Clarence Ashley born September 29, 1895

 Clarence "Tom" Ashley (September 29, 1895 – June 2, 1967) was an American musician and singer, who played the clawhammer banjo and the guitar. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame during the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands. 

G.B. Grayson & Ashley

Ashley was born Clarence Earl McCurry in Bristol, Tennessee, but when Clarence was very young, he was nicknamed “Tommy Tiddy Waddy” (after a nursery rhyme) by his grandfather Enoch, and thus became known to friends and acquaintances as ‘Tom’. As he was raised by the parents of his mother, the name “McCurry” was dropped in favour of “Ashley”. From infancy, Tom was acquainted with musicians. His grandfather bought him a banjo when he was eight years old, and his mother and aunts taught him to play traditional Appalachian folk songs and ballads. He learned a number of songs and techniques from itinerant lumberjacks and railroad workers lodging at his grandfather's boarding house. In 1911, Tom joined a medicine show that happened to be passing through Mountain City. He played banjo and guitar, and performed blackface comedy. Tom would play with medicine shows every summer until the early 1940s. During winters, he organized local concerts at rural schools. He would also play for money at coal camps and rayon mills, often accompanied by influential Johnson County fiddler G. B. Grayson.

Byrd Moore & His Hotshots

Tom made his first recordings for Gennett Records during February 1928 with the Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers, which then consisted of Ashley on banjo or guitar, Garley Foster on harmonica, and Clarence Horton Greene on fiddle. With the help of Victor producer Ralph Peer, Ashley made several recordings with The Carolina Tar Heels, which consisted of Tom on guitar and vocals, his friend Dock Walsh on banjo, and Gwen or Garley Foster on harmonica. In 1929, Frank Walker of Columbia Records auditioned Ashley to make his first solo recordings, as well as to record with a trio called "Byrd Moore and His Hot Shots" at the Johnson City Sessions. He recorded several songs derived from English or Irish ballads that were passed down through generations in Appalachia, the best-known of which included "Coo Coo Bird" (which he learned from his mother), "House Carpenter", and "Rude and Rambling Man". Other recordings included the murder ballads "Naomi Wise", "Little Sadie", and "John Hardy", and the folk songs "Frankie Silvers" and "Greenback Dollar". An African-American influence can be heard on Ashley's renderings of "Dark Holler", "Haunted Road Blues", and "Corrina, Corrina".

                                 

During the early 1930s, Ashley again recorded with the Blue Ridge Entertainers, this time for the American Record Corporation. The final recordings from his early era were a series of duets with harmonica player Gwen Foster in 1933. The oldest known recording of the song, "House of the Rising Sun", under the title "Rising Sun Blues", was recorded  by Ashley and Foster on September 6, 1933, on the Vocalion label (02576), which he claimed he learned from his maternal grandfather. The effects of the Great Depression made money scarce throughout the early 1930s. Not only was Ashley no longer recruited to make records, it was virtually impossible to earn money playing at coal camps or on street corners. The Depression (along with government regulations) also greatly reduced the crowds that attended medicine shows. 

Ashley worked briefly as a coal miner in West Virginia, and did odd jobs back in Shouns to support his wife, Hettie, and their two children. In 1937, he established a trucking business in Mountain City that hauled furniture and crops to various cities around the region. Throughout the following decade, Ashley performed as a comedian with the Stanley Brothers. He formed a local string band, the Tennessee Merrymakers.

During the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, urban ethnomusicologists rediscovered Ashley's music. By this time, Ashley was well known among folk music enthusiasts due in large part to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (1952), which included some of Ashley's early recordings. In 1960, Ralph Rinzler met Ashley at the Old Time Fiddler's Convention in Union Grove, North Carolina. He eventually persuaded him to start playing banjo again and to record his repertoire of songs. Over the next few years Ashley and his friends Doc Watson, Clint Howard, and Fred Price played at numerous urban folk festivals, including the Chicago Folk Festival in 1962 and the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.

