Uncle Dave Macon born 7 October 1870

David Harrison Macon (October 7, 1870 – March 22, 1952), known professionally as Uncle Dave Macon, was an American old-time banjo player, singer, songwriter, and comedian. Known as "The Dixie Dewdrop", Macon was known for his chin whiskers, plug hat, gold teeth, and gates-ajar collar; he gained regional fame as a vaudeville performer in the early 1920s before becoming the first star of the Grand Ole Opry in the latter half of the decade. 

Born in Smartt Station in middle Tennessee's Warren County, he was the son of a Confederate officer who owned a large farm. Macon heard the folk music of the area when he was young, but he was also a product of the urban South: After the family moved to Nashville and began operating a hotel, Macon hobnobbed with traveling vaudeville musicians who performed there. After his father was stabbed near the hotel, Macon left Nashville with the rest of his family. He worked on a farm and later operated a wagon freight line, performing music only at local parties and dances. 

Macon's turn toward a musical second career was due partly to the advent of motorized trucks, for his wagon line fell on hard times in the early '20s after a competitor invested in the horseless novelties. In 1923, he struck up a few tunes in a Nashville barbershop with fiddler Sid Harkreader, and an agent from the Loew's theater chain happened to stop in. Soon Macon and Harkreader were touring as far afield as New England, and when George D. Hay began bringing together performers two years later for what would become the Opry, Macon was a natural choice. 

The tour also brought Macon the first of his many recording dates, held in New York for the Vocalion label in 1924. Macon would record prolifically through the 1930s (and occasionally up to 1950) for various labels, accompanied at different times by Harkreader, the brother duo of Sam & Kirk McGee, the Delmore Brothers, the young Roy Acuff, and other string players including a then-unknown Bill Monroe. For secular material, his backing band took the name of the Fruit Jar Drinkers. 

                                   

Macon's recordings are richly enjoyable in themselves and are priceless historical documents, both for the large variety of banjo styles they preserve and for the window they afford on American song of the late 19th century. Macon performed musical-comic routines such as the "Uncle Dave's Travels" series, topical songs, often of his own composition ("Governor Al Smith"), playful folk songs ("I'll Tickle Nancy"), gospel with his Dixie Sacred Singers, blackface minstrel songs, unique proto-blues pieces that Macon learned from African-American freight workers ("Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy"), and songs of other types. 

“The Dixie Dewdrop" was loved most of all for his presence as a live musician, captured not only on the weekly Opry broadcasts (which were broadcast nationally for a time in the 1930s) but also in the 1940 film Grand Ole Opry. Macon delivered what an 1880s southern vaudeville audience would have demanded for its hard-earned dollar, which included showman, humor, political commentary (often of the incorrect variety by modern standards), and unflagging energy. 

Macon continued to appear on the Opry almost until his death, gradually taking on the status of a great-hearted living link to country music's origins. He became the tenth member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966, and the revival of old time music that flourished as part of the folk movement focused the attention of younger listeners on his music. 

Macon continued to perform until shortly before his death on March 22, 1952, at Rutherford County Hospital in Murfreesboro. He was buried at Coleman Cemetery near Murfreesboro. His funeral was visited by more than five thousand people and his pallbearers were George D. Hay, Kirk McGee, Roy Acuff, and Bill Monroe. He was inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966. A monument was erected near Woodbury. His son Dorris and several bandmates (often including Sam and Kirk McGee) made sporadic appearances on the Grand Ole Opry as the Fruit Jar Drinkers until the early 1980s. 

Yet Macon remains less well understood, and less present in the musical minds of country listeners, than Jimmie Rodgers or the Carter Family, even though he was nearly as well-known in his own day. Perhaps that's because he represents an older layer of American music-making than almost any other performer known to country audiences: modern hearers can easily connect with Rodgers' blues or the Carters' homespun sentiment, but Macon may require greater effort. Such effort, in any case, is well repaid by an acquaintance with his musical legacy. 

