Career
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Lanson was a band singer with Francis Craig"s dance band in the late 1930s. He became a singing star when major bandleader Ray Noble hired him as his orchestra"s "boy singer". Noble and Lanson appear together in three Soundies musical films produced in 1941.
Lanson made additional Soundies as a solo artist in 1944.
National Broadcasting Company"s popular Your Hit Parade radio programs featured Frank Sinatra, who left the series in 1950. Snooky Lanson was chosen to replace him, and Lanson became one of America"s first television stars when Your Hit Parade came to television in July 1950.
Lanson remained with the series through 1957. After Hit Parade ended, he performed in nightclubs and on local television shows in Atlanta and Shreveport.
He guest-starred in 1958 on The Gisele MacKenzie Show, MacKenzie having been a co-star with Lanson on Hit Parade.
In 1961, he was one of five rotating hosts on the National Broadcasting Company-television program Five Star Jubilee. In January 1960, Crossroads television Productions videotaped a pilot in Springfield, Missouri for a proposed popular music-variety series called Snooky Lanson Time. Guests were Brenda Lee, the Anita Kerr Singers, Betty Ann Grove and Paul Mitchell"s instrumental combo.
From 1967 on he lived in Nashville, where he sang at tea dances and similar functions, had a syndicated radio show that played big-band music, and sold cars and outdoor advertising.
He reunited with his Your Hit Parade co-stars for five episodes of the Family Feud game show. Lanson died in 1990 at age 76 in New New York
