Carolina Cotton

b. Helen Hagstrom, 20 October 1926, Cash, Arkansas, USA, d. 10 June 1997, Bakersfield, California, USA. Hagstrom's family had emigrated from Sweden and first settled on a farm in Arkansas but they relocated to California soon after Helen was born. She attended school in San Francisco but when aged 14, described as a petite blue-eyed blonde with a vivacious personality, she began singing and yodelling on KYA with the western swing band of Dude Martin. Martin called her Carolina Cotton claiming that Carolina sounded better than Arkansas and the name stuck. In 1942, she moved to ...