Ashley continued touring the folk circuit throughout the mid-1960s. He appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York and played at dozens of venues in California. In 1966, Ashley and Reidsville, North Carolina guitarist Tex Isley toured England. On October 7, 1966, Clarence “Tom” Ashley was a leading performer at ETSU’s first annual Folk Festival. A local article published by the Elizabethton Star described Ashley as “perhaps the best known artist to appear” at the festival. This performance was one of Ashley’s final significant regional performances. A second tour of England was planned for 1967, but Ashley grew ill and discovered he had cancer before he departed. He died June 2, 1967, at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

(Edited from Wikipedia)

Jim Diamond born 28 September 1951

Jim Diamond (28 September 1951 – 8 October 2015) was a Scottish singer-songwriter, best known for his three top 5 hits: "I Won't Let You Down" (1982), as the lead singer of PhD; and his solo performances "I Should Have Known Better", a United Kingdom No. 1 in 1984, and "Hi Ho Silver", the theme song from Boon, which reached No. 5 on the UK singles chart in 1986.

James Aaron Diamond was born in the Bridgeton area in the East End of Glasgow in 1951. He started his music career at the age of 15 with Tony Diver's band, The Method. When aged 16, he also fronted a Glasgow band called Jade. That line-up included bassist Chris Glen who went on to play with the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, and Jim Lacey on lead guitar who later went on to join the Alan Bown Set. Jade played many pub, club and university gigs in London in 1969, playing at Brunel University, West London College in Cricklewood, The Pied Bull in Islington, West Hampstead Country Club, another college in Virginia Water and many more in 1969. They also supported The Move on their Scottish tour with The Stoics in the same year.

Alexis Korner then discovered Diamond, who spent the next couple of years as part of Korner's band. He provided additional and backing vocals on many of Korner's songs, most of which would appear on The Lost Album. Diamond left Korner in 1976, to form Bandit. The line-up included future AC/DC member Cliff Williams. They were soon signed up by Arista Records and released a début album, Bandit, which failed to reach the chart. But the record brought Diamond, who had written five of its songs in various styles, to wider attention and was enough to prompt the NME’s reviewer, Tony Stewart, to comment that he was “an inspired and remarkable vocalist who projects himself well, displaying not only a passion for the music but a staggering range, which he uses fully”. 

                                   

In 1979, Diamond was lead vocalist for a Japanese band called BACCO, whose debut album was Cha Cha Me. Word was spreading about Diamond and his powerfully expressive singing, and he was invited to fly to Los Angeles to form a band with the guitarist and David Bowie collaborator Earl Slick and the drummer Carmine Appice, who had been playing with Rod Stewart. The trio worked in the studio with the producer Eddie Kramer, who had collaborated with a who’s who of stars from Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin and Bowie. Before the project could come to fruition, Diamond was in demand again, returning to England to form PhD and embarking on the series of hits that sealed his reputation.

PhD

In 1981, Diamond formed PhD (Phillips, Hymas and Diamond), with pianist/keyboard player Tony Hymas and drummer Simon Phillips. They were signed by WEA Records and had a hit single with the multi-million selling "I Won't Let You Down". Then Diamond contracted hepatitis, which prevented him from touring and prompted PhD to split. In 1984, he decided to go solo and was signed to A&M Records. He had a number-one hit with "I Should Have Known Better", and was also number one in Latin America. The single, which was from his album Double Crossed (released in 1985), earned him a nomination for an Ivor Novello award. In the same year Diamond went to No 1 again with the celebrity ensemble The Crowd on You’ll Never Walk Alone, a charity record for families of the victims of the Bradford City stadium fire. In 1986 his second solo album, Desire For Freedom, delivered the No 5 hit Hi Ho Silver, a song commissioned for Boon, starring Michael Elphick, and featuring yet another of Diamond’s catchy choruses, this time set to a briskly pumping reggae beat.

In 1993 he released the album Jim Diamond, which reached No 16 on the UK charts, and went on tour performing acoustic versions of his catalogue of songs. In the late 90s he teamed up with the saxophonist Chris “Snake” Davis, renowned for his studio work with M People, George Michael, Paul McCartney and many more, and they performed as The Blue Shoes, but were later billed as Jim Diamond and Snake Davis. With the Hammond organist Paul Birchall, they also worked on Diamond’s 2005 album Souled and Healed. In 2009 he re-united with Tony Hymas to produce a third PhD album entitled Three. 

