Betty Johnson was born on 16 March 1929 in Guilford County, N.C. As a child, Johnson traveled throughout the South as a member of the Johnson Family Singers, a gospel and popular music group. Betty Johnson's solo career as a pop-standard and cabaret singer took off in 1954 when she joined the Csida-Grean management company. Throughout the 1950s, Johnson recorded songs, appeared on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club radio show, and performed on various television shows. From 1957 to 1962 she was a cast member of Jack Parr's in New York, N.Y. Betty Johnson stopped performing in 1964 when she married New York City investment banker Arthur Gray Jr. and moved to New Hampshire. In 1993, Johnson re-entered show business with a cabaret act at The Oak Room at The Algonquin Hotel in New York. In the mid-1990s, she launched her own record label, Bliss Tavern Records, based in Haverhill, N.H., which distributes new and re-released records by Betty Johnson, her daughters Lydia and Elizabeth Gray, and the Johnson Family Singers. Tonight Show The collection consists of manuscript and published orchestral scores of popular songs; drafts and an audiobook version of Betty Johnson's autobiography, ; a complete discography; a small amount of correspondence, chiefly between Betty Johnson and her brother Kenneth Johnson regarding acquisition of rare recordings for deposit into the Southern Folklife Collection; commercially produced music recordings of Betty Johnson's singles, albums, demonstration samples, associated compilations, and a few radio programs featuring Johnson; and published non-fiction books, chiefly regarding popular music and the performing arts, that mention or relate to Betty Johnson. In Her Own Words
