Thursday, December 6, 2012

A Huge Rock Singer No One Knows!

Anthony "Tony" Burrows (born 14 April 1942) is a British session pop singer and recording artist. Though his lead singing voice is easily recognizable to pop music fans, Tony remains relatively unknown in the recording industry to this day. And, yet he has been accredited as the lead singer on pop group hit singles for more groups (the singular career achievement of a total of 5 top-charted "one hit wonders") than any other recording artist in recording industry history, both on the UK Singles Chart and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Burrows was born in Exeter, Devon. In the early 1960s, he was a member of The Kestrels, a vocal harmony group which also included the future songwriting team Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook. Subsequently he joined The Ivy League. He was still with them when they metamorphosed into The Flower Pot Men. The Flower Pot Men had only one hit, "Let’s Go to San Franisco", which reached number four in the UK Singles Chart in the autumn of 1967. Two founding members of the famous Deep Purple band, Jon Lord and Nick Simper, were also part of this early band.

Later, Burrows sang the lead vocals on several one-hit songs under different group names, Edison Lighthouse’s "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" (February 1970); White Plains’ "My Baby Kloves Lovin’" (March 1970); The Pipkins’ novelty song "Gimme Dat Ding" (April 1970); and The First Class’ "Beach Baby" (July 1974). He also sang lead vocals on The Brotherhood of Man’s "United We Stand", which reached #10 on the UK charts and also reached #13 in the U.S.

On February 26, 1970, he became the first (and still the only) recording artist to appear on BBC Television’s Top of the Pops fronting three different group acts appearing nearly simultaneously (to the delight of the broadcast studio audience, running from stage to stage for the three consecutive vocal performances) in a single broadcast show: Edison Lighthouse (the number one British-charted hit that week), White Plains, and Brotherhood of Man.

He has also recorded as a session harmony singer with Elton John, Cliff Richard, and James Last.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Burrows
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"….I think nowadays far too much is produced in the studio. I think recording techniques have advanced so far that music has become sort of robotically produced now. I don't think there's enough emotion and heart goes into recordings anymore. They certainly used to in our day. I think that's a bit of a shame. But that's probably the old man in me speaking."

-- Tony Burows in a 1999 interview (online at: http://www.popentertainment.com/burrows.htm )

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