Jim Diamond's last album, City of Soul, released by Camino Records in 2011, featured among others Wet Wet Wet drummer Tommy Cunningham and Greg Kane of Hue and Cry. All proceeds from this album of soul music covers benefited the children's charity, Radio Clyde Cash for Kids.

Diamond married Christine Bailey in 1978. The couple had two children; their son Lawrence is the keyboard player of the UK indie pop group Citizens! and the former bass player of Official Secrets Act. Diamond died in his sleep on 8 October 2015, at the age of 64. According to his daughter Sara, the cause of death was a pulmonary edema.

(Edited from Wikipedia &The Guardian) 

Guido Basso born 27 September 1937

Guido Basso CM (27 September 1937 – 13 February 2023) was a Canadian jazz musician who was a member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass big band. He was a trumpeter, flugelhornist, arranger, composer, and conductor, equally proficient in jazz, pop and classical music.  

Guido Basso was born in Montreal, Quebec. He grew up in the Little Italy neighbourhood of Montreal, in an Italian-Canadian family. He began playing the trumpet at the age of nine, on which he eventually became a child prodigy after studying at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montreal. In his teens, under the name Stubby Basso, he worked in dance and show bands led by Al Nichols, Maury Kaye and others. While playing at the club El Morocco with Kaye, he was heard by American singer Vic Damone, who took him on the road in 1957–58. Basso then worked throughout North America from 1958 to 1960 with singer Pearl Bailey and the orchestra led by her husband, drummer Louis Bellson.

                    Here's "Marion's Theme" from above LP

                                   

Basso returned to Canada and settled in Toronto in 1961, instead of obtaining permanent residency in the United States and the likelihood of required enlistment in the United States Army. A full-fledged career as a studio musician ensued, parallel to which he undertook formal studies at the Royal Conservatory of Ontario. He became a first-call studio musician trumpeter and bandleader. He also took assignments as a harmonica player. Basso was music director for CBLT's Nightcap (1963–67) and for CBC-TV's Barris and Company (1968–69) and for Mallets and Brass (1969) with vibraphonist Peter Appleyard. Basso was also music director for CBC Radio's After Noon (1969–71) and led orchestras for two CBC-TV series devoted to the big band era: In the Mood (1971–72) and Bandwagon (1972–73). In 1975, he organized big band concerts at the CNE Bandshell, featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, Woody Herman, Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. 

One of his most outstanding performances with Amy McConnell is Portrait Of Jenny from the 1976 Jazz Album which can be heard on YouTube. He is centre stage for the eight-minute duration in an intimate statement of subtlety and lyricism. Basso performed in Toronto nightclubs and hotel lounges with his own small groups, several of which mixed jazz and Latin music. Basso was a charter member and also an important soloist with the Boss Brass, playing with the band for over twenty years. He also played in bands led by Ron Collier, Rob McConnell and Phil Nimmons. Basso was also featured in the 2009 album Norm Amadio and Friends, playing trumpet and flugelhorn accompaniments.

Basso was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1994. His citation cited him as, "an advocate of the arts and an inspiration to young musicians, he is generous with his time and talent, running workshops and clinics, and lending his name and expertise to worthy causes". He received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002. Basso won the Juno Award for traditional jazz album of the year, Turn Out the Stars, in 2003. He also received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.

Despite his pre-eminence among Canadian jazz trumpeters, Basso was reticent to work in that idiom. Equally at home in the jazz, pop and classical fields, as an in-demand session musician he played on more than 200 albums. He once told Bill King in an interview: “I wanted to be a jazz musician but a better lifestyle won out. I have to be able to afford it to play jazz”. Nevertheless, Basso known for the lyricism of his flugelhorn work on jazz ballads, a reputation taken far afield by his recordings with the Boss Brass. He was equally capable of incisive trumpeting in the bebop style. He was credited with the theory that one attacks the trumpet and makes love to a flugelhorn.

