Ross Bagdasarian Sr.

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Rostom Sipan "Ross" Bagdasarian (January 27, 1919 – January 16, 1972), better known as an Armenian-American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor, best known for his creation of the cartoon band Alvin and the Chipmunks, was a singer.

He began as a stage and film actor in 1958 and "Witch Doctor" and "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) -- both became Billboard top-one hits.

The Alvin Show, which aired on CBS in 1961–62, was produced and directed by Henvin.

Life

Bagdasarian was born in Fresno, California, on January 27, 1919, to an Armenian-American family. Richard Sirak (1910–1966) and Harry Sisvan (1915–1989) were two of his three elder brothers. William Saroyan was his first cousin, to whom he was very close.

Bagdasarian graduated from Fresno High School in 1937. During World War II, he spent four years as a control tower operator and then rose to the rank of a staff sergeant (SSgt) in the Army Air Forces. David Seville's stage name "David Seville" derives from the fact that he was stationed in Seville, Spain, where he was stationed.

Personal life

Armenouhi "Armen" Kulhanjian (1927-1991) married Bagdasarian (1927-1991) in 1946. They had three children: Carol Askine (b. ), Rebecca Askine (b.) Ross Dickran Jr., a 1947 actress, is a producer who specializes in the arts. Adam Serak (b. 1949) and James Serak (b. (1954), a fiction writer. They lived in Los Angeles from 1950 to 2012. He owned the Chipmunk Ranch, a California wine ranch, as of 1963. He purchased Sierra Wine Corp., a winery that sold wine, among other things, to E & J Gallo Winery in the mid-1960s. On January 16, 1972, he died of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home, just 11 days before his 53rd birthday. At the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, he was cremated and inurned.

Bagdasarian's wife and three children will be given the Chipmunks franchise. Ross Jr. said in an interview that he "worshipped" his father and felt the need to keep his job. After finishing law school and becoming the sole owner when he acquired the rights from his siblings in the mid-1990s, he revived the franchise with his wife Janice Karman in the late 1970s.

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Career

Bagdasarian's Broadway debut was in 1939 when he played the newsboy in The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan, his cousin. He also appeared in minor roles in several films, such as Viva Zapata! (1952), Stalag 17 (1953), Destination Gobi (1953), Rear Window (1954), and The Proud and Profane (1956). Notably, in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, he is the piano player. In Stalag 17, he sings "I Love You" in a pivotal scene at the POW Christmas Party.

Bagdasarian's major success with songwriting came with "Come On-a My House". Originally recorded by Kay Armen in 1950, it was turned into a million-selling hit in 1951 by Rosemary Clooney released by Columbia Records. It is an adaptation of an Armenian folk song Bagdasarian wrote with his cousin William Saroyan. The song was originally composed for their off-Broadway musical The Son. It launched Clooney's career, reaching number one on Billboard charts and was number four on Billboard year-end top 30 singles of 1951. The song sold some 750,000 records in a month. In 1954, he wrote "Hey, Brother, Pour the Wine", a hit for Dean Martin.

In 1955 Bagdasarian signed with the then newly established Liberty Records. In early 1956 he had a transcontinental hit with the novelty record "The Trouble with Harry" (inspired by the homonymous Hitchcock film) credited to Alfi & Harry, although Alfi & Harry was just one person, Bagdasarian himself. It reached No. 44 on the Billboard chart and was a bigger hit in the United Kingdom reaching No. 15. In December 1956, he charted with his first record credited to his David Seville pseudonym, "Armen's Theme" which reached No. 42 on the Billboard chart.

Bagdasarian's rise to prominence came with the song "Witch Doctor" in 1958, which was created after he experimented with the speed control on a tape recorder bought with $200 (around $2,000 adjusted for inflation as of 2022) from the family savings. Liberty Records released this novelty record under the David Seville name. It is a duet between his real voice and accelerated version. The record went on to become a Billboard number-one single by April 28, 1958, and further established him as a songwriter. It sold 1.5 million copies.

Bagdasarian went on to create his trio of Chipmunks named after the executives of Liberty Records: Simon, Theodore, and Alvin, named for Simon "Si" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep, and Alvin Bennett. Their debut song, "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" was released on November 17, 1958, and became a number one hit by New Years Day. The song sold 4 million records in the first few months. It topped Billboard charts the two weeks before and two weeks after New Years and won three Grammy Awards at the 1st Annual Grammy Awards on May 4, 1959: Best Recording for Children, Best Comedy Performance, and Best Non-Classical Engineered Song. Bagdasarian won the first two as David Seville. The song was the 23rd most performed Christmas song of the 20th century.

Shana Alexander, writing for Life magazine in 1959, noted that Bagdasarian was the first case in the "annals of popular music that one man has served as writer, composer, publisher, conductor and multiple vocalist of a hit record, thereby directing all possible revenues from the song back into his pocket." Alexander also found it remarkable that Bagdasarian "can neither read nor write music nor play any musical instrument in the accepted sense of the word." Bagdasarian owned Chipmunk Enterprises, which sponsored Chipmunk-related sales. By 1963, some 15 companies were using or planned to use Alvin figures. By that year, Billboard magazine estimated the total income from the Chipmunks' record sales (including overseas sales) and record club sales to be around $20 million (around $171 million adjusted for inflation to 2021 dollars).

In the following years, the Chipmunks released several hit songs: "Alvin's Harmonica" (1959), "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" (1959), "Alvin's Orchestra" (1960), "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" (1960), "The Alvin Twist" (1962), and the album The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits in 1964 during the British Invasion.

Bagdasarian then produced The Alvin Show, a TV cartoon broadcast on CBS from October 1961 to September 1962.

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