DANNY DARROW a/k/a Philip Ross Zinn

GENRES: POP-JAZZ-RAP-FOLK-ROCK-SPOKESMAN-ACTOR-PRODUCER-DIRECTOR-COMPOSER-PHOTOGRAPHER

MANY SOUNDS AND VOICES. Voice type BARITONE.

LABELS: MIGHTY (USA)- STRAND (USA) - ALMONT (USA) - COLLY FONOGRAPHICA (Argentina)

Family name Braumfield, in early 1920s his grandfather(Harry), kept 16 people alive in one room in Minsk-Pinsk (Poland) by steeling food while the authorities were looking to kill him. Trying to leave the country by train, he begged the man in line in front of him to say they were brothers and took on the name Harry Zinn, escaped with his family and finally arrived and settled in Chicago Illinois.

BIRTH NAME: Philip Ross Zinn BORN: October,3, 1937 Chicago Ill. USA. YEARS ACTIVE: 1947 to present.

EARLY LIFE: Danny Darrow is an American singer, entertainer and actor of popular music of many different sounds and styles. Raised in Chicago, Illinois Darrow began singing at the age of 10, and toured with his father and grandfather throughout the Midwest as Cantors. Mother Lottie Stein and father Aaron Zinn brought up Philip as a Rabbinical student. Studied at the Chicago Jewish Academy and the Hebrew Theological College. Started at the age of 4. At the age of 10 he started singing lessons with Russell Wood and performed in many of Woods productions such as: Finian's Rainbow, Oklahoma, Kismet, Guys and Dolls etc. He paid for his singing lessons by delivering newspapers and kosher chickens on his bicycle along with selling rugs on Halsted and Maxwell streets near the Chicago stockyards earning 35 cents per hour. Zinn took a job as straight man at Minsky's and Rialto theaters in Chicago doing vaudeville and burlesque skits, introducing striptease dancers and left his Rabbinical studies.

In 1950 Zinn joined the R.O.T.C. and in 1952 joined and served in the U.S. National Guard in an operations detachment for guided missiles and was honorably discharged in 1972 from the U.S. Army Reserves.

FIRST SUCCESS: In 1954, Zinn won the Gold Medal Award for Chicago top male vocalist from the Chicago Sun and Times newspaper, the Bronze Metal Award from the Harvest Moon Festival and appeared at the Chicago Coliseum in front of over 50,000 people with Stars: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Red Buttons, Edie Gorme and others. Pat McClaren a managing theatrical agent in Chicago, took Zinn to meet Jack Ruby, a well connected club owner, to help McClaren get Zinn working in night clubs. Zinn became a regular on the Howard Miller Show on NBC TV, 4:30 PM. with June Valli and the

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Art Van Damme Quintet, along with daily appearances on coast to coast Monitor on NBC Radio, broadcasting from the Merchandise Mart in Chicago with live bands such as Lou Breeze, Don Fernando, Harry James and others while doing club dates with Ramsey Lewis at Stelzers Restaurant, 6300 Stony Island Ave., Xavier Cugat with Abbe Lane at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, Red Norvo at the Adobi Club, Jerry Vandyke at the Lamplighter and the Top Hat Club in Danville, Ill. weekly among others. Zinn sharpened his skills by doing 16 sets a night on weekends in Danville ILL.

His regular daytime job was music reporter for Variety Newspaper, He Left Variety in 1955 and opened the Platter Shop in the famous Rush Street Area which became a small chain of record shops and catered to most of the clubs in Chicago since they changed from live bands to records to cut their costs, selling bump and grind records to the strippers and Gregorian chant records to the nuns, sometimes at the same time. At night Zinn was on WGN Radio, live, with Bill Anson broadcasting from the Wagonwheel Restaurant in Chicago nightly. In 1958, Zinn auditioned for the Arthur Godfrey Show in New York and made it. He then sold everything he owned and moved to New York for the show. The week he was scheduled to be on, the show went off the air without notice. Stuck at the King Edward Hotel on 44th Street paying 17 Dollars a week and eating dinners at Grants on 42nd Street, a sardine sandwich 12 cents and a grape drink for a nickle. It seemed everything was lost.