Basso did not make his first real jazz recording under his own name until 1986, with Guido Basso. He followed that with collaborative efforts with Doug Riley (A Lazy Afternoon, 1997) and Dave Turner (Midnight Martini, 1997). Basso’s record Lost in the Stars won the 2004 Juno Award for Traditional Jazz Album of the Year. As a sideman, Basso appeared on some 30 recordings by the Boss Brass, as well as on more than 200 albums by such diverse performers as Anne Murray, Ian Tyson, Mel Tormé, Holly Cole, Gene Lees, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Ranee Lee, Lenny Solomon, and Oliver Jones. His final recording was Solstice/Equinox in 2016, with vocalist Diana Panton.

Basso was married to Kristin and had one daughter, Mia Basso Noble, who was a musician and songwriter, who died of cancer in September 2013. Basso died from natural causes in Toronto, on 13 February 2023, at age 85.

(Edited from The Canadian Encyclopedia, Jazz Journal & Wikipedia) 

Ted Greene born September 26, 1946

Theodore Greene (September 26, 1946 – July 23, 2005) was an American fingerstyle guitarist, columnist, session musician and educator based in Encino, California.

Ted was born in Los Angeles, Calif. on Sept. 26, 1946 but grew up primarily in White Plains, N.Y. where he spent most of his early musically formative years. During this time he was exposed to everything from Gershwin and show tunes at home, to rhythm & blues in the city. In 1957 at age 11 his father bought him his first guitar. Shortly afterwards he began lessons, used various guitar books and learned to read music. He was an accomplished player while still in high school, occasionally collaborating with local rock and R&B bands. He briefly studied accounting at California State University, Northridge, but dropped out to devote more time to music. 

In 1963 Ted moved back to Calif. and subsequently took a teaching position at Ernie Ball’s Guitar Shop, which after 11 years would ultimately become a private teaching practice from his home. It was during the 1960s he was a member of the rock band Natural Selection and a blues rock group called Bluesberry Jam, which included future Canned Heat drummer Fito de la Parra. He was a friend and collaborator with Joseph Byrd, on whose Columbia Masterworks album The American Metaphysical Circus he was featured (he also provided the whimsical name of the studio band who performed it, "The Field Hippies"). During the late 1960s and early 1970s he did commercial studio work with Byrd.

                                   

In April of 1965 Greene acquired his first Fender Telecaster, a 1953 that cost $135. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the Tele. Greene estimated that he owned 200 Telecasters at one point or another. “The versatility of the Telecaster is almost unmatched,” he said in an interview. While Telecasters held a special place in Green’s heart, he owned many other guitars, mostly Gibsons. His collection included a goldtop Les Paul, an ES-335, and a number of hollowbody archtops. He would also make occasional live appearances at clubs in the San Fernando Valley, usually playing a Fender Telecaster.

Meanwhile, Greene continued to gig around Los Angeles with various rock and blues acts. In 1967, he joined a group called Bluesberry Jam that featured future Canned Heat member Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra on drums. The group regularly played the Magic Mushroom club, as well as the larger Shrine Auditorium, where they supported such acts as the Doors, Iron Butterfly, Joe Cocker, and Alice Cooper. While Bluesberry Jam gained a following around the city, they never made it to the next level, and the band folded when de la Parra departed for Canned Heat. Sadly, no Bluesberry Jam recordings survive. However, Greene did record with psychedelic rocker Joe Byrd, including on Byrd’s 1969 album The American Metaphysical Circus.

Greene typically worked as a vocal accompanist, which he preferred because he found group settings restrictive. While he was a sought-after session musician, he derived much of his income from tutoring. He wrote several influential books on the subject of jazz guitar performance and theory: Chord Chemistry, Modern Chord Progressions: Jazz and Classical Voicings for Guitar, and the two-volume Jazz Guitar: Single Note Soloing. Published in 1971, Chord Chemistry became widely regarded as a foundational jazz guitar harmony known for its complex catalogue of chord voicings. His playing style included techniques such as harp-like arpeggios combined with gentle, tasteful neck vibrato, creating a "shimmer" to his sound. Other notable techniques included playing songs with a walking bass line with simultaneous melodies. Greene used counterpoint to improvise in a variety of styles, playing, for instance, a jazz standard such as Autumn Leaves in Baroque style. He used a large variety of chord voicings, often creating the effect of two simultaneous players.

