Perry Como, who died on May 12th aged 88, was one of a group of early 1940s singers, led by Frank Sinatra, who forsook the big bands and set out on solo careers. Along with Sinatra and Bing Crosby, he became one of America's leading crooners.
During a career spanning more than 60 years, he sold more than 50 million records, appeared in three musicals, starred in his own million-dollar TV series and won a string of Grammy and Emmy awards.
Born into a large Italian-American family in the small steel town of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, Perry Como, the town barber, had no suspicion that he would eventually become a world-famous singer. The barber's shop was his own, and his use of a pleasing baritone voice was strictly a part-time indulgence. The landscape changed abruptly in 1933, when he was hired by Freddie Carlone's local touring band.
Singers at this time were still struggling to escape from the naivet e of the 1920s, and Perry Como, like most vocalists of the period, was as attached to his megaphone as a baby to its dummy. When Carlone introduced him to the mysteries of the new-fangled microphone, he found it impossible to dispense with his beloved megaphone. "I finally hit on a compromise," he said. "I sang into the microphone through the megaphone."
After three years with Carlone, he was appearing with the band in an Ohio gambling casino when he was spotted by one of the customers, the bandleader Ted Weems. After watching the singer taking countless encores, Weems offered him a job. The Weems Orchestra dispensed novelty effects, which included a great deal of whistling, yodelling and barber-shop sentimentality, and never came remotely close to the great bands of the day. It says a great deal about Perry Como that he should have spent so many happy years with a group of which a critic once said, "They sound run-of-the-mill, that is to say, like they're running a mill."
With the entry of the US into the second World War at the end of 1941, and the drafting of thousands of musicians, the balance between singer and bandleader began to change. Young men who sang with the big bands began to strike out on their own. Led by the example of Sinatra, most of these artists enjoyed some degree of success.
His leap to stardom came in 1946, when he starred in the US on the cigarette-sponsored Chesterfield Radio Hour, followed, two years later, by the television version, the Chesterfield Supper Club. A year before the Chesterfield connection, he had a million-selling record with Till The End Of Time, quickly followed by another hit, When You Were Sweet Sixteen, then Hot Diggity and Papa Loves Mambo.
Although his records all went into the US charts, a much wider fame came in 1950 with his pioneering of the TV music show, on which he both hosted and sang.
For the next eight years, the Perry Como Show became one of the most popular series on both US and British television. He won an Emmy in 1956 and 1957 for the most outstanding television personality.
His silken delivery - a touch too bland sometimes for its own good - was always ideal for sentimental ballads, although it was not too effective on uptempo pieces that demanded more rhythmic animation.
His method of learning a new song never changed. He would retire to a rowing boat on the lake on his estate, armed with a tape of the new song. He would then try to catch a few fish while playing the tape over and over until he was ready to record it.
Although the advent of rock 'n' roll pushed the crooners out of the limelight, he had more hits in the 1970s with It's Impossible, and And I Love You So.
Catch A Falling Star, one of his biggest-selling records - for which he had won a Grammy in 1958, and the song for which he was best known - enjoyed a revival as the soundtrack of the 1993 Clint Eastwood film, A Perfect World.
In the following year he came to Dublin to record his Christmas show at the Point theatre. The show hit the headlines after singer, Twink (Adele King), was asked to pay over £11,000 compensation when she took a night off from a pantomime in the Gaiety to appear in it.
A thoroughly decent, amiable, relaxed character with a sublimely beautiful voice, he was a persuasive argument for the theory that it is possible for a man to become a world celebrity without mislaying his composure. His wife, Roselle, whom he married in 1933, died in 1998. He is survived by his three children.
Pierino (Perry) Como: born 1912; died, May 2001