THE 1-A-ROUND: A friend Lew Douglass, an arranger, producer conductor for MGM Records came up from Chicago to help. While at a recording session Lew and Sid Ascher, a publicist and writer suggested Zinn change his name. Later that year with the help of Ascher, Zinn was contracted to be the spokesman-producer-director for the Cerebral Palsey Telethons on local T.V. stations through-out the country, using the name Danny Dreem, it was changed later to Danny Darrow. When he returned to New York, he became Joe Franklin's anchor on WOR.TV for over 300 shows while being a music copiest for Claus Oberman, Don Costa, Lew Douglass and others while doing club dates with Jackie Mason, Morrie Amsterdam etc... and teaching ballroom dancing at Dales Dance Studio. In 1960, Darrow's recording of "Regrets And Roses" b/w "The Handsome Man" was to be released on Dot Records but the company went out of business just before. In 1961, Darrow's recording of "Fools Rush In" was to be released on M.G.M. Records in April, but again the record division of M.G.M. closed in March leaving Brook Benton's recording on Mercury Records to ride the charts alone. In 1961, Darrow's recording of "Impulse" on Strand records became a turntable hit all over the West Coast. Danny toured all over the West Coast with the "Impulse" record which he wrote and appeared on many Radio and TV shows along with doing a concert at Pacific Ocean Park and a club date at the Hungry Eye in San Francisco. The record company refused to pay royalties to any of their artists including Darrow and went out of Business. "Impulse" sold approx. 350,000 copies which the record distributors informed Darrow of, but was never reported. Darrow went back to his photography, taking pictures of thousands of actors and working for Playboy Enterprises. John Hammond from Columbia Records called Darrow and offered him a recording contract, but disgusted and broke Darrow left the business studied and became registered with the New York and American Stock Exchanges along with the National Association of Securities Dealers. In 1971, Zinn was appointed by Judge Joseph V. Costa, Federal Court, Eastern District of New York, to run the bankrupt "Pilgrim Laundry" in Brooklyn and Long Island to try and save over 400 workers jobs. Zinn invented the Fade-Out Blue Jean Process and his first contract was 325,000 Dollars, which turned the business around. Zinn appeared on ABC News, "What's My Line" and was written up in the Readers Digest among other TV shows and publications for his "Fade Out Blue Jean Process". while still recording his songs in his spare time. He kept the company running until the late 70's. In the 1980's, Otto Preminger at Columbia Pictures, called Darrow and gave him the part of the Army Sargent in the "Moshe Diane Story" to be his last movie, starring Yul Brynner. Brynner died in New York with lung cancer and Preminger was killed crossing 65th St. and Lexington Ave. in NYC by a car, walking across the street to buy a newspaper. Darrow wrote and produced a show " A Salute to Frank Sinatra, the Man and his Music" which he performed at Tavern on the Green in the late 1990's. Abe Hirschfeld who produced the "Jackie Mason" on Broadway wanted the show to be his next project on Broadway. Hirschfeld called Darrow and told him he was going to jail for five years, for attempted murder of his business partner and couldn't do it. He would be 95 when he got out and said he was sorry. The music industry was changing and Darrow went to work in films and soap operas, while recording different styles and sounds of music. He received film parts from Sidney Lumet, Nicholas Hytner, Adrian Lyne and Robert Redford among others while having parts on "All My Children", "Texas", "The Doctors" and "As the World Turns", along with playing Mark Fishman on "Late Night with David Letterman". Darrow received a contract to produce the U.S. Man of the Year Pageant for New York State, which Burt Parks was doing in Atlantic City. Darrow was also featured daily in the "Mary Worth" comic strip world wide as himself doing his own show. In 2008, a disc jockey Frank Mendez remixed one of Darrow's records "Doomsday" which he co-wrote and it became number one, "Five Stars", on the Dance Club Charts World-Wide along with articles written on (Musik Kontrapunkt Kontrol) about Darrow among others. His recordings are now on all the search engines World-Wide and sought after and sold by collectors. His digital's can be found on Amazon and CD baby.com and can be heard on I-tunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Bing, Deezer and many others. His video "Danny Darrow Sings Frank Sinatra" can be seen on You Tube and others. Thought dead and many claiming to be him, Danny Darrow is sill alive and works out of New York City. Currently in pre-production for the Danny Darrow TV special.

A list of most of his known recordings are as follows;

SERENADE IN BLUE - 1954 with Joe Loco -Label unknown. BLUE MOON - 1954 with Joe Loco - Label unknown REGRETS AND ROSES - 1959 and 1965 - Mighty Records and Almont Records THE HANDSOME MAN - 1959 - Mighty Records IMPULSE (ORIGINAL) - 1961 - Strand Records TRAVELIN' - 1961 - Strand Records NO USE RUNNING FROM LOVE - 1961 -Strand Records IMPULSE (Revised and Extended) - 1980 - Mighty Records (USA)/Colly Fonographica (Argentina) DOOMSDAY (Original and Extended) - 1980 - Mighty Records (USA)/Colly Fonographica (Argentina) BABY LET YOUR LOVE RUN FREE - CIRCLES OF LOVE - 1980 - Mighty Records (USA)/Colly Fonographica (Argentina) TELEPHONES - 1980 - Mighty Records (USA)/Colly Fonographica (Argentina) WOMAN OF LOVE - 1980 - Mighty records (USA)/Colly Fonographica (Argentina) MOTHERLESS CHILD - 1980 Mighty Records GREEN SLEEVES - 1980 - Mighty Records CINDY - 1980 - Mighty Records WAYFARING STRANGER - 1980 - Mighty records BLACK IS THE COLOR - 1980 - Mighty Records SINNER MAN - 1980 - Mighty Records BLOW THE CANDLES OUT - 1980 - Mighty Records SHENANDOAH - 1980 - Mighty Records ALL DAY ALL NIGHT MARY ANN - 1980 - Mighty Records A FRIEND (THE RIDDLE SONG) - 1980 - Mighty Records FALLING IN LOVE - 1980 - Mighty Records A PART OF YOU - 1980 - Mighty Records CORPORATE LADY -1980 - Mighty Records FOR MY TOMORROW - 1980 - Mighty Records BETTER THAN YOU KNOW - 1980 - Mighty Records I SING YOU - 1980 - Mighty Records WONDERLAND OF DREAMS - 1980 - Mighty Records LOOK TO THE WIND - 1980 - Mighty Records AS YOUNG AS WE ARE - Almont Records & Mighty Records THE POWER OF LOVE - 1980 - Mighty Records MERRY GO ROUND OF LOVE - 1980 - Mighty Records FOOLS RUSH IN - 1980 - Mighty Records CARNIVAL NIGHTS - 1980 - Mighty Records TIME WILL TELL - 1980 - Mighty Records LET THERE BE PEACE - 1980 - Mighty Records MY GIRL - 1980 - Mighty Records

Note: MERRY GO ROUND OF LOVE was played at the last New York Worlds Fair in Queens, NY.

Written and edited by Josiane Hird (2010)