia airwaves.

Survivors include her son, Jonathan Granoff, a lawyer who lives in Bala Cynwyd and is president of the New York-based Global Security Institute; and three grandsons. - Washington Post