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| Baby Pam in the recording studio (1953) |
In 1953, seven-year-old Baby Pam was already an experienced trouper. Before her debut as a singer with such catchy little items as "My Daddy Gave Me Choo Choo Trains for Christmas and Now He's Having Fun.", she was an accomplished drummer with a troupe of six-year-old musicians called The Rhythm Babies, who entertained Middle Western television audiences over a Chicago station. The Rhythm Babies broke up two years before during a legal wrangle over which tot was the leader of the band.
In 1953, the trend of recording young and very young artists has been noted generally with sympathy by various magazines and music trade papers. A little less moved by the junior performances, a columnist from New York wrote:
They sing (if that is the word) not to other children but to adults. Not since the days of Shirley Temple, Bobby Breen and Baby Rose Marie have tiny tots and teenagers commanded such an impressive part of America's craze-ridden, fad-conscious entertainment industry.
On television, radio and records they are lisping and sighing, screeching and crying their way through such musical gems as "Too Old for Toys, Too Young for Boys," "My Daddy is in Korea and Mommy Cries All Day," "Three and Four is Eight," and "God Bless Us All."
The youngsters ‒ Jimmy Boyd, 14, "Brucie" Weil, six, Gayla Peevey, eight, Baby Pam, seven, Charlie Applewaite, 13, and several implausibly named little dears, Molly Bee, six, Texas Sunshine Ruby, nine, Sonny Boy, five, Nelly Honey, of Missouri, seven, and Kansas Pete, who is alleged to be three ‒ now fill the airwaves from New York to San Francisco with their piping renditions of the latest of Tin Pan Alley's vocal nightmares.
The most curious aspect of all this is that people are prepared to pay enormous sums for what many consider to be sheer punishment.More potential punishment for your pleasure here
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