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia) 

 

Little Sonny (Willis) born 6 October 1932

Little Sonny (born Aaron Willis; October 6, 1932, in Greensboro, Alabama) is an American electric blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. 

Willis was born in 1932 and raised solely by his mother. He relocated to Detroit in 1953. Little Sonny stated that his nickname was originated by his mother: "[She] called me 'Sonny boy' from the time I can remember." He had no real interest in music, he said, "But then I saw Sonny Boy Williamson II." Willis was "spellbound at the way he played. After the show I went home and practiced for hours. Every day after that I would practice until I got the sound I wanted." His daytime job was working in a used car lot. 

After sitting in with Washboard Willie at the Good Times Bar one evening, Sonny was offered ten dollars a night, three nights a week by the club owner. Within six months, Sonny formed his own group. During the years that followed, he worked five shows a night in many Detroit bars and clubs, packing the rooms every weekend. He spent two years at the Bank Bar, four and a half at the Congo Lounge, five years in the Apex Bar, and two years at the Calumet Show Bar. He still took Polaroid pictures of the customers between sets and often he earned more money from the photography than from entertaining. It was a rough grind, but he managed to make a living and eventually to buy a car and a home for his wife and four children. 

He often performed with John Lee Hooker, Eddie Kirkland and Baby Boy Warren. Another club stalwart, Eddie "Guitar" Burns, accompanied him on Little Sonny's debut single, "I Gotta Find My Baby" (1958), released by Duke Records. It was co-written by Little Sonny's wife, Maggie. His follow-up release, "Love Shock", was for Excello Records. He received $25 for that track. He then established his own label, Speedway Records, and sold enough copies of his next single, "The Mix Up", to pay his production costs. 

                                   

Little Sonny acquired a two-track tape machine and took matters into his own hands during the early '60s, helming his tiny Speedway label.In 1966 he leased "The Creeper" and "Latin Soul" to Revilot Records. A later track, "Sonny's Bag", became his first Top 20 hit in Detroit. By late 1969, Little Sonny recorded his debut album, the predominantly instrumental New King of Blues Harmonica, which he cut in less than six hours. It was released by Enterprise, a subsidiary of Stax Records. Despite their reputation for soul music productions, Little Sonny released three albums for the label in the early 1970s. He also briefly appeared in the Stax stadium concert film, Wattstax. 

Black & Blue (1971) and Hard Goin' Up (1973) followed, with Little Sonny using an Old Standby 34B harmonica. His 1973 release, Hard Goin' Up, reached the Top 50 in the Billboard R&B chart. A lean period ensued, until the British label Sequel Records issued Sonny Side Up in 1995. His accompanists included the keyboard player Rudy Robinson, a regular session musician in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, and the guitarist Aaron Willis, Jr., Little Sonny's son, who had both played on Hard Goin' Up over 20 years earlier. 

Little Sonny performed at Black Hills State University on June 24, 2000. His last public concert was at  the Motor City Blues & Boogie Woogie Festival, in Detroit on October 4, 2008, at, with Eddie "Guitar" Burns, Otis Clay and Bobby Rush. 

His photograph collection, housed in the basement of his Detroit home, includes shots of John Lee Hooker, Eddie "Guitar" Burns, Eddie Kirkland, Joe Hunter, Eddie Willis, Bobby Bland, Washboard Willie, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. He has released eight albums, including three for a subsidiary of Stax Records. 

Now long retired, he recently gave an interview in 2023 to the French abs online magazine. @ https://www.absmag.fr/little-sonny

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic and Concord.com)

B.W. Stevenson born 5 October 1949

Louis Charles "B. W." Stevenson (October 5, 1949 – April 28, 1988) (originally known as Buckwheat Stevenson) was an American country pop singer and musician, working in a genre which is now called progressive country. 