In 1976 Greene began performing his first solo gigs, taking up a Sunday night residency at the Smoke House in Toluca Lake, California. Southern California guitarists flocked to hear the master perform. One frequent attendee was Greene’s friend and sometime student Leon White. Recalls White, “In the parking lot after the show I said to him, ‘We have to record that. You don't have to prepare anything. Just come and sit down and play.’ We ended up having that same discussion in the Smoke House parking lot for two years. He just didn’t want to do it!” Ultimately, White’s persistence won the day, and Greene went into the studio with White and friend William Perry. Over the course of roughly 10 hours spread out over two days, Greene sat alone in the studio, playing almost continuously. There was no game plan, not even a song list—just Greene playing whatever came to mind. The result was Solo Guitar, a breathtakingly beautiful set of standards played as only Ted Greene could play them. The album received near-universal praise.

Green was called on in 1977 to provide guitar tablature for three arrangements of Bix Beiderbecke's piano music for the Ry Cooder album Jazz, which Joseph Byrd arranged and produced. Greene ceased writing instructional books after 1979, though he continued teaching and learning. For the rest of his life, he coached aspiring guitarists at his home, at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, and at seminars throughout Southern California. He stopped playing solo gigs, too—reportedly because he disliked the way guitar players would scrutinize his technique and execution on the guitar rather than soaking in the music he drew from the instrument.

Greene died in his Encino El Dorado apartment of a heart attack on July 23, 2005, at age 58. Approximately 700 people attended his memorial, nearly all of them guitarists. Greene had many loves in his life: baseball cards, fast cars, and his partner Barbara Franklin. But above all else, he loved music and teaching. In 2009 Barbara Franklin wrote the biography My Life with The Chord Chemist: A Memoir of Ted Greene, Apotheosis of Solo Guitar. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Premier Guitar) 

Shel Silverstein born September 25, 1930

Shel Silvertsein (September 25, 1930 – May 10, 1999) was an American writer, cartoonist, songwriter, and musician.

Sheldon Allan Silverstein was born and raised in Chicago. His father, Nathan, was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and his mother, Helen, was born in Chicago to a Hungarian-Jewish family. They ran a bakery that fared poorly, having been opened during the Great Depression. He grew up in the Albany Park neighbourhood of Chicago but spent summers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at his family's summer home in Chicago, he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School. He then attended the University of Illinois for one semester and was enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts for one semester before being drafted into the U.S. Army (1949-1955) . 

Shel & Hugh Hefner

He served in Japan and Korea and contributed to the armed forces periodical Pacific Stars and Stripes. On his return home, he established himself as a cartoonist and writer with Playboy and befriended the magazine's owner, Hugh Hefner. His cartoons became one of Playboy’s hallmarks. Many of his songs reflect a hedonistic lifestyle and, as the record producer Chet Atkins remarked, "Ol' Shel has probably got the worst voice of anyone alive, but he's also got the run of the Playboy mansion and I'm not knocking anybody with a deal like that."

Shel with Johnny Cash

Silverstein recorded Inside Folk Music in 1962. His first children's book, Uncle Shelby's Story of Lafcadio, the Lion who Shot Back, appeared in 1963, joined the following year by The Giving Tree - about a tree that gives up its branches, fruit and even its trunk to make a boy happy. In 1969 he passed Johnny Cash a poem the day before he was due to give a concert in San Quentin prison. Cash asked Carl Perkins to set it to music and the result was a million-selling saga of transvestites and bar- room fights, "A Boy Named Sue". Cash also sang Silverstein's witty song about the condemned cell, "Twenty-Five Minutes To Go", while Loretta Lynn topped the US country chart with his song about the restrictions of motherhood, "One's On the Way" (1970). In 1970, he wrote several songs for the film Ned Kelly.

                        

Silverstein met Dr Hook and the Medicine Show whilst working on a Dustin Hoffman film, Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things about Me? (1971). The film was every bit as bad as its title but Silverstein realised that the outlandish hippies of Dr Hook were the perfect mouthpiece for his material. "Sylvia's Mother," is a good example of an over-the-top romantic lament that reached number five on the charts. They recorded 60 of Silverstein's acutely observed vignettes of American life. He parodied the group's desire for success in "The Cover of Rolling Stone" and "Everybody's Makin' It Big But Me".

