MAY 30

Bobby Sherwood (May 30, 1914 in Indianapolis, Indiana – January 23, 1981 Auburn, Massachusetts) was a trumpet player, bandleader, actor and composer. He appeared in three films including Pal Joey in 1957. His sons Billy and Michael are both musicians. Sherwood was a regular performer on The Red Buttons Show on TV in the fifties. He hosted the DuMont variety show Stars on Parade (1953-54), was the announcer for DuMont's The Morey Amsterdam Show, and the host for the ABC game show Quick As a Flash (March to May 1953). He composed the music for at least one film, Campus Sleuth (1948).

 

MAY 22

1934 ~ Peter Nero (born Bernard Nierow, 22 May 1934) is an American pianist and pops conductor. Nero recorded his first album in 1961, and won a Grammy Award that year for "Best New Artist." Since then, he has received another Grammy, garnered ten additional nominations and released 67 albums. Nero's early association with RCA Records produced 23 albums in eight years. His subsequent move to Columbia Records resulted in a million-selling single and album - Summer of '42.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE | Wikipedia Bio | Search Amazon.com for Peter Nero

MAY 18

Charles Trenet (born Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet, 18 May 1913, Narbonne, France – 19 February 2001, Créteil, France)[citation needed] was a French singer and songwriter, most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s. In an era in which it was exceptional for a singer to write his or her own material, Trenet wrote prolifically and declined to record any but his own songs. His best known songs include "Boum!", "La Mer", "Y'a d'la joie", "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", "Ménilmontant" and "Douce France". His catalogue of songs is enormous, numbering close to a thousand. While many of his songs mined relatively conventional topics such as love, Paris, and nostalgia for his younger days, what set Trenet's songs apart were their personal, poetic, sometimes quite eccentric qualities, often infused with a warm wit. Some of his songs had unconventional subject matter, with whimsical imagery bordering on the surreal. "Y'a d'la joie" evokes 'joy' through a series of disconnected images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street and a baker making excellent bread. The lovers engaged in a minuet in "Polka du Roi" reveal themselves at length to be 'no longer human': they are made of wax and trapped in the Musée Grévin. Many of his hits from the 1930s and 1940s effectively combine the melodic and verbal nuances of French song with American swing rhythms. His song "La Mer", which according to legend he composed with Léo Chauliac on a train in 1943, was recorded in 1946. "La Mer" is perhaps his best known work outside the French-speaking world, with over 400 recorded versions. The song was given unrelated English words and under the title "Beyond the Sea" (or sometimes "Sailing"), was a hit for Bobby Darin in the early 1960s, and George Benson in the mid-1980s. "La Mer" has been used in many films such as The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci's 2003 film, and more recently in the closing scene (on the beach) of Mr. Bean's Holiday. The song was also used in the opening credits of the 2007 film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which used the song to highlight the paralyzing effects of a stroke that felled his fellow Frenchman, Jean-Dominique Bauby. It was also used as the opening title song in Steve Martin's L.A. Story in 1991, and in a popular commercial for South Australia, promoting the wine region of Australia. Other Trenet songs were recorded by such popular French singers as Maurice Chevalier, Jean Sablon and Fréhel. Wikipedia | Search Amazon.com for Charles Trenet

MAY 16

Francis Goya (born Francis Weyer on 16 May 1946) is a Belgian guitarist born in Liege. Weyer first played with Patrick Ruymen in the group Les Caraïbes, a Belgian cover group. The two then formed the rock group Liberty Six in 1965, which had a proto-psychedelic stage show and released only one single before disbanding. Weyer then moved on to the J.J. Band and Plus. In the 1970s, Weyer started using the name Francis Goya and released solo albums of romantic Spanish guitar and mandolin music. His 1975 single "Nostalgia", a tune written by his father and arranged for guitar by Goya, became an international hit, reaching #1 in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Norway, and Brazil. Later albums saw Goya moving more into a Latin American-influenced style, including three albums recorded with Bolivian singer Carmina Cabrera.

MAY 15

Norrie Paramor (15 May 1914 – 9 September 1979) was a British record producer, composer, arranger, and orchestral conductor. Although the term 'producer' was not in frequent circulation at the time Paramor started producing records (the usual term being 'Artiste and Repertoire Manager' or 'A&R Man'), he effectively commenced this role in 1952 when he became 'Recording Director' for EMI's Columbia Records. Paramor produced hit singles for Cliff Richard.
,
 Others inckluded The Shadows, and Frank Ifield. Until George Martin produced "Candle In The Wind 97" for Elton John, Paramor and Martin jointly held the record for having produced the most number one hit singles, despite Paramor's death 18 years earlier. Paramor recorded one of the biggest selling albums from Capitol Records' "Capitol of the World" import series: In London in Love which featured the floating voice of the soprano Patricia Clark, who was used in many subsequent selling albums. This became his trademark orchestral signature sound.
  Wikipdia | Search Amazon.com for Norrie Paramor