Don't Pity Me - Joanie Sommers

About Joanie Sommers

At age ten, Sommers sang Your Cheating Heart on a Buffalo television show and won a prize for her performance. The family moved to California when she was 14. As a student at Venice High School in Los Angeles, she sang at school dances. By the time she was 18, she appeared on the television series 77 Sunset Strip and sang a duet with Edd Byrnes (Kookie's Love Song) and on a solo album (Positively the Most!).

Sommers was a popular singer during the 1960s. In 1962, she reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the single Johnny Get Angry, released on Warner Bros. Records. (Will Ryan wrote and produced a sequel song, Johnny Got Angry, for Sommers during the 1990s.) She also charted with One Boy from the musical Bye Bye Birdie, which reached #54 in 1960, and When the Boys Get Together, a #94 single in 1962. She appeared on numerous television shows as a singer and as an actress, and acted in two films: Everything's Ducky (1961) and The Lively Set (1964).

Sommers was a game show contestant during the 1960s on such shows as Everybody's Talking, Hollywood Squares, You Don't Say, and The Match Game, as well as Dick Clark's, Where the Action Is.

In the early 1960s, she sang It's Pepsi, For Those Who Think Young in commercials, and she came to be referred to as "The Pepsi Girl". Years later, uncredited, she sang Now You See It, Now You Don't, Oh, Diet Pepsi for the sugar-free companion product.

Her 1965 track, Don't Pity Me (Warner Bros. 5629 - Don't Pity Me / My Block), became a huge Northern Soul hit in the UK and still fills the dance floors whenever played.

In the early 1970s, she withdrew from the music scene in favor of a family life. She began making public appearances again during the 1980s, including two appearances on KCRW's satirical radio program, The Cool & the Crazy, hosted by Art Fraud (Ronn Spencer) and Vic Tripp (Gene Sculatti).