Tommy Sands
Tommy Sands is an American pop music singer and actor.
Born into a musical family in Chicago, his father was a pianist and his mother a big-band singer. While still young, he moved with his family to Shreveport, Louisiana. Sands began playing the guitar at age eight and within a year had a job performing twice weekly on a local radio station. He was only 15 when Colonel Tom Parker heard about him and signed him to RCA Records.
His initial recordings achieved little in the way of sales but in early 1957 he was given the opportunity to star in an episode of Kraft Television Theatre. He played the part of a singer who was very similar to Elvis Presley, with guitar, bouffant hair, and excitable teenage fans. On the show, his song presentation of a Joe Allison composition called “Teen-Age Crush” went over big with the young audience and, released as a 45 rpm single by Capitol Records, it went to No.3 on the Billboard Hot 100 record chart.
Sands’ sudden fame brought an offer to sing at the Academy Awards show and his teen idol looks landed him a motion-picture contract to star in a 1958 musical drama called Sing, Boy, Sing.