Stevenson was born in Dallas, Texas. He attended Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, where his peers included Michael Martin Murphey and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Under the name Chuck Stevenson he sang with a few local bands until he graduated in 1967 and went to North Texas State University (now University of North Texas) in Denton on a voice scholarship. Operatic singing did not appeal to him, and he left the music program after a year. He subsequently attended Cooke County Junior College (now North Central Texas College) and served a stint in the United States Air Force. 

Stevenson returned to Dallas, playing local clubs when he could and working odd jobs. He went to Austin in 1970 to look for work but found none. He then went to Los Angeles to try to sell his songs, but the L.A. labels also passed him by. Sometime in this period his longtime girlfriend left him unexpectedly, and, heartbroken, he wrote some of his best ballads. A representative from RCA who was in Los Angeles heard his songs and signed him in 1971. 

                          Here's "On My Own" from above LP

                                      

Stevenson's self-titled first album on RCA was recorded in Chicago and released in 1972. The record included one of his songs that is very popular with his fans today, "On My Own," but RCA did not promote any songs on the album that were written by Stevenson. This was the first misstep in a long series of blunders in producing and marketing his music and voice. 

Stevenson's talent lay in his ballads and mournful tunes of lost and unrequited love, of which "On My Own" is a beautiful example. This got the attention of the Austin music scene, and Stevenson was welcomed back as a brother in the progressive country movement. RCA had given him the moniker "Buckwheat," and the name stuck. "Buck," as his friends called him, became a regular at the Armadillo World Headquarters and other clubs around Austin. RCA had no interest in the Austin music scene and took Stevenson to L.A. for his next recording, Lead Free (1972) which also produced no hits. 

For the third album RCA's producer found a song in the ABC–Dunhill reject pile called "Shambala," written by Danny Moore. It was perfect for Stevenson's voice, and he was climbing the charts with it as a single when ABC–Dunhill realized its potential and quickly released a version of it by Three Dog Night, even though RCA had negotiated a "lock" on the song. As Three Dog Night was very popular at the time, its cover of the tune quickly eclipsed Stevenson's and knocked him off the charts. This unscrupulous move generated some sympathetic press for Stevenson, but not much else until RCA released "My Maria," written by Stevenson and Danny Moore as a vehicle to show off Stevenson's powerful and distinctive voice. "My Maria" went to Number 9 on the pop charts for weeks in 1973 and was the most commercially successful of Stevenson's recordings, although he felt it was far from his best work. Nevertheless, it had a compelling sound, so much so that it became the Number 1 Billboard "Country Song of the Year" when Brooks and Dunn covered it in 1996. 

The misguided attempts to package Stevenson as something other than what he wanted to be, a Texas musician, continued with the next album on RCA, Calabasas (1974), and with subsequent albums from Warner Brothers and MCA. Calabasas was critically acclaimed, but its over-produced sound was difficult to reproduce onstage, and although Stevenson toured extensively to promote it, his heart was not in it. He grew discouraged and, already fond of food and drink, began to drink excessively. Warner Brothers and MCA also attempted to categorize him as a pop musician on the next five albums that he recorded, with fewer and fewer of his songs on the records. 

By the time his ninth major-label album was released in 1980 and Stevenson was free of his contracts, the progressive country scene had faded. Although he returned to Texas for a while, there were no further recording opportunities available to him. But in 1980 Stevenson recorded a contemporary Christian album titled Lifeline, produced by Chris Christian, his neighbor in Beverly Hills, California and it had success on Christian radio with the hit "Headin' Home". 

Stevenson returned to Texas once again in 1987 and went into the studio on his own. He recorded some new songs and some old ones, including "On My Own." This was the first time his songs were recorded the way he wanted them produced, and the first time all but one of the songs on an album were his. 

