2020. 3. 6. 04:51ㆍ카테고리 없음
The singer was only 54 but cancer had so ravaged his body he was barely recognisable. Unable to eat or drink, he had become dangerously thin and frail.“That moment defined everything for Mickie,” says ’s daughter Michele. “She knew she was going to lose him.”It was a heartbreaking and premature demise for a man whose warm and beautiful voice had brought enormous pleasure to so many. Now, 25 years after his death, Michele has written a biography of her father, a man she says was not just adored by his millions of fans but also massively respected by his peers.“He loved the business and saw only the good side of everything and everyone.
But it was the accolades from his contemporaries that gave him the biggest thrill of all.”. Frank Sinatra, the man with whom he was so often compared, said of Monro after his death: “If I had to choose three of the finest male vocalists in the singing business, Matt would be one of them. His pitch was right on the nose; his word enunciations letter perfect; his understanding of a song thorough.”Matt could count among his admirers some of the biggest names in showbusiness on both sides of the Atlantic. They included such singers as Sammy Davis Jr, Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, Val Doonican and Bing Crosby and comedians Tony Hancock, Sid James and Dave Allen.In poll after poll Monro was voted Britain’s best male singer despite performing easy-listening ballads at a time when the charts were full of rock and roll.
Even more remarkable was the fact that he reached such heights despite facing huge obstacles in his early life. Born Terry Parsons in 1930 in Shoreditch, East London, he was the youngest of five children who lost their father Fred, a chemical worker, from tuberculosis when Terry was three.
For mother Alice, the struggle to clothe, feed and house the children became too much. Two years after her husband’s death she had a mental breakdown and went to a sanatorium. Terry was taken to a foster home where he was badly behaved. His mother returned to look after him but he continued to be difficult.Moved from one school to the next, he hardly ever turned up to lessons at any of them and his childhood became even more disrupted when the war forced his evacuation to the country. By the age of 16 he had lived in numerous homes, had no memory of his father and had enjoyed little contact with his mother. He volunteered for early conscription at 17 and two years later was posted to Hong Kong as a mechanic with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He didn’t take well to the discipline of military life but his craving for attention and his remarkable voice did find an outlet in the Hong Kong radio station’s weekly talent show.
He won it almost every week and the station soon gave him his own slot.When he returned to Britain in 1953 he tried to get a normal job but couldn’t settle. His success singing in Hong Kong had given him a taste for the limelight and he wanted more.When his first proper girlfriend Iris Jordan became pregnant with his son Mitchell, Terry felt obliged to marry her but it was not a marriage based on love. The responsibilities of being a father didn’t help with his ambition to be a star. He got a job as a lorry driver, then a London bus driver and would sing in the evenings but his wife had little faith in him ever making it big and complained about him coming home late at night.
But his voice was beginning to get noticed. A demo record he had made reached the ears of popular pianist Winifred Atwell and she persuaded her record label, Decca, to give him an audition. Terry’s enchanting voice wowed everyone at Decca.They took him on and gave him his new name, Matt Monro, partly named after Winifred’s father, Monro Atwell. Especially impressed was a young female music promoter, Renate Schuller, whom everyone called Mickie.Like Matt, Mickie Schuller was married but her marriage was as unhappy as his.
“Matt kept asking me out, I kept saying no,” Mickie recalls. “Then one day in January, when it was clear that both marriages were at an end, I said yes. How many times I have thanked the gods I did.”.
Matt married Mickie as soon as their divorces came through and they had two children, Michele and Matthew.Decca’s faith in Matt slowly began to pay off. He released an LP, Blue And Sentimental, and began unglamorous but lucrative work singing jingles for TV commercials.S uddenly Terry Parsons had a new life, a new career, a new wife and a new name. But his life really changed for the better when he was asked to sing for a Peter Sellers album called Songs For Swinging Sellers. The album was being produced by George Martin, who would later produce The Beatles’ records.
Sellers had to sing the first song of his new album You Keep Me Swingin’ in the style of Frank Sinatra and as Martin had heard that Monro’s voice was similar to Sinatra’s, he asked him to sing it so that Sellers would have someone to copy. In the end Sellers and Martin were so impressed with Monro’s version they included it on the record.Martin gave Monro a Parlophone contract and hits quickly followed, including My Kind Of Girl and the soundtrack for the James Bond film, From Russia With Love.Monro was chosen to sing Britain’s entry in the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest and though he only came second it heightened his profile. He became one of the decade’s best known performers of hit film theme songs from Born Free to On Days Like These, featured in the Michael Caine comedy, The Italian Job.Popular in the US, South America and the Far East, he found himself touring constantly.“With Matt spending so much time on the road it is not surprising that he suffered from homesickness.
He always said that he lived out of suitcases so much that he forgot what it was like to open a drawer,” says Michele. “Whenever he was based abroad for a few weeks he had the Daily Express delivered from England.” But he calmed his homesickness with alcohol and, as his drinking became heavier, it damaged his health. His GP noticed his liver had become dangerously swollen and wrote that, at a conservative estimate, he was drinking at least half a bottle of scotch a day.I n 1976 he was admitted to the Priory in London for rehabilitation. “The root of the problem seemed to be that he simply enjoyed drinking,” says Michele.
“They established that his drinking did not interfere with his normal life: he was quite competent and able to go about his normal day without it having a detrimental effect on his routine. Unfortunately it did have a detrimental effect on his liver. It was damaged and with regular jaundice attacks it was evident that alcohol and Matt didn’t get on.” The Priory failed to get Monro dry but in 1981 staff at another clinic, Galsworthy House in Surrey, finally succeeded in getting him to give up the bottle.But less than four years later he began feeling ill and doctors diagnosed cancer of the liver. An attempted transplant was abandoned when it was found the cancer had spread too far and on February 7, 1985, he died.The music world mourned the passing of such a great star but some noted that despite topping the charts in other nations, Matt Monro had never enjoyed a UK No1. Then in 2005, Michele discovered a recording of her father performing that had been in a family garage for nearly 40 years.
Matt Monro On Days Like These Karaoke
The film was put on DVD and released as An Evening With Matt Monro. It shot to the top of the DVD music charts. Matt Monro had finally achieved the UK No1 he had always craved.