Damita Jo

Before Damita Jo was a Janet Jackson album, she was a recording artist. Her top 40 career consisted entirely of answer records, for her follow up to I’ll Save The Last Dance For You was a song called I’ll Be There, an answer to Stand By Me. Besides her two top 40 records she had Keep Your Hands Off Of Him, in 1961, and If You Go Away, presumably the Jacques Brel song, in 1967. She is listed in Whitburn under J, suggesting that Jo is her surname, which it isn’t, her surname was DeBlanc, though it’s arguable whether Damita Jo should be her first names, like Donovan or Melanie, but doubled, or whether, in fact, she would be Ms. Jo.

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Damita Jo:

• I’ll Save The Last Dance For You – An answer record, obviously, to Save The Last Dance For Me, and reassuring in a feeble kind of way. What about the other dances? From the winter of 1960 / 1961