Tony Burrows

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Tony Burrows (born Anthony Burrows, 14 April 1942, in Exeter, Devon) is a British session singer.

[edit] Career

In the early 1960s he was a member of The Kestrels, a vocal harmony group which also included the future songwriting team Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook. Subsequently he joined The Ivy League (unfortunately after their hit-making days). He was still with them when they metamorphosed into The Flower Pot Men. The Flower Pot Men only ever had the one hit, "Let's Go to San Francisco", which nevertheless reached number four in the UK Singles Chart in the autumn of 1967. Two founder members of Deep Purple, Jon Lord, and Nick Simper were also part of the band.

Later Burrows sang the lead vocals on several hit songs under different group names.

He sang on -

Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)"
White Plains' "My Baby Loves Lovin'"
The Pipkins' novelty song "Gimme Dat Ding"
The Brotherhood of Man's "United We Stand"
The First Class' "Beach Baby";

In February 1970 he became the first (and still the only) person to appear on BBC Television's Top Of The Pops fronting three different acts in one show: Edison Lighthouse (who were number one that week), White Plains, and Brotherhood of Man. Afterwards he was told that he would be unofficially blacklisted from the programme as listeners might think it was a "fix", with his appearing so often. Nonetheless, he returned to the show a few weeks later as one member of The Pipkins, a duo - the other member being fellow ex-Kestrel Roger Greenaway. Nevertheless this success worked against him, in that he subsequently made several singles under his own name which were excluded from radio playlists, among them "Melanie Makes Me Smile", "The Humming Song", and "Hand Me Down Man".

He has also recorded as a session singer with Elton John, Cliff Richard, and James Last.