Before the album was completed, however, Stevenson fell ill, in February 1988. At first he thought he had the flu, but the diagnosis was endocarditis, an inflammation of his heart that was eating away one of its valves. Stevenson went to the hospital to undergo heart valve surgery. He developed a staph infection and died on April 28, at 38. After much effort, with the last overdubs and mixing done after Stevenson's death, Rainbow Down the Road was released as a CD on Amazing Records in 1990

(Edited from The Texas State Historical Association)

Leroy Van Dyke born 4 October 1929

Leroy Frank Van Dyke (born October 4, 1929) is an American country music and honky-tonk singer and guitarist, best known for his hits "The Auctioneer" (1956) and "Walk on By" (1961). 

Born in Missouri, Van Dyke originally wanted to be a farmer. He earned a degree in agriculture and journalism at the University of Missouri, where he first began playing guitar. His uncle had been an auctioneer, and Van Dyke himself studied livestock auctioneering and worked as an auctioneer for a time. Following graduation, he worked as a newspaper reporter. Sent to Korea during the Korean War, he began performing for his peers and wrote "The Auctioneer," which recalled Van Dyke's uncle and was dedicated to his cousin. The song contains passages of actual auction calls. 

Following military service, Van Dyke returned to journalism in Chicago but kept up his performing career, appearing on Red Foley's Ozark Jubilee television show. In 1956, he entered a talent contest on Chicago radio station WGN, performing "The Auctioneer." DJ Buddy Black signed up as Van Dyke's manager and slipped in a document giving himself co-writing credits and half the royalties for the song. Released as a single on the Dot label, the song hit the pop charts in late 1956 and appeared on the country charts in early 1957, where it climbed to the Top Ten. 

                                    

He was a cast member in the late 1950s on Ozark Jubilee, and was co-host, with Bill Mack, of the Southern Baptist Radio/TV Commission-produced Country Crossroads radio show for 10 years, and was joined by a third co-host Jerry Clower. It became the most widely syndicated radio show in country music history. In 1961, Van Dyke went to Nashville and signed with Mercury. One of his early releases on the label was "Walk on By," which went right to the top of the country charts and remained there for 19 weeks; it also crossed over to the Top Five on the pop charts. Van Dyke contributed his distinctive smooth tenor to what became one of country music's quintessential cheating songs, a fast two-step number with a certain sly veneer of sophistication. 

"Walk on By," which gained a Grammy nomination for Van Dyke, was followed up with another major crossover hit, "If a Woman Answers (Hang Up the Phone)," and the Top 40 "Black Cloud." In 1962, Van Dyke began appearing on the Grand Ole Opry. His next few Mercury releases gained only middling success, and in 1965 he signed to Warner Bros and had Top 40 success with "Roses from a Stranger." In 1967, Van Dyke appeared in the film What Am I Bid? He recorded throughout the decade but hit the charts only with "Louisville" in 1968. Nevertheless, he remained a strong draw in Las Vegas (where he was among the first country performers to package and deliver his own self-contained show) and other upscale concert locales.

As a performer Van Dyke mastered the art of combining a rural persona with a countrypolitan sheen; he offered what he called "city-style country music" on the album The Leroy Van Dyke Show. In 1977, he notched one final minor hit, "Texas Tea." Later that year he also released two albums, Gospel Greats and Rock Relics, both produced by old friend Shelby Singleton. He performed often in Branson, Missouri, after that town emerged as a country music tourist Mecca, and he continued to appear at the agricultural trade shows and livestock auctions, where his music had sprung. 

Van Dyke continued a performance schedule, traveling from his office/home complex on his 1,000-acre (4 km2) ranch in west-central Missouri near Sedalia. He is a member of the National Auctioneers Association Hall of Fame, is active in many music industry organizations, and as a sideline, raises premium quality Arabian mules. All aspects of Leroy Van Dyke Enterprises are managed by his wife Gladys, a former legal secretary and court reporter. Their son Ben plays lead guitar in all Van Dyke performances. In 2001 Leroy was inducted into the North American Country Music Association, International, Hall of Fame. 

