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Marlene Ver Planck was born Marlene Paula Pampinella on November 11, 1933 in Newark, New Jersey. She grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald on the radio and started singing at age 19., working with Tex Beneke and Charlie Spivak in the Fifties, the latter band is where she met her husband, composer, arranger and conductor Billy Ver Planck.

Her first big break came in 1955 at the age of 21 when she teamed up with pianist Hank Jones, flutist Herbie Mann, trumpeter Joe Wilder, bassist Wendell Marshall and drummer Kenny Clarke and recorded I Think Of You With Every Breath I Take for Savoy Records. Singing went on to sing with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in New York City and after Tommy’s death pursued studio work with Sinatra, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Blood Sweat & Tears and Kiss.

Marlene’s voice was recognizable by millions of people outside the jazz world doing jingles in the ’60s: “Weekends were made for Michelob… Yeah!”, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!” and “Mmm good, mm-mm good, that’s what Campbell’s Soups are/mm mm good.” After thousands of commercial jingles and hours and hours of studio session work in New York, she decided to settle down with her husband in their house in Clifton, New Jersey and began performing and recording together.

They would go on to work with composer Loonis McGlohon, Alec Wilder, Mel Torme, Eileen Farrell, Glenn Miller Orchestra, George Shearing and Marian McPartland among others. Over the course of her career she recorded two-dozen albums and appeared on several television shows.

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