April Stevens, singer who had a huge hit with her version of Deep Purple – obituary

April Stevens, who has died aged 93, was a singer whose career was dominated by one song, the sentimental 1930s jazz standard Deep Purple, with which she topped the US charts in 1963 with her brother, Nino Tempo.

It had been covered by a panoply of artists, from Bing Crosby to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – and even the avant-garde jazz great Sun Ra – but it was the two siblings who took it to No 1 in the US the week before the assassination of President John F Kennedy. It went on to sell more than a million copies and won the pair a Grammy.

She was born Caroline Vincinette LoTiempo on April 29 1929 at Niagara Falls, New York, to Italian immigrants Samuel, a grocer, and Anna, née Donia. Her brother Antonino followed in 1935, and he was the first to make inroads into show business, singing with the Benny Goodman Orchestra before he was 10 years old.

The family moved to Los Angeles to further his ambitions – he went on to play saxophone for acts such as Bobby Darin – and she attended Belmont High School before establishing her own musical career.

Taking the stage name of April Stevens, she had a string of releases in the 1950s, taking Cole Porter’s I’m In Love Again into the Top 10 in 1951. Later in the decade came Teach Me Tiger (co-written by Nino), whose mildly suggestive lyric and Je t’aime-style heavy breathing saw it spurned by most radio stations – though in 1983 it was used by Nasa to wake up astronauts on the space shuttle.

Brother and sister formed a double act, and hit upon Deep Purple, which had been published in 1933 as a piano instrumental written by Peter DeRose. Sheet-music sales were so strong that in 1938 Mitchell Parish added a lyric, and Bing Crosby and Jimmy Dorsey were among the first to have hits with it – and later, the likes of Joe Loss and Ray Conniff. In 1957 the Dominoes transformed it into a doo-wop classic, then in 1975 Donny and Marie Osmond took their cover – a note-for-note copy of April and Nino’s rendition – into the Top 20 on both sides of the Atlantic.

April Stevens and Nino Tempo recorded their version, with its shuffling, laidback beat overlaid by gentle harmonica, in 14 minutes at the end of a recording session with the Atlantic supremo Ahmet Ertegun (who had signed them to his Atco label), with April softly speaking the lyric in the second half, echoed in falsetto by her brother.

It was intended as the B-side of I’ve Been Carrying a Torch for You So Long That it Burned a Great Big Hole in My Heart but was promoted when DJs began playing it instead (the new flip-side would go on to claim the niche distinction of being the longest B-side title to reach No 1 in the US). Ertegun, though, was unimpressed, telling the duo that he and his partners rated it as “the worst record you’ve ever made”.

John Lennon, for one, seemed to disagree, as April Stevens recalled of meeting him in the studio: “I was so excited I was tripping over myself. I walked towards him and he started to sing. As he walked up to me, he started to sing my harmony part to Deep Purple. I really flipped.”

The song’s title found fame beyond its jazz-ballad confines thanks to Ritchie Blackmore’s grandmother, who loved it and would play it on the piano during his childhood. When the lad grew up and became a guitarist he nabbed the title for the name of his new heavy-rock band.

The siblings toured extensively and had a few more distinctly minor hits – April’s 1967 single Wanting You went on to become a Northern Soul classic – but were never able to emulate the success of Deep Purple. While Nino Tempo went on to resume his career as a jazz saxophonist, April Stevens wound hers down.

In 2013 she published a memoir, Teach Me Tiger, in which she admitted that she had been born in 1929 and had routinely taken years off her age during her career.

April Stevens married, in 1985, William Perlman; he survives her with two stepsons. Nino Tempo also survives her.

April Stevens, born April 29 1929, died April 17 2023