According to his web site his last show was August 18, 2024 at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville, Kentucky. In his 50 year-plus career, Van Dyke has recorded more than 500 songs, dozens of them making the charts. His record of "Walk on By" (1961) was named by Billboard magazine in 1994 as the biggest country single of all time, based on sales, plays, and weeks in the charts. 

(Edited from AllMusic &Wikipedia)

 

Jesse James born 3 October 1943

Jesse James (born October 3, 1943) is an American soul singer who had several minor US hits from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and has continued to record since then. 

James Herbert McClelland was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, but in one interview he gave his home state as nearby Louisiana. His singing ability was recognizable at an early age where he sang alongside his mother in church. While still a toddler, his family relocated to California. After literally singing his way through school he accepted his first professional singing engagement at The Makesmo, a popular Richmond nightclub whilst in his late teens. He was given his stage name Jesse James by a compere who struggled to announce his real name. During his early years as a singer, Jesse had a job at a local chemical factory. 

                                   

Initially credited as Jessie James, he recorded several singles in the early 1960s on the Shirley label before moving to the Hit label where some of his recordings featured guitar by Sly Stewart (later Sly Stone). His first commercial success came in 1967 when one of his recordings for Hit, "Believe in Me Baby", was reissued by 20th Century Fox Records, and reached No. 42 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 92 on the Pop chart. The song was credited to Jesse James & the Dynamic Four, was produced by Jesse Mason Jr., and was co-written by James with Sugar Pie DeSanto, Shena Demell, and Jesse Anderson. 

Later recordings for 20th Century Fox, to which he was signed by Hosea Wilson, failed to chart, but he released a self-titled LP on the label in 1968, also produced by Mason. After one single on Uni, he set up his own label, Zea, distributed by Roulette Records. His first single for the new label, the self-penned "Don't Nobody Want to Get Married", reached No. 18 on the R&B chart in 1970, and its follow-up, "I Need You Baby", reached No. 47 R&B. After Zea's distribution deal ended, he re-launched the label as Zay, and had another R&B hit (No. 25) with his version of "At Last", arranged and produced by Willie Hoskins and previously a hit for Etta James. In 1974, he returned to the 20th Century label, and the following year had a minor R&B hit (No. 73) with "If You Want a Love Affair". 

He continued to record for various labels through the 1970s and 1980s, and his final chart success came in 1987, when "I Can Do Bad By Myself", on the TTED label, reached No. 61 on the R&B chart. He released one album on TTED, It Takes One to Know One (credited as Mr. Jessie James), followed by several on Gunsmoke, for whom he signed in 1988. His first album on Gunsmoke, I Can Do Bad by Myself (1988), included a collaboration with Harvey Scales, and was followed by Looking Back (1990). 

He has continued to release albums on Gunsmoke, including Operator Please Put Me Through (1993), It Just Don't Feel the Same (1997), Versatility (1998), It's Not So Bad After All (2006), Get in Touch with Me (2009), Do Not Disturb (2012), and I Lost My Baby on Facebook (2014). Now well into his seventh decade this most resilient and enduring performer, has never been one to let the grass grow under his feet. He still performs live shows and is actively writing, producing and recording fresh new material. 

He is sometimes confused with the Philadelphia songwriter and record producer Jesse James, who wrote "Boogaloo Down Broadway" for the Fantastic Johnny C and "The Horse" for Cliff Nobles. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Soulwalking, Doul Junction Records Soundclick)

 

George Siravo born 2 October 1916

George Siravo (October 2, 1916 - February 28, 2000, Medford, Oregon) was an American composer, arranger, conductor, saxophonist, and clarinetist. 

Cliquot Club Eskimos

Siravo was born in Staten Island, New York and began learning the clarinet at an early age, and by the early 1930s, he had begun working professionally. Once of his earliest gigs was as a member of Harry Reser's Cliquot Club Eskimos, an ersatz Dixieland band that was one of the first groups to gain fame through radio. Percussionist Harry Breuer was another Cliquot Club alumnus. 

