Elmo Tanner, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Elmo Tanner

American singer, whistler, bandleader and disc jockey

Date of Birth: 08-Aug-1904

Place of Birth: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

Date of Death: 20-Dec-1990

Profession: disc jockey, jazz musician

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Leo


Show Famous Birthdays Today, United States

👉 Worldwide Celebrity Birthdays Today

About Elmo Tanner

  • William Elmo Tanner, known as Elmo Tanner (August 8, 1904 – December 20, 1990) was an American whistler, singer, bandleader and disc jockey, best known for his whistling on the chart-topping song “Heartaches” with the Ted Weems Orchestra.
  • Tanner and Weems recorded the song for two different record companies within a period of five years.
  • Neither recording was successful originally.
  • The song became a hit for both record companies after a Charlotte, North Carolina disk jockey played it at random in 1947. Tanner was originally hired by Weems as a vocalist; the bandleader discovered Tanner's whistling ability while the band was traveling to an engagement.
  • Like Bing Crosby, he was able to whistle from his throat due to the muscles in his larynx.
  • He subsequently became a featured performer as a whistler, earning the nicknames "Whistler’s Mother’s Boy", "The Whistling Troubador," and "the nation’s best-known whistler".
  • He began appearing in films as part of the Ted Weems Orchestra in 1936; his first film role was in The Hatfields and McCoys, and he later appeared in the movie Swing, Sister, Swing (1938) and the musical film short, Swing Frolic (1942).
  • Weems considered Tanner's whistling important enough to his orchestra that in 1939 he insured Tanner's throat for $10,000.
  • Besides musical whistling, he also imitated birds for Disney. After a failed attempt at running a restaurant in his native Nashville in the early 1950s, he toured with the Elmo Tanner Quartet until 1958, when he found work as a disc jockey in Florida.
  • After working as an auto dealer in the 1960s, in the early 1970s he resumed musical activity, singing with a St.
  • Petersburg, Florida-based quartet.

Read more at Wikipedia

See Also