Ross Bagdasarian Sr.

Ross Bagdasarian Sr. Studied at Fresno High School. The recorded working language is English. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are pop. Residence is recorded at Cleveland. Employment is recorded with Warner Bros. Distinctions recorded are Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album and Grammy Award for Best Album for Children.

• Name — Ross S. Bagdasarian • Born — 27 January 1919 • Birthplace — Fresno, California, U.S. • Died — 16 January 1972 • Place of death — Beverly Hills, California, U.S. • Resting Place — Chapel of the Pines Crematory • Other Names — David Seville (stage name) • Occupation — * Singer • songwriter • record producer • actor • Years Active — 1939–1972 • Notable Works — Alvin and the Chipmunks • Style — Novelty music • Television — The Alvin Show (1961–62) • Children — 3, including Ross Jr. • Relatives — William Saroyan (cousin) Janice Karman (daughter-in-law) • Website — https: alvinandthechipmunks.com/

Bagdasarian was born on January 27, 1919, in Fresno, California, to an Armenian-American family. His father was a grape grower. He had two elder brothers: Richard Sirak (1910–1966) and Harry Sisvan (1915–1989). The novelist William Saroyan, with whom he was very close, was his first cousin. Bagdasarian graduated from Fresno High School in 1937. He went to New York to work with his cousin Saroyan, intending to become an actor. When World War II started, he enlisted and served four years as a control tower operator and rose to the rank of a staff sergeant (SSgt) in the Army Air Forces. He spent time in England, France and Spain; his later stage name "David Seville" originated from the fact that he was stationed in the city of Seville in Spain and he liked the city. After the war, he returned to Fresno, married Armenouhi "Armen" Kulhanjian, and they tried for a time to be grape growers. They were unsuccessful, and they moved to Los Angeles, where he started a career as a songwriter.

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), and Destination Gobi (1953). In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), he is the lonely composer at the piano. Acting in The Proud and Profane (1956), he also composed and performed the tie-in song The Ballad of Colin Black.

Bagdasarian's first major songwriting success came with "Come On-a My House", which he co-wrote with William Saroyan in 1939. Many record companies rejected the song for being "too ethnic", and it was not recorded until 1950 (by Kay Armen). The songwriters themselves recorded it as a duet in 1951. Mitch Miller of Columbia Records came across the song and persuaded Rosemary Clooney to record it. It became a million-selling hit. 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, Bagdasarian 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 1956, he wrote an instrumental "Armen's Theme" named after his wife. The executives at Liberty Records suggested that he adopt a pseudonym as they thought his name was too difficult to pronounce. In December 1956, he charted with his first record credited to his David Seville pseudonym, and "Armen's Theme" reached No. 42 on the Billboard chart.

• Illustration — Bagdasarian pictured in the 1950s 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 from the family savings. Liberty Records released this novelty record under the David Seville name. It is a duet between his real voice and an 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 $20 million ($ adjusted for inflation in 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 produced The Alvin Show, a half-hour TV cartoon show broadcast on CBS from October 1961 to September 1962. In 1968, Alvin and the Chipmunks recorded a version of "The Chipmunk Song" with the rock band Canned Heat, who also recorded for Liberty Records.

Bagdasarian married Armenouhi "Armen" Kulhanjian (1927–1991) in 1946. They had three children: Carol Askine (b. 1947), an actress; Ross Jr. (b. 1949); and Adam Serak (b. 1954), a fiction writer. They lived in Los Angeles from 1950. As of 1963, he owned a grape ranch in California called the Chipmunk Ranch. In the mid-1960s, he bought Sierra Wine Corp., a winery that supplied product, among others, to E & J Gallo Winery.

• The Music of David Seville (1957 Liberty 3073) • The Witch Doctor Presents: David Seville...and his Friends (1958 Liberty 3092) • Let's All Sing with the Chipmunks (1959 Liberty 3132) • Sing Again with the Chipmunks (1960 Liberty) • Around the World with the Chipmunks (1960 Liberty Records) • The Alvin Show (1961 Liberty Records/Capitol) • The Chipmunk Songbook (1962 Capitol/Liberty) • Christmas with the Chipmunks (1962 Liberty) • Christmas with the Chipmunks Vol. 2 (1963 Liberty Records) • The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits (1964 Sunset/Liberty; as Alvin and the Chipmunks with David Seville) • Chipmunks à Go-Go (1965 Liberty 3424; as Alvin, Simon and Theodore with David Seville) • The Mixed-Up World of Bagdasarian (1966 Liberty 7451; recorded under David Seville's real name, Ross Bagdasarian)

• The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) as Spectator (uncredited) • Viva Zapata! (1952) as Officer (uncredited) • The Stars Are Singing (1953) as Song Promoter (uncredited) • Destination Gobi (1953) as Paul Sabatello • The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953) as Marine (uncredited) • Stalag 17 (1953) as Singing Prisoner of War (uncredited) • Alaska Seas (1954) as Joe, Jim's crewman • Rear Window (1954) as Songwriter/pianist • Kismet (1955) as Fevvol (uncredited) • Hot Blood (1956) as Gas Station Attendant (uncredited) • The Proud and Profane (1956) as Louie • Three Violent People (1956) as Asuncion Ortega • The Devil's Hairpin (1957) as Tani Ritter • The Deep Six (1958) as Pvt. Aaron Slobodjian • The Alvin Show (1961–1962, TV Series) as Alvin, Simon, Theodore and David Seville (voice, final appearance)