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Where have you gone, Perry Como?
Perry Como, forgotten man
Steve Cohen
While driving through Canonsburg, Pennsylvania last week, I thought I'd visit the museum of that town's favorite son, Perry Como.
Como, of course, was America's best-selling recording artist from the 1940s until the late 1950s. Disc jockeys frequently referred to him as the singing ex-barber from Canonsburg, a steel town just south of Pittsburgh.
For more than a decade preceding the advent of rock 'n' roll, Como was adored by teenagers. He was far and away the nation's Number One singer (far outselling Frank Sinatra, for instance) as he recorded the love ballads that provided the soundtrack for people's lives. His biggest hits were the ballads "Prisoner of Love," "Til the End of Time," "No Other Love" and "Some Enchanted Evening."
Starting in 1948, he had a 15-minute dinnertime TV show every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On that "Chesterfield Supper Club," he came into family homes with a casual warmth that reinforced the effectiveness of the ballads he crooned (not to mention religious songs like "Ave Maria" and "Kol Nidrei" at holy-day times).
Burn this message!
When I (as a disc jockey) was granted a phone interview with him in the early "'50s, Como's PR handler made me swear to destroy my note with his phone number as soon as our conversation ended.
He amassed Emmys and Grammys. The Kennedy Center honored him. Yet today's music-lovers barely recognize his name. When they do see his name, it's as an object of ridicule.
BSR's editor acknowledged Como as the personification of his era when he wrote, "Farewell, Perry Como" as the headline on a story about the 2009 Broadway show Memphis, which chronicled the coming of rock 'n' roll. In her BSR review of Memphis, Julie Morcate described a scene in which a white radio DJ plays a record by Perry Como, and the white singer plods downstage until the DJ announces that "Como is putting him in a coma."
In retrospect, Como's outreach to families in the decade after World War II hastened his rejection by the rebellious next generation of kids, as they abruptly turned their backs on their parents' culture.
In search of a shrine
On TV, Como frequently mentioned his Canonsburg roots. You would think that Como's hometown (population: about 9,000) would have a shrine to him. But it doesn't, beyond one lonely statue. An effort to open a museum in 2002 had to be abandoned when Como's heirs sold off the few personal items that he left behind when he died in Jupiter, Florida, at age 88 in 2001.
Perry himself was a down to earth sort who didn't seem impressed by his celebrity. Apparently he wasn't a saver. And even if he had kept his barber tools and gold records, how important are those objects? His memory must live on in the emotions of the listeners who dated and fell in love to the accompaniment of his songs— folks who are rapidly dying out.
This issue transcends Canonsburg or Perry Como. What will you and I leave behind? What will our surviving family members do with those objects? And how much will anyone care? To paraphrase Shelley, take a drive through Canonsburg, o ye mighty, and despair!♦
To read a response, click here.
Como, of course, was America's best-selling recording artist from the 1940s until the late 1950s. Disc jockeys frequently referred to him as the singing ex-barber from Canonsburg, a steel town just south of Pittsburgh.
For more than a decade preceding the advent of rock 'n' roll, Como was adored by teenagers. He was far and away the nation's Number One singer (far outselling Frank Sinatra, for instance) as he recorded the love ballads that provided the soundtrack for people's lives. His biggest hits were the ballads "Prisoner of Love," "Til the End of Time," "No Other Love" and "Some Enchanted Evening."
Starting in 1948, he had a 15-minute dinnertime TV show every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On that "Chesterfield Supper Club," he came into family homes with a casual warmth that reinforced the effectiveness of the ballads he crooned (not to mention religious songs like "Ave Maria" and "Kol Nidrei" at holy-day times).
Burn this message!
When I (as a disc jockey) was granted a phone interview with him in the early "'50s, Como's PR handler made me swear to destroy my note with his phone number as soon as our conversation ended.
He amassed Emmys and Grammys. The Kennedy Center honored him. Yet today's music-lovers barely recognize his name. When they do see his name, it's as an object of ridicule.
BSR's editor acknowledged Como as the personification of his era when he wrote, "Farewell, Perry Como" as the headline on a story about the 2009 Broadway show Memphis, which chronicled the coming of rock 'n' roll. In her BSR review of Memphis, Julie Morcate described a scene in which a white radio DJ plays a record by Perry Como, and the white singer plods downstage until the DJ announces that "Como is putting him in a coma."
In retrospect, Como's outreach to families in the decade after World War II hastened his rejection by the rebellious next generation of kids, as they abruptly turned their backs on their parents' culture.
In search of a shrine
On TV, Como frequently mentioned his Canonsburg roots. You would think that Como's hometown (population: about 9,000) would have a shrine to him. But it doesn't, beyond one lonely statue. An effort to open a museum in 2002 had to be abandoned when Como's heirs sold off the few personal items that he left behind when he died in Jupiter, Florida, at age 88 in 2001.
Perry himself was a down to earth sort who didn't seem impressed by his celebrity. Apparently he wasn't a saver. And even if he had kept his barber tools and gold records, how important are those objects? His memory must live on in the emotions of the listeners who dated and fell in love to the accompaniment of his songs— folks who are rapidly dying out.
This issue transcends Canonsburg or Perry Como. What will you and I leave behind? What will our surviving family members do with those objects? And how much will anyone care? To paraphrase Shelley, take a drive through Canonsburg, o ye mighty, and despair!♦
To read a response, click here.
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