Gone Gal

When Cab Galloway first heard Toni Harper, he paid her the highest compliment in the Galloway scale. "That little gal," said he solemnly, "is real gone."

However real she is gone, Toni Harper is obviously going further. A dreamy, fidgety little girl of ten, Toni is one of Hollywood's about-to-be-discovered wonders. Columbia Records will shortly release her first two records, and last week she was signed up for a Hollywood musical.

When she patters to the center of a stage, smooths down her dress, poises her small hands like a tiny coffee-colored ballerina, and starts out on a husky, whispery ballad, she seems only a step away from being a Maxine Sullivan or an Ella Fitzgerald. In the records she has made for Columbia, the words sound like jived-up Mother Goose. Sample:

I'm nine years old but I'll soon, be twenty-four. I'm nine years old but I'll soon be twenty-four. The man I marry gotta own a candy store. . . .

The words were written specially for her, to an old blues tune,* but otherwise the musicians make no concessions to her age. Toni doesn't need any. Her breathy voice is grownup, her phrasing fresh, and her rhythm as good as if she had been singing since the birth of the blues.

Toni got her rhythm naturally. Her mother was once in the Cotton Club chorus, has always wanted her kids in show business. And her father, a redcap at Los Angeles' Union Station, owns a roomful of hot records--Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan. "Daddy likes to riff," says Toni sternly. "'Sometimes he keeps us awake all night." But two years ago, Toni began riffing, too.

One day, M-G-M Dance Director Nick Castle, who runs a school for professional children on the side, heard her improvising on Waitin' for the Train to Come In. He gave her a part in a Christmas revue. Toni stole the show. Later, she appeared in stage shows with Cab Galloway and a broadcast with Eddie Cantor.

Between shows and trips to the studio, Toni likes to skip rope, ride bicycles, and listen to the Lone Ranger. She is not much impressed by her singing and is cool when her father insists on playing her records for visitors ("I just like to sing. It sounds pretty to me, that's all"). At school, where she always gets As or Bs, no one else is much impressed either. Since she tends to syncopate even her school songs, her teachers don't ask her to sing solo. But Toni doesn't care. "School songs," says she, "is corny."

*Sent for You Yesterday, Here You Come Today.

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