Sue Thompson, who after more than a decade of moderate sucess as a country singer found pop stardom in the early 1960s with hook-laden novelty hits like 'Sad movies (Make me cry)' and 'Norman', died on Thursday, 23rd September 2021, at the home of her daughter and care-giver Julie Jennings, in Pahrump, Nevada. She was 96. Her son, Greg Penny, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease.
With a clear, somewhat girlish voice that brought sass to humorous ditties but that could also be used to good effect , Ms Thompson was part of a wave of female vocalists, like Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, who had hits in the late 50s and early 60s.
Her breakthrough came when she was paired with the songwriter John D.Loudermilk, who wrote her first big hit, 'Sad movies', a done-me-wrong tune about a woman who goes to a movie alone when her boyfriend says he has to work late, only to see him walk in with her best friend on his arms.
'Sad movies (Make me cry') got to # 5 at Billboard's Hot 100 on 23rd October 1961. Four months later, with another Loudermilk song 'Norman', in which she turned that rather unglamorous male name into an earworm ('Norman, Norman my love', Ms Thompson cooed in the chorus, surrounding the name with ooh and hmms) went even higher getting to # 3, on 24 February 1962.
Thompson never made the Top 10 again. Her follow-up to 'Norman' was a ballad, 'Have a good time', a song, by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, Tony Bennett recorded a decade earlier. It reached # 30 on 21st July 1962. Before 1962 was over, Mr Loudermilk wrote an elopement novelty, 'James (Hold the ladder steady)' which got to # 17 on 20 October 1962.
The 1964 British Invasion soon eclipsed this kind of light fare, but Ms. Thompson had one more pop success with Mr. Loudermilk’s “Paper Tiger” which got to # 23 on 6 February 1965.
In 1966 she traveled to Vietnam to entertain the troops. Because she was accompanied by only a trio, she could go to more remote bases than bigger U.S.O. acts, exposing her to greater danger.
“Tonight we are at Can Tho, a huge American air base,” she wrote to her parents. “You can see the fighting (flashes from guns), hear the mortars, etc.” “We’re fairly secure most of the time,” she continued, “but must be aware that things can pop right in our midst.” The trip left her shaken. “A heartbreaking — and heartwarming — experience,” she wrote. “I will never be the same. I saw and learned unbelievable things.”
Mr. Penny said that his mother was ill for weeks afterward, and that she long suspected that she had been exposed to Agent Orange. She underwent a sort of awakening, he said, becoming a vegetarian and developing an interest in spiritual traditions, Eastern as well as Western.
Despite becoming ill after the first trip, she went on other tours to entertain troops, including one in 1967, the next year, on which Mr. Penny, just a boy, accompanied her. They traveled to Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and elsewhere. Vietnam had also been on the itinerary, but that part of the trip never happened. “I remember getting the communication while we were on the road in Okinawa,” Mr. Penny said in a phone interview. “They said it was just too dangerous.”
When Ms. Thompson returned to performing stateside, she also returned to country music, releasing a number of records — including a string recorded with Don Gibson — and leaving behind the little-girl sound of her hits.
“I don’t want to be ‘itty bitty’ anymore,” she told The Times of San Mateo, Calif., in 1974, when she was already 49. “I want to project love and convey a more mature sound and a more meaningful message.” Country music, she said, was a better vehicle for that because “country fans pay more attention to what is being said in a song.”
Eva Sue McKee (she picked her stage name out of a phone book) was born on 19 July 1925, in Nevada, Mo. Her father, Vurl, was a labourer, and her mother, Pearl Ova (Fields) McKee, was a nurse. In 1937, during the Depression, her parents moved to California to escape the Dust Bowl, settling north of Sacramento. When she was in high school the family moved again, to San Jose.
As a child Ms. Thompson was entranced by Gene Autry, and she grew up envisioning herself as a singing cowgirl. Her mother found her a secondhand guitar for her seventh birthday, and she performed at every opportunity as she went through high school.
In 1944 she married Tom Gamboa, and while he fought in World War II, she had their daughter, Ms. Jennings. She also worked in a defense factory, Mr. Penny said.
Her wartime marriage ended in divorce in 1947, but her singing career soon began in earnest. Ms. Thompson won a talent show at a San Jose theater, which led to appearances on local radio and television programs, including those of Dude Martin, a radio star in the Bay Area who had a Western swing band, Dude Martin’s Roundup Gang.
In the early 1950s she became the lead vocalist on a TV show that Mr. Martin had introduced in the Los Angeles market, and she cut several records with his band, including, in 1952, one of the first versions of the ballad “You belong to me.” Later that year it became a hit for Jo Stafford, and in the 1960s it was covered by the Duprees.
Ms. Thompson and Mr. Martin married in December 1952, but they divorced a year later, and Ms. Thompson soon married another Western swing star with his own local TV show, Hank Penny. That marriage ended in divorce in 1963, but the two continued to perform together occasionally for decades.
The country records Ms. Thompson made on the Mercury label in the 1950s never gained much traction, but that changed when she signed with Hickory early in 1961. “Angel, Angel,” another ballad by the Bryants, garnered some attention — Billboard compared it to the Brenda Lee hit “I Want to Be Wanted” — and then came “Sad Movies.”
That breakthrough hit was something of an accident. In a 2010 interview on the South Australian radio show “The Doo Wop Corner,” Ms. Thompson said she recorded it only after another singer had decided not to. “I inherited the song,” she said, “and I was really happy and excited when it turned out to be such a hit for me.”
Even before her pop hits Ms. Thompson was a familiar sight on stages in Nashville and Nevada as well as on the country fair circuit, and the hits made her even more in demand in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Nev., and elsewhere.
Gravitating between country and pop came easily. “Most popular songs actually are country-and-western songs with a modern instrumental background,” she told The Reno Gazette-Journal in 1963.
Ms. Thompson said her favorite among the songs she recorded was “You belong to me.” About a decade ago, when she was in her 80s, Greg Penny, a record producer who has worked with Elton John and other top stars, recorded her singing the song to a guitar accompaniment. Carmen Kaye, host of “The Doo Wop Corner,” gave the demo its radio premiere during the 2010 interview, Ms.Thompson still sounding sweet and clear.
Her fourth husband, Ted Serna, whom she had known in high school and married in 1993, died in 2013. In addition to Ms. Jennings and Mr. Penny, she is survived by eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Ms. Jennings, in a phone interview, told about a time when her mother, on tour in Vietnam, asked to visit soldiers in the infirmary who couldn’t come to her stage show. One badly injured young man, when introduced to her, said, “I don’t give a darn who’s here; I just want my mama.” Ms. Thompson sat with him for a long while, asking all about his mother, helping him conjure good memories.
“Three years later,” Ms. Jennings said, “my mother was working in Hawaii, and he brought his mother in there and introduced her to my mom.”
Neil Genzlinger for The New York Times on 28 September 2021.
