Shore rose to prominence as a recording artist during the Big Band era. Born in Winchester, Tennessee , and raised in Nashville, Tennessee , She achieved even greater success a decade later in television, mainly as the host of a series of variety programs for the Chevrolet automobile company.
After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman , and both Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey , Shore struck out on her own. She became the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of eighty charted popular hits, spanning from to , and after appearing in a handful of feature films, she went on to a four-decade career in American television.
She starred in her own music and variety shows from through and hosted two talk shows in the s. TV Guide ranked her at number 16 on their list of the top 50 television stars of all time.
Stylistically, Shore was compared to two singers who followed her in the mid-to-late s and early s, Jo Stafford and Patti Page. When Fanny was eighteen months old, she was stricken with polio infantile paralysis. The only known treatment was bed rest and sometimes more extreme care if the child was severely compromised.
Her mother provided extensive care for her, which included regular therapeutic massage and a strict exercise program. Fanny loved to sing as a small child; her mother, a contralto with operatic aspirations, encouraged her. Her father often took her to his store, where she would perform impromptu songs for the customers. In , the Shore family moved to McMinnville, Tennessee , where her father had opened a department store. By her fifth-grade year, the family had moved to Nashville , where she completed elementary school.
