Felicia Sanders

1922 – 7 February 1975

Felicia Sanders (1922 – 7 February 1975) was a singer of traditional pop music.

She was born Felice Schwartz in Mount Vernon, New York and, in the 1940s sang both with big bands and on the radio, based in Los Angeles, California. She stopped singing to get married, but was bored with stay-at-home life, and in 1950 returned to singing, in a nightclub in Hollywood, Café Gala. She was heard there by Benny Carter, who thought enough of her to recommend her to Mitch Miller, Columbia Records' artist and repertory director. She was picked, in 1953, by Columbia's biggest orchestra leader, Percy Faith, to sing a vocal on a song he was recording, taken from the film, Moulin Rouge, a biographical film about Toulouse-Lautrec.

The song, known as "The Song from Moulin Rouge," was recorded on January 22, 1953 and released by Columbia with the credits shown as "Percy Faith and his Orchestra featuring Felicia Sanders." She had been paid only union scale and her name appeared below Faith's in small letters, but she had a hit. The song reached #1 on all the record charts, and was to be her biggest success.

Just before the record was released, she was hired by New York's famous Blue Angel nightclub, and she played there for a long time, being the first singer to do the song "In Other Words (Fly Me to the Moon)," although she did not record it until several other singers had done so.

Miller kept finding other songs to have her sing, but only one other cracked the Top 30: "Blue Star," based on the theme from a well-known television series, Medic.

She died of cancer at the age of 53.

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