What do Daisy Mae (in the '59 movie) and Red Hot Riding Hood have in common? Imogene Lynn. Imogene Lynn was a popular vocalist of the Big Band era, heard on records by Ray McKinley, Artie Shaw and others. Born in Trenton, Missouri, she began her professional career in 1940, singing with Emerson Gill and several "Society Bands," playing the national tour of hotel ballrooms and night spots. In 1942, she moved to Los Angeles along with her husband, musician Mahlon Clark, who had a pretty good career of his own playing the clarinet. There, she went to work for McKinley and sang lead vocals on "Big Boy" and "Who Wouldn't Love You" for Capitol Records, both top-selling tunes. Two years later, she went to work for Shaw where she sang on his million-selling rendition of "Accentuate the Positive" for RCA. She toured with Shaw for several years and later went on to be the female vocalist for the MerryMacs, then for the Starlighters.
From the mid-forties on though, her main career was as an anonymous studio singer and as a dubber of non-singing actresses. She sang for Mona Freeman in Mother Wore Tights and Isn't It Romantic?, for Loretta Young in Mother Was a Freshman and, yes, she dubbed Leslie Parrish when she played Daisy Mae in Li'l Abner. And that's her you hear as Little Red Riding Hood (aka Red Hot Riding Hood) in several Tex Avery cartoons. Ms. Lynn passed away in February of this year at age 80.