Patti Page - Early Life

Early Life

Page was born Clara Ann Fowler on November 8, 1927, in Claremore, Oklahoma, (although some sources give Muskogee, Oklahoma). She was born into a large and poor family. Her father worked on the MKT railroad, while her mother and older sisters picked cotton. As she related on television many years later, the family went without electricity, and therefore she could not read after dark. She was raised in Hardy, Muskogee and Avant, Oklahoma, before attending Daniel Webster High School in Tulsa, from which she graduated in 1945.

Fowler became a featured singer on a 15-minute radio program on radio station KTUL, Tulsa, Oklahoma, at age 18. The program was sponsored by the "Page Milk Company." On the air, Fowler was dubbed "Patti Page," after the Page Milk Company. In 1946, Jack Rael, a saxophone player and band manager, came to Tulsa to do a one-night show. Rael heard Page on the radio and liked her voice. Rael asked her to join the band he managed, the "Jimmy Joy Band." Rael would later become Page's personal manager, after leaving the band.

Page toured with the "Jimmy Joy Band" throughout the country in the mid-1940s. The band eventually ended up in Chicago, Illinois, in 1947. In Chicago, Page ate with a small group led by popular orchestra leader, Benny Goodman. This helped Page gain her first recording contract with Mercury Records the same year. Page became Mercury Records' "girl singer."