The Skylarks (vocal group)

Under the name The Velvetones they toured bases in Panama and appeared in a weekly program on Armed Forces Radio Network.

[2] After the end of the war and their discharge, the group relocated to Detroit and added a female lead singer, the lively and charismatic Gilda Maiken.

[3] By the 1950s lineup was Becker, Maiken, Joe Hamilton, Earl Brown, and female singer, Jackie Gershwin (later replaced by Carol Lombard; Donna Manners and Peggy Clark also later spent some time in the group).

They sang backup for artists including Dinah Shore, Eddie Fisher, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Betty Hutton, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra.

[2] Their 1957 album Ridin' On The Moon was described by musicologist Todd Decker as "a forgotten masterpiece of jazz arranging and singing"; Decker described "Ol' Man River", released from the album as a single, as "a kind of cubist assemblage of familiar elements made delightfully strange... Kern's angular bridge gets some spectacular chromatic remaking".