Glenn Miller's Band 1937 

Through the 1930s and into the early 1940s, Siravo wandered from band to band, playing with Jan Savitt, Charlie Barnet, Will Hudson, and Artie Shaw. He played in Glenn Miller's first band appearing on the 1937 recording "Community Swing" and joined Gene Krupa in 1938, when Krupa left Benny Goodman. He eventually quit the road in favor of working on the staff of the radio show, "Your Hit Parade." Siravo's first exposure to Sinatra was while the two were both working on the show, and Sinatra put him on retainer for his next radio show, "Frank Sinatra in Person." 

He joined the staff of Columbia Records in 1947, and when Sinatra and Columbia producer Mitch Miller decided to do an entire album of uptempo numbers, Siravo was their first choice. Sinatra later said of Siravo, "He's one of the untapped arrangers, I feel. He's a very fresh style guy, he's just fine." Unfortunately, both Sinatra and Miller got cold feet about a whole album of dance tunes, particularly since Sinatra's pipes were about to go due to an unrelenting schedule of radio shows, four club sets a night, and studio work, and a number of Siravo's arrangements went unrecorded. 

Siravo attributed a lot of Sinatra's technique to the lessons he learned from jazz musicians. "Frank would hang out with the real hip instrumentalists, guys that could do anything you asked them to do. That's where Frank got it, from the trombones and trumpets and clarinets and saxophones." He also appreciated Sinatra's approach to studio work: "He was so flexible... He was the guy who could walk between raindrops without getting wet." 

                                   

He did most of the arranging for Sinatra's first album after winning the Oscar for "From Here to Eternity," but Capitol Records ended up giving the credit to Nelson Riddle. For years, Siravo nursed a grudge about being cheated of the credit, but Riddle later passed on his apologies through Tony Bennett, and told Bennett that much of what he learned about writing for a singer without getting in his way he owed to Siravo. And when Riddle did the arrangements for Sinatra's tour of Australia in 1959, he brought in Siravo to handle the orchestration. Siravo tried to keep Sinatra in perspective and "never let him mold me." 

George Siravo

He claimed that attitude led to Sinatra's dumping him around 1961. Sinatra called Siravo in New York and invited him to come join a golf tournament in Las Vegas. Siravo had a heavy schedule of studio work and told Sinatra, "You gotta be kidding, I'm busy." Sinatra replied, "I'll send my jet." Siravo told him, "You're out of your mind." "That was the last time I ever talked to him," Siravo later told a reporter. Sinatra was not the only singer to credit Siravo for a hit. Songwriter Sammy Cahn said Siravo was the reason Doris Day's 1950 single, "It's Magic," became a hit, and he helped Tony Bennett with one of his most successful albums and singles, Who Can I Turn To?. He also worked with Vic Damone, Jimmy Rosselli, Connie Boswell, and Rosemary Clooney. 

Siravo recorded under his own name only intermittently. His best-known album, Swingin' in Studio A is a fine example of big band arranging and top-notch studio engineering and is the sort of thing audio engineering legend Henry Kloss probably had in mind when he said that the best demonstration of his pioneering headphones was "a great big band album written for stereo and recorded with top studio musicians and engineers." It may not be as splashy as an Esquivel album, but in its own way, it may be more representative of space age pop as a whole. He also recorded a showcase album for Time, Seductive Strings that featured Doc Severinsen on trumpet. His personal favorite may have been an obscure album of small ensemble, chamber music-influenced jazz recorded for Kapp Records, Polite Jazz. 

Siravo and his wife retired to Oregon in 1983, picking out the town of Medford from a map. "It's close to California, how different can it be?" he later explained. He died from natural causes at his home in Medford on February 28, 2000 at the age of 83 years. 

