Ruth Wallis sings "Senorita What's Her Name" on De Luxe 1111.<br /><br />Ruth Wallis was born in Brooklyn on January 5, 1920.<br /><br />The young Wallis was a student of piano, voice, and dance. She began her career by singing with bands, one of which belonged to Isham Jones.<br /><br />She became a nightclub vocalist. In 1941 she sang at New York City's Hotel Forrest.<br /><br />Wallis began her career singing jazz and cabaret standards, but gained fame in the 1940s and 1950s for her suggestive songs.<br /><br />One hit was "Dear Mr. Godfrey," a song about his public firing of Julius La Rosa.<br /><br />She sang with a studio orchestra and often took on an accent for songs about characters from other countries. <br /><br />She married Hy Pastman. <br /><br />Ruth Wallis sang lyrics that were considered suggestive, naughty, and risqué. These satirical songs were full of saucy innuendoes and double entendres.<br /><br />Wallis wrote her own material, including one song that sold 250,000 copies and became her theme--"The Dinghy Song." It tells of a sailor who possessed "the cutest little dinghy in the Navy." <br /><br />She recorded her first song in 1948 for well-known labels but soon established her own in Linden, New Jersey. The company was the Wallis Original Record Corporation.<br /><br />Wallis recorded into the '60s and released a pair of live albums, one each on Mercury and King.<br /><br />Wallis died on December 22, 2007, in South Killingly, Connecticut. She had Alzheimer's disease.
