Background
She was born in the New York borough of The Bronx.
She was born in the New York borough of The Bronx.
As a child, she appeared on The Children"s Hour, a television show locally aired in New New York Sponsored by Horn & Hardart, a cafeteria chain which had locations in New York and Philadelphia. She later became a singer and dancer with the United Service Organizations and joined big band orchestras such as those of Sammy Kaye, Johnny Dee, and Larry Fontaine.
In 1953 she signed with Coral Records, but had no hits for them, later switching to Fraternity Records, a small company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, in early 1955.
lieutenant was for Fraternity that she had her only major hit, "Ivory Tower", which was her third record for Fraternity. She never again had another big hit, though in 1959 she had two small successes for Roulette Records.
She recorded one single for Smash Records in 1961, which was a more mature song, but went back to recording teenage popular on Laurie Records in 1962. She moved to Radio Corporation of America to record a number of albums of standards, before Laurie released her final single in 1967.
Her first LP was reissued on Dot Records in 1966.
In spite of her age, at the time of her 1956 hit Carr recorded a lot of high school popular, not moving on to more mature songs and standards until her popular career was all but over. The Civil Defense age saw an unofficial release of selected singles which showed her preference to seem younger than she was and did not include her attempts at more mature songs.