Frederik, Baron van Pallandt

Frederik Jan Gustav Floris, Baron van Pallandt (4 May 1934  – 15 May 1994) was a Dutch singer best known as the male, guitar-playing half of the singing duo Nina & Frederik, which was together from the late 1950s to the early 1960s.

Van Pallandt was born in Copenhagen, the son of a former Ambassador for the Netherlands to Denmark[1] and Danish Else Dagmar Hanina Blücher, Countess of Altona.[2][3][4] He and his first wife, Nina van Pallandt, created a sensation first in Denmark and then throughout Europe with music rooted in folk, ethnic, and calypso styles and, at first, their plain stage attire. Their recordings were released in the United States on the Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco, but did not enjoy the same success as they had enjoyed in Europe; they may have been ahead of the music curve which saw folk music enjoy a revival in the US in the early 1960s.

The couple had three children: Floris Nicolas Ali, Baron van Pallandt (10 June 1961 – 2006), Kirsa Eleonore Clara, Baroness van Pallandt (born 9 August 1963), and Ana Maria Else, Baroness van Pallandt (born 30 October 1965)[5] – and continued their musical careers until they parted in 1969, eventually divorcing in 1975. The following year, on 10 May, van Pallandt married María Jesus de Los Rios y Coello de Portugal. Together, they had one child – Daniel Tilopa, Baron van Pallandt, who was born 12 May 1977[5] – and in 1979, van Pallandt bought Burkes Peerage from The Holdway Group.

According to his first wife's memoir, van Pallandt was an avid sailor, and settled in the Philippines in the 1990s. There he joined a major Australian crime syndicate, for which he provided transportation for drug trafficking. On May 15, 1994, both he and his Philippine girlfriend Susannah were shot dead in a hut at Puerto Galera in the Philippines, supposedly in a dispute over the sale price of his yacht, which he had recently sold. However, their murderer is believed to have been another member of the drug syndicate.[6] He was buried near his parents's grave in IJhorst in the Netherlands.

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