At age ten, Sommers sang Your Cheating Heart on a Buffalo television show and won a prize for her performance.[citation needed] The family moved to California when she was 14.[citation needed] As a student at Venice High School in Los Angeles, she sang at school dances. By the time she was 18, she appeared on the television series 77 Sunset Strip and sang a duet with Edd Byrnes (Kookie's Love Song) and on a solo album (Positively the Most!).[citation needed]
Sommers was a popular singer during the 1960s. In 1962, she reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the single Johnny Get Angry, released on Warner Bros. Records. (Will Ryan wrote and produced a sequel song, Johnny Got Angry, for Sommers during the 1990s.)[citation needed] She also charted with One Boy from the musical Bye Bye Birdie, which reached #54 in 1960, and When the Boys Get Together, a #94 single in 1962.[citation needed] She appeared on numerous television shows as a singer and as an actress, and acted in two films: Everything's Ducky (1961) and The Lively Set (1964).[citation needed]
Sommers was a game show contestant during the 1960s on such shows as Everybody's Talking, Hollywood Squares, You Don't Say, and The Match Game, as well as a performer on Dick Clark's Where the Action Is, Hullabaloo, and other variety shows of the period.[citation needed]
In the early 1960s, she sang It's Pepsi, For Those Who Think Young in commercials, and she came to be referred to as "The Pepsi Girl".[citation needed] Years later, uncredited, she sang Now You See It, Now You Don't, Oh, Diet Pepsi for the sugar-free companion product.[citation needed]
Her 1965 track, Don't Pity Me (Warner Bros. 5629 - Don't Pity Me / My Block), became a huge Northern Soul hit in the UK and still fills the dance floors whenever played.[citation needed] The latter song "My Block" was written by Jimmy Radcliffe, Bert Berns and Carl Spencer and had previously been recorded by Clyde McPhatter on his "Songs Of The Big City" Album and by The Chiffons, Recording as The Four Pennies On Rust Records.
In the early 1970s, she withdrew from the music scene in favor of a family life. She began making public appearances again during the 1980s, including two appearances on KCRW's satirical radio program, The Cool & the Crazy, hosted by Art Fraud (Ronn Spencer) and Vic Tripp (Gene Sculatti). [edit] Album Discography 1959: Positively the Most! 1961: Joanie Sommers 1962: Look Out! It's **Joanie Sommers **(with Bobby Troup and Shelly Manne) 1962: For Those Who Think Young 1962: Johnny Get Angry 1962: Let's Talk About Love 1963: Sommers' Seasons 1964: Softly, the Brazilian Sound 1965: Come Alive! 1982: Dream 1988: Tangerine 1992: A Fine Romance 2004: Here, There and Everywhere!
