Girl singers, Lena Zavaroni and Piccola Pupa, both started their singing careers before the age of 10. 

The memory is vivid. Looking through records at the Goodwill on Valencia Street in San Francisco and coming across an LP entitled "Ma He's Making Eyes at Me" with a little girl on the cover. What?!?! Who IS this girl? $2.99 let me in to world of Lena Zavaroni.

Here she is singing her big hit (#10 UK, #91 Billboard Pop) on Johnny Carson. She sang it on the Jerry Lewis telethon, too, also on YouTube. But this video showcases little girl with the big voice.

Lena later segued into disco/dance and her "Presenting Lena" LP is quite the collector's item and not cheap! There's a nice montage of photos to her dance version of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/iUmVDxwW0Ys?si=UFHbk_izfUUXnyi7

I was lucky to find a good, autographed picture of Lena and I spent a lot of time researching her life and music on the Internet. Her story is a painful one with a sad ending, yet too common about the pressures of young women in show business.  You must watch this documentary on her - and kudos to her friends, fans and family for keeping her fire burning.

Piccola Pupa didn’t have it so rough. She was a protege of Danny Thomas and you can see her giving it her all on Ed Sullivan.

Piccola released one album, a few singles and seems to have had a thriving, wonderful Italian life. Pure luck led me to find her autograph when it popped up as "Mystery Autograph" in one of my eBay alerts. No mystery to me, I recognized Piccola's face right away and bought that sucker forten bucks. I was also happy to come across her kin on Facebook in 2025 under Giuliana Crimilde Coverlizza. Just to see the joy in her eyes and her big happy family. Now THAT'S amore!