"It Can Happen to You"

Four years ago, Joan Carmella Babbo graduated from Chicago's Bowen High School. Then she went to college for four years--but not to the academic kind. College for her was a succession of spotlighted floors where she learned to belt out popular songs.

She had a husky-sweet voice and an unsophisticated manner. On numberless Midwest floors from sedate hotel dining rooms to beer halls she learned how to use her voice, but she kept her unsophisticated manner. "Everybody in their life goes through different romantic phases," she decided. "All you have t do is remember real living, and put it into the song." By last winter, 22-year-old Joanie Babbo--known as Joni James--had graduated to a place among the top recording songbirds in the U.S. Three of her hits nestled simultaneously on bestseller lists: Why Don't You Believe Me?, Have You Heard? and Your Cheatin' Heart.

Success was no more than Joni expected. "When you work four years at college,'' she says, "and you finally got a diploma, are you shocked?" Instead of getting a diploma, "I got to know what people liked."

Last week Joni James was back in Chicago for a triumphal stage appearance at the Chicago Theater. The audience cheered when she swept out in a floor-length, white-beaded number and bounced through a happy performance of Gee, but It's Great to Be Again in My Home Town--and into her hit songs. Joni also found time while in Chicago for a sentimental visit to Bowen High School. She hugged her old teachers on sight, wept openly when she sang in her old place in the Bowen High mixed chorus, accepted a bouquet of roses, and got kissed on the cheek, on a dare, by a 17-year-old. For a farewell, Joni reached for the microphone and said: "If it can happen to me, it can happen to you --and it's so wonderful I hope it happens three times to each of you."

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