Page Morton Black, Who Sang Heavenly Jingle, Dies at 97
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: July 23, 2013
For Gothamites of a certain vintage, it was as much a part of life as BUtterfield, ALgonquin and Horn & Hardart — a jaunty little waltz, its lyrics connoting warmth, fiscal security and celestial reward:
Page Morton Black, a cabaret singer, and William Black, the founder of the Chock Full o’Nuts company, in the early 1960s.
Chock Full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee,
Heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee.
Chock Full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee,
Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy.
Page Morton Black, the cabaret singer whose sprightly rendition of that song in radio and television ads was indelibly engraved on New Yorkers’ brains at midcentury, died on Sunday at her home in the Premium Point enclave of New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 97.
Her death was announced by the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, of which Mrs. Black, a noted philanthropist, was a past chairwoman.
Mrs. Black, the widow of William Black, the founder of the Chock Full o’Nuts company, curtailed her singing career after their marriage. But her voice lived on in the jingle, which was broadcast for more than 20 years. Upon frequent and nostalgic request, she continued singing it at public events long afterward.
The daughter of pianists, Page Morton was born in the Chicago area on Oct. 27, 1915. As a girl, walking to piano lessons in that city, she was enthralled by the nightclubs she passed and vowed one day to appear in them.
As a young woman she moved to New York, where she played and sang in clubs and hotels, including the Pierre, the Vanderbilt and the Sherry-Netherland.
Some years later, in the late 1950s or early ’60s, Mr. Black, who needed a new singer for his jingle, heard Page Morton at a Greenwich Village nightclub. She got both the jingle and Mr. Black, becoming his third wife in 1962.
Mr. Black had begun Chock Full o’Nuts in New York City in 1926 as a chain of nut shops, later converting them into lunch counters. By the mid-1950s he was selling its packaged coffee at stores in the Northeast, primarily in New York. (It is now a national brand.)
Not long afterward, the jingle — a reworked version of an existing love song, “That Heavenly Feeling,” by Bernie Wayne and Bill Silbert — made its debut. The original singer was Mr. Black’s second wife, Geanne Martin.
The jingle’s original last line, “Better coffee Rockefeller’s money can’t buy,” was changed in 1957, after John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family complained.
It was the rewritten version, with Page Black’s voice and image, that became ubiquitous on the airwaves in the New York region in the 1960s and ’70s.
Mr. Black died in 1983. Mrs. Black’s survivors include three stepdaughters.
Chock Full o’Nuts, now owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA, has revived the jingle, in a new arrangement, for its contemporary ads. The lyrics have been adjusted for inflation, with “billionaire” replacing “millionaire” in the last line.
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