Lillian Briggs (born Lillian Biggs, June 3, 1932 – April 11, 1998) was an American rock 'n roll performer and musician.
Briggs was the first woman to achieve star status at the dawn of rock 'n roll in the early 1950s, as evidenced by the fact that soon after embarking upon her career, she was billed as "The Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" when she supported Nat "King" Cole while on tour in Australia in early 1956. This was during the same period that the media began referring to Elvis Presley as the "King" of the new musical genre.
Lillian Briggs, the daughter of a steel mill worker, studied piano and violin as a child in Pennsylvania, and then learned to play the trombone so she could join her high school band. She became so good on the trombone that she represented her school at a district festival. In her senior year, she joined the Swingettes, an all-girl boogie-woogie band. After graduation, she worked the window at a movie theater and continued making rounds with the Swingettes. When the group broke up, Lill formed her own orchestra, playing the Philadelphia night spots and appearing weekly on radio WAEB. She supported herself early in her career by working odd jobs, including truck driver and welder.
In 1952, she joined Joy Cayler's All-Girl Orchestra as a singer and trombonist. Two years later, appearing with Cayler's Orchestra at the Arcadia Ballroom in New York City, she performed a rousing version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and was discovered by celebrity manager/talent scout Jack Petrill. As a preferred client of Petrill, her solo career was launched. Briggs made her presence known on the touring circuit by working non-stop at sock hops, nightclubs and doing radio interviews as well as driving herself coast-to-coast from one engagement to the next in her white Cadillac convertible. Also in 1952, Alan Freed asked her to appear in his New York City stage shows, and her popularity in these shows led to her signing with Epic Records in 1954.
Briggs' punchy 1955 debut single "I Want You to Be My Baby" went on to sell over a million copies, and hit No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. During the peak of her career (1954–64) she headlined at concert venues around the world, starred at the Las Vegas hotels and appeared on countless TV shows including Jack Paar's The Tonight Show, The Mike Douglas Show, American Bandstand and The Steve Allen Show, and won a part in the 1961 Jerry Lewis movie The Ladies Man.
However, Briggs also recorded a series of novelty singles including "Boogie Blues,""The Teens in Jeans From New Orleans," and "Rock and Roly-Poly Santa Claus" . She also recorded several songs on the soundtracks of three Hollywood films: The Fugitive Kind, Mr. Wonderful, and My Sister Eileen. In 1965, she appeared as a contestant on What's My Line? At the same time she was giving trombone lessons to one of the show's panellists, Arlene Francis.
Lillian continued to record on Sunbeam, Paramount, Coral and Phillips while touring extensively until the early 1970s when she relocated to Miami Beach to become a co-partner in Turnberry Isle, a lucrative mixed-use luxury condominium resort. Her business dealings made her a very wealthy woman, and she lived the high life during the decades to follow. Her yacht, Monkey Business, was the boat upon which Gary Hart was photographed with Donna Rice, ending the former's presidential ambitions. Biggs died of lung cancer in Miami, April 11, 1998.
(Edited mainly from Wikipedia)