Roger Whittaker

With his avuncular appearance and rich baritone, African-born British pop singer Roger Whittaker seemed like a late successor to Bing Crosby when he emerged into worldwide popularity in the '70s. Although his initial hits were self-written, he quickly turned largely to interpretive singing as he recorded prolifically. With the front line of the popular music business dominated by young performers playing pop/rock, he and his music soon encountered resistance from radio and the music press. Also, the U.S. was one of the last regions of the world to acknowledge him, and he never focused primarily on America, resulting in an underestimation of his stardom stateside, where he was thought of as a one-hit wonder for "The Last Farewell." But he maintained a large following in Europe and the Far East where he performed frequently, resulting in sales that were estimated at 40 million albums worldwide by the early '90s. The son of immigrants from Staffordshire, England, Whittaker was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on March 22, 1936. His father, Edward Whittaker, owned a grocery store, for which his mother, Viola Whittaker, kept the books; she later worked as a teacher. He took up the guitar at the age of seven and learned to sing songs in Swahili, but did not think of music as a career until much later. In 1956, he entered the University of Cape Town, South Africa as a medical student, but flunked out in his second year and returned to Nairobi, where he taught primary school and performed in nightclubs. In September 1959, he moved to the U.K. and began attending Bangor University in Wales, where he studied science with the intention of furthering his teaching career. But he continued to sing in clubs, and in the early '60s, a few of his recordings were issued on flexi-discs included...