August 18, 2011
By Jon Lewis, Contributing Writer


Jan Daley remembers watching one of the televised Bob Hope Christmas Tour specials as a child and saying to her mother, "Some day I'm going to do that."

It turns out the budding singer wasn't just dreaming. As a young woman, she got to perform with the legendary comedian and served as his "canary" in 1971 during his final USO Christmas tour to Vietnam.

Although her career includes numerous TV appearances, five recordings, USO tours in Alaska and Hawaii, writing an Academy Award-nominated song and co-starring with Alec Baldwin and Tom Hanks, Daley said her time on stage with Hope in front of thousands of GIs in Vietnam stands above the rest.

Daley will pay a musical tribute to Hope as well as members of America's military on Sept. 9 during a performance at the Cascade Theatre. The concert, which will include poignant stories and vintage clips from the USO days, is a benefit for the Shasta Family Justice Center, which is celebrating its first anniversary of providing hope to victims of family violence.

The concert will feature songs from Daley's 2009 recording, "Where There's Hope," which is packed with American songbook gems like "That Old Black Magic," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "It's De-Lovely" and "But Beautiful."

"This is a personal project, something I wanted to do for years," Daley said by phone from her home in Hancock Park near Hollywood. "When I was asked to sing ‘Thanks for the Memory' at Bob's memorial, I decided I had to do it."

By paying tribute to American soldiers, both past and present, Daley also is honoring her father, Herbert Shute, an Army Air Corps pilot who was killed in action in World War II. Daley, who was 3 months old at the time, never got to meet her father.