Thursday 29 December 2011

valentines day flowers delivery - Big-band singer had vast fan base

valentines day flowers delivery
Big-band singer Marilyn Beckman Niles, who performed on Columbus TV shows and in central Ohio clubs and dinner theaters, is being remembered for her effervescent singing.

Best-known under her stage name, Marilyn Daye, Niles died on Monday in Naples, Fla. She was 85.

“She was very bubbly, very upbeat,” said Jim Roberts, a friend and former Columbus resident who lives in Florida.

“Marilyn was a popular big-band songstress who had her own fan base from years back.”

She launched her career at 17 with the Don Crawford Orchestra when Crawford played the Ionian Room of the Deshler-Wallick Hotel. She was the featured vocalist with the band until 1950.

In 1946, she was one of six winners in a nationwide Tommy Dorsey talent contest. Later, she performed with Chuck Selby’s big band and the WBNS Studio Band and was heard regularly on WBNS radio’s Date With Daye and Song Shop broadcasts.

In the 1970s, she formed the Capital City Jazz Band and performed regularly at the Dell in German Village.

Daye, also known as “Mrs. Spook,” continued to perform in central Ohio into the 1980s, appearing with the Marilyn Daye Band in 1988 as part of Upper Arlington’s summer Music in the Park series.

She was the wife of Frederick “Spook” Beckman, the Columbus disc jockey and TV personality who died in 1986. She later married Ralph Niles.

Even after the death of Beckman, whom she got to know as his assistant on his TV show, Niles continued to make appearances in support of his many charity efforts for underprivileged kids, such as Spook’s Santa Claus Zoo.

She spent her retirement singing with keyboardist Day Keane in the Marilyn and Dan Duo. They gave their last performance on valentines day flowers delivery in Naples, Fla.

Niles was among the performers honored in 1995 at the first enshrinement of the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame.

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