Johnson, Betty, 1929-

Betty Johnson was born on 16 March 1929 in Guilford County, N.C. As a child, Johnson was a member of the Johnson Family Singers, a gospel and popular music group that included her father Jesse Deverin ( Pa ) Johnson, mother Lydia Florence ( Ma ) Craven, and her three brothers, Kenneth Marshall Johnson and twins Bob and Jim Johnson. The family had a contract with WBT AM radio, a CBS affiliate in Charlotte, N.C., from 1938 to 1951.

Betty Johnson embarked on a solo career as a pop-standard and cabaret singer in 1952, and joined the Csida-Grean management company, which also handled the careers of Eddy Arnold and Bobby Darin, in 1954. After recording songs with Columbia Records (1951-1952), Bell Records (1954), and RCA-Victor Records (1955), Johnson moved to Chicago, Ill., to appear on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club radio show. The show led to a contract with the small record company Bally Records, on which she released her first hit song, I Dreamed, in 1956. Throughout the late 1950s, Johnson performed on television on the Ed Sullivan Show, Eddy Arnold Time, and as a spokesperson for Borden milk, before joining the cast of Jack Parr's Tonight Show in New York, N.Y., from 1957 to 1962. In 1957, Johnson signed a contract with Atlantic Records and recorded the Billboard chart-topping song Little Blue Man and several other hits with the label.

Betty Johnson was married three times. In 1949, she married Dick Redding and had a son, Harold Richard ( Dicky ) Redding; the couple divorced in 1954. In 1957, Johnson married the producer Charles Grean; the couple divorced in 1961. In 1964, after marrying New York City investment banker Arthur Gray Jr., Johnson stopped performing and moved to New Hampshire to raise a family and attend college.

In 1993, Johnson re-entered show business with a cabaret act at The Oak Room at The Algonquin Hotel in New York City. The performance, and a subsequent interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, galvanized renewed public interest in Johnson's music. In the mid-1990s, Johnson launched her own record label, Bliss Tavern Records, based in Haverhill, N.H., which distributes new and re-released records by Johnson, her daughters Lydia Gray and Elizabeth Gray, and the Johnson Family Singers.

From the guide to the Betty Johnson Papers, 1947-2012, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Folklife Collection.)