A clear-voiced singer with no touch of vibrato, Stafford was one of  the most versatile vocalists of the forties. Her cool voice was a key feature in the recordings of the Pied Pipers, while as Cinderella G. Stump she recorded the  million selling parody of country music (and country accents), ‘Temptation’ or ‘Timtayshun’ as the song was billed on the label. In the fifties her biggest hits included the jaunty ‘Shrimp Boats’ and a version of Hank Williams’  ‘Jambalaya’.  Stafford started  as part of a  family singing act,  the 'Stafford Sisters'.  They made their radio debut, singing country styled material, in 1935.

   In 1941 she became a member of the Pied Pipers, the vocal group featured by Tommy Dorsey. Formed in 1937 as an octet, they had joined Dorsey in 1939 as a quartet and in 1942 backed Frank Sinatra, then Dorsey’s featured male singer, on ‘There Are Such Things’. In 1945 the Pied Pipers (which then comprised Stafford, John Huddlestone, Chuck Lowry and Clark Yokum had their own million seller with ‘Dream’, written by Johnny Mercer with whom they recorded ‘Candy’ that same year. Stafford began her solo career on Capitol with versions of songs popularized in films, including ‘That’s for Me’ from State Fair, and ‘White Christmas’ from Holiday Inn, but her first big success came in partnership with Red Ingle and his Natural Seven with the parody of Arthur Freed’s and Nacio Herb Brown’s ‘Temptation’ as done by a ‘hillbilly’ band.                 
   Later in the mid-fifties, with her husband and fellow Dorsey alumnus Paul Weston, whose band backed her on almost all her recording sessions, she returned to this comic vein, when as Jonathan and Darlene Edwards they recorded a series of take-offs of popular singers of the day. In 1948 Stafford had a million seller with her version of ‘Say Something Sweet to Your Sweetheart’ and in 1949 repeated her success with ‘My Happiness’. In 1950, following Mitch Miller’s appointment as head of popular music at Columbia, Stafford joined the label. Miller immediately gave her country hits to cover, including several by Hank Williams that climaxed with her version of ‘Jambalaya’. Equally successful was the folky-sounding ‘Shrimp Boats’, written by Weston, and Pee Wee King’s ‘You Belong to Me’.                                                   
   More unusual was ‘Make Love to Me!’, a version of the 1923 jazz instrumental ‘Tin Roof Blues’ with a new lyric by Bill Norvas and Allan Copeland. Her last major hit was ‘Almost Tomorrow’, a cover of the Dream Weavers’ million selling record. Afterwards Stafford regularly toured and appeared on television, but recorded only intermittently.