SUZUKI, PAT

Homebase: Seattle, WA.
Stats: (b. 1930)
Pat Suzuki (born Chiyoko Suzuki, September 22, 1930, Cressey, CA)is a popular singer and actress, who is best known for her role in the original Broadway production of the musical Flower Drum Song. A few months after the United States entered World War II, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt forced the Suzuki family and more than 110,000 other Japanese American residents of the U.S. Pacific coast states, to evacuate their homes and enter American concentration or detention camps. The Suzukis were sent to the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado. During the early 1950s, she attended college at San Jose State University. After moving to New York, she obtained a part in a touring production of the play, The Teahouse of the August Moon. She subsequently secured a singing gig in a Seattle nightclub named The Colony Club (4th Avenue & Virginia Street) where she enjoyed a long run. Suzuki also performed outdoors at the Green Lake Aqua Theatre, and cut some demonstration tapes with Joe Boles in his West Seattle home studio. It was in 1957 that the Northwest's greatest singing star, up until that time period, Bing Crosby, attended one of her shows at the Colony and he helped her obtain a recording contract with RCA Victor.She recorded several albums for RCA Victor, including the 1958 album titled The Many Sides of Pat Suzuki. She also appeared on several national network television programs, including The Frank Sinatra Show on ABC. Her recordings and television appearances helped her land a lead role in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway production of the musical Flower Drum Song in 1958. Suzuki's rendition of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" is deemed to be the definitive recording. In 1960 Suzuki was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category, for her album "Broadway '59." Also in that year she married photographer Mark Shaw; they soon had a son, David, but divorced two years later. Suzuki's haunting studio rendition of "How High the Moon" is featured in the motion picture Biloxi Blues during the opening credits. The recording first appeared as part of her self-titled LP (RCA Victor LPM-2030 and LSP-2030) in 1959. Throughout the 1970s, Suzuki appeared regularly on stage. In 1999, Taragon Records released The Very Best of Pat Suzuki on compact disc. Her original LPs were on display in the Northwest Passage gallery at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Suzuki continues to sing and act on stage in small and major venues such as Lincoln Center. She has actively supported Asian American civil rights.