Thanks to Tacky Raccoons for turning me on to today’s delightful/terrible find.

You may recall I once posted about Florence Foster Jenkins. In that same spirit of terrible performances that make me laugh, I bring you Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. The main difference between FFJ and this cacophonous pair is that these two were in on the joke. They described themselves as a musical comedy double act. The duo was actually American conductor Paul Weston and his wife, the glorious singer Jo Stafford.

According to the internet, Weston, who worked for Columbia Records at the time, first assumed the role of a bad lounge pianist in the mid-1950s as a way of entertaining guests at Hollywood parties. I can see that being a lot of fun. He was eventually pressured into recording an album when a couple of his colleagues at Columbia heard him perform at a sales convention in 1956. He managed to talk his wife into joining him, and thus was born Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. Even after the release of their first album, they managed to keep their identities a secret until Time Magazine outed them in 1957. The pair recorded a total of five albums, the last released in 1982. That album contained their now-famous version of the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive.

There is nowhere to follow the long-dead artists, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for more gems from them. Enjoy!