The group backed Silverstein on his outrageous solo album, Freakin' at the Freakers Ball (1972), and the titles match the contents such as "Polly in a Porny", and "I Got Stoned and I Missed It". Silverstein gave Dr Hook a poignant song about the pressures of modern life, "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan", which was also recorded successfully by Marianne Faithfull. In "A Couple More Years", which has been sung by Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, he wrote of an older man's love for his girlfriend, and in "More Like The Movies", another hit for Dr Hook in 1978, of the difficulties of satisfying a partner.

Though he became a millionaire, Silverstein never owned a car, and looked for bargains in flea markets. When he found an album by Bobby Gosh, he offered one of the songs, "A Little Bit More", to Dr Hook with the comment, "This is a great song even though no one's ever heard it." In 1973 he wrote an album, Lullabys, Legends and Lies, for the country singer Bobby Bare in four days. It included a country hit about the witch queen of New Orleans, "Marie Laveau", how you lose even when you're "The Winner", and an eight-minute picture of grotesque characters in a late- night diner, "Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe". He went on to write two more albums for Bare in quick succession: one of children's songs, Singin' in the Kitchen (1974) and one of "Songs for the New Depression", Hard Time Hungrys (1975). In "Daddy's Been Around the House Too Long" a child comments on her father's unemployment, and even God is in "The Unemployment Line".

Many other classic songs stem from the 1970s including Emmylou Harris's portrayal of a bar-room prostitute, "The Queen of the Silver Dollar", Tompall Glaser's response to Women's Lib, "Put Another Log on the Fire", and Burl Ives' touching look at old age, "Time". Silverstein commented on the hypocrisy behind Nashville's tributes to the bluegrass musician Lester Flatt, in Bobby Bare's "Rough On The Living": "They didn't want him around when he's living, But he's sure a good friend when he's dead."

A restless man, Silverstein tired of writing songs and returned to children's books and cartoons. His books include Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974), The Missing Piece (1976), and A Light in the Attic (1981). His poems share the same anarchic spirit as Spike Milligan: "Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird, And catch the worm for your breakfast plate, If you're a bird, be an early early bird, But if you're a worm, sleep late." His epic poem about a bad songwriter making Faustian deals, The Devil and Billy Markham (1978), became an off-Broadway musical.

Shel Silverstein's heart disease made him view death as a subject for popular songs. The remarkable result, Old Dogs (1998), performed by Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, Mel Tillis and Jerry Reed, happens to be his funniest album for several years. During his lifetime, Silverstein was described variously as a world traveller and a free spirit but also as a recluse and workaholic. Silverstein died at the age of 68 from a massive heart attack in his two-story Conch house, Key West, Monroe County, Florida. He was found by his cleaning maids, sitting up in bed with the notes and drafts of the next project around him. He was buried in the Westlawn Cemetery, Norridge, Illinois. He was posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2014.

(Edited from The Independent obit by Spencer Leigh, Wikipedia & Tampa Bay Times) 

Anthony Newley born 24 September 1931

Anthony Newley (24 September 1931 – 14 April 1999) was an English actor, director, comedian, singer, and composer. A "latter-day British Al Jolson", he achieved widespread success in song, and on stage and screen.

Born to a single mother in the East London working-class neighbourhood of Hackney, Newley was evacuated during the bombing of London and was thereby exposed to the performing arts when he was tutored during this time by George Pescud, a former music-hall entertainer. Though recognized as very bright by his teachers back in London, he was uninterested in school, and by the age of fourteen was working as an office boy when he read an ad for "boy actors." After an audition, he was offered a job including free tuition at the prestigious Italia Conti Stage School. He accepted and his career was launched. 

Petula Clark & Anthony Newley 1947

He first appeared as a child actor in the film serial Dusty Bates (a.k.a. The Adventures of Dusty Bates, 1947) which launched his career. This was followed by The Little Ballerina and Vice Versa; in 1948 he starred as the Artful Dodger in David Lean's acclaimed adaptation of Oliver Twist. In 1955 Newley made his theatrical debut in the revue Cranks, with close to two dozen more onscreen character roles. During the 1950s, Newley made twenty-seven movies for J. Arthur Rank, many of them in the United States, "comfortably transitioning from child to adult actor".  He was under contract for many years to Warwick Productions who built him into a star. 