(Edited from Spaceagepop)

Richard Harris born 1 October 1930

Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. Having studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he rose to prominence as an icon of the British New Wave. He received numerous accolades including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and a Grammy Award. In 2020 he was listed at number 3 on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors. 

The notion of Richard Harris as a popular singer would have seemed an absurdity to anyone who knew his work in 1967, ten years into his career. In less than a year from that time, however, Harris would be the most popular actor-singer in the history of popular music, with a gold record to his credit and radio play that rivaled the Beatles. 

The son of a miller, Richard Harris was educated at the Sacred Heart Jesuit College, and later studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His stage debut took place in 1956, and he made his first film appearance in 1958 in Alive and Kicking, a British film. He appeared in key supporting roles in big-budget movies like The Guns of Navarone and Mutiny on the Bounty (where he outshone Marlon Brando's Fletcher Christian), but it was his performance in This Sporting Life (1963) which propelled him to a major international career. 

For most of the mid-'60s, Harris was among the most visible of British (or, more properly, Irish) actors in international cinema, alongside the likes of Michael Caine and Sean Connery, although he seldom played starring roles; Cromwell (1970) was such a rarity, but it was A Man Called Horse that same year that turned him into a popular culture icon, and yielded two sequels over the next 13 years. 

It was his performance as King Arthur in Warner Bros.' 1967 screen version of Lerner & Loewe's musical Camelot that made people begin to think of Harris as a singer. 

As directed by Joshua Logan, the movie was monumentally long and sluggish, but Harris proved an electrifying presence and revealed himself as a better actor-singer than Rex Harrison, who had done the role on Broadway and on the original cast album. To a great extent, Harris talked his songs in a manner similar to Harrison, but he also put a lot of an actor's performance into the material, so that one swore it was an attractive singing voice that one was hearing. The soundtrack album on Warner Bros. remained in print for decades, and was more profitable than the movie itself. 

                                   

A year later, he was approached by his friend, songwriter Jimmy Webb, with a proposed epic-length pop project, and Harris agreed to record it. The recording was eventually placed with Lou Adler's Dunhill label, and the song "MacArthur Park," clocking in at seven-and-a-half minutes, rose to number two on the American charts and shattered AM radio's established prohibition against playing singles of greater than three-and-a-half minute-length. The accompanying album A Tramp Shining was one of the great pop LPs of the '60s, a sophisticated and extraordinarily well-produced concept album (which owed a considerable debt to Sgt. Pepper's) to rival any of Sinatra's efforts in that direction. 

Harris continued working in movies  but he also found himself in demand as a recording artist. He did a second album with Webb writing and producing, The Yard Went on Forever, which may have been an even better collection of material even though it didn't sell nearly as well or yield any hits. His subsequent records included My Boy and The Richard Harris Love Album (which pulled some of the best romantic numbers from his previous records), and well into the early '70s, three years after it had been on the charts, Harris was still prevailed upon to perform "MacArthur Park" during his talk-show appearances. 

Harris' acting career remained strong right into the end of the '70s, including very well-received performances in Juggernaut (1974), Robin and Marion (1976), and The Wild Geese (1978), although these were counterbalanced by starring roles in popular junk movies like Orca (1977), sort of the equivalent of Michael Caine's work in movies like The Island and Blame It on Rio, which made a fortune but made everybody in them look more than a little foolish at the time. 

Harris' health deteriorated during this period, a result of his well-publicized heavy drinking and other fast-lane activities. He withdrew from most public activities during the early '80s, gave up drinking, and spent years recovering his health on a strict dietary regimen -- he also rediscovered religion in the process, and pursued a writing career, publishing poetry and a novel. Harris re-emerged in movies during the early '90s as the star of an acclaimed drama entitled The Field, directed by Jim Sheridan, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 2002 and died of that ailment the same year on October 25 at University College Hospital in London. 

(Edited from AllMuisc & Wikipedia)