He also had to spend two years in the UK military in what was then called "national service". In 1959 he starred as a rock 'n' roll star in Idle on Parade; the feature's soundtrack EP launched the hit ballad "I've Waited So Long," the first in a string of seven U.K. Top Ten hits between 1959 and 1961 including "Personality," "Pop Goes the Weasel," "If She Should Come to You" and the chart-toppers "Why" and "Do You Mind." In 1960, Newley issued his debut LP Love Is a Now and Then Thing, followed a year later by Tony.

                                   

During  the 1960’S he also added his greatest accomplishments on the London and Broadway stage, in Hollywood films, and British and United States television. With collaborator Leslie Bricusse, Newley wrote the book, music and lyrics for the 1961 stage musical Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!; he also directed and starred as Littlechap. The production was a major success, running in London's West End for over 16 months before appearing on Broadway for some 500 performances; adapted by Hollywood in 1966, it also launched the hits "What Kind of Fool Am I?," "Once in a Lifetime" and "Gonna Build a Mountain." 

After recording the 1963 comedy album Fool Brittania with wife Joan Collins and Peter Sellers, Newley and Bricusse wrote the theme to the James Bond entry Goldfinger before mounting their next musical, 1965's The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd; Newley later starred on Broadway in the lead role, although the production did not equal the success of Stop the World. Upon appearing with Rex Harrison in the 1967 film musical Doctor Doolittle, Newley directed and starred in 1969's Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? 

In the 1970s he remained active, particularly as a Las Vegas and Catskills resort performer, but his career had begun to flounder. He had taken risks that eventually led to his downfall in Hollywood.  After the 1978 LP The Singer and His Songs and the musical film Sammy Stops the World, Newley spent the majority of the 1980s away from music, accepting only small roles in projects like a 1982 PBS production of Alice in Wonderland, the 1983 TV miniseries Malibu and the reviled 1987 feature The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. 

Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley

In 1989 he helmed a short-lived London revival of Stop the World, I Want to Get Off! Newley's vocal style has been recognised as a major influence on that of the early David Bowie. In recognition of his creative skills and body of work, Newley was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989 with his long-time collaborator Leslie Bricusse. In his later years as a mature singer Newley recorded songs from Fiddler on the Roof and Scrooge. He enjoyed his final popular success onstage when he starred in the latter musical in London and Birmingham in the 1990s. He mounted a theatrical anthology of his past material titled Once Upon a Song, and later continued performing the material in a cabaret act. 

Ill health had plagued the star for many years. He was first diagnosed with renal cell cancer in 1985, and had one kidney removed. The cancer returned in 1997, this time attacking his lungs, then spreading to his liver. One of the final television acting appearances for the renowned English actor, singer, and songwriter was in 1998 when he took a small role in BBC soap EastEnders. Speaking once about his illness, he said: "When they told me I had a growth on my left kidney I had  a bet with the surgeon. 'A dollar that it's not malignant', I said. "Before they wheeled me into the operating theatre they pinned a dollar on my gown. It had gone when I finally came round. That's when I knew I'd lost the bet." Cancer finally claimed his life on 14th April, 1999 at his home in Jensen Beach, Florida. He was 67.

Anthony and his mother

Newley married and divorced three times. In 1956, he first married Elizabeth Ann Lynn, and the marriage was dissolved in 1963. The same year he married Joan Collins; and they divorced in 1971. In 1989, he divorced his third wife, air hostess Dareth Dunn. At the time of Newley's demise, he was survived by his mother, Grace, age 96 (with whom he lived in Surrey since 1992 after 22 years living in the U.S.), and four children, a boy (Sasha) and a girl (Tara) with Joan Collins, and another boy (Christopher) and girl (Shelby) with Dareth Dunn. His third wife, Dareth Newley Dunn, described him as "a dear, sweet, loving friend and father, consummate performer and ultimate composer".

(Edited from Wikipedia & Find-a-Grave)