These hits included 'Dig You Later (A Hubba-Hubba-Hubba),' 'I'm Always Chasing Rainbows,' 'They Say It's Wonderful,' 'Surrender' and 'Some Enchanted Evening.' The 1945 rendition of 'Till the End of Time,' (a song associated with the movie 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo' and based on Chopin's 'Polonaise in A-Flat Minor') was perhaps his most memorable hit from this era. CBS radio soon offered him a weekly show at $100 a week and RCA signed him to a recording contract that garnered him in the next 14 years 42 Top 10 hits, a feat bettered only by Bing Crosby. But, with the start of WWII and the eventual breakup of Weems' band, Como found himself back in Canonsburg in a barbershop cutting hair - not for long, however. In 1937, he joined the Ted Weems orchestra and was featured on the band's 'Beat the Band' radio program. It didn't take long to prove that he had talent and soon landed a spot in the Freddie Carlone Orchestra, where he made $28 a week touring the Midwest. He enjoyed singing, however, and let go of his barbershop ambitions soon after high school and his marriage to his high school sweetheart, Roselle Beline. Before long he had set his sights on owning his own shop - even making monthly payments toward one. At 11, he was working after school cutting hair in a barbershop. In more than six decades of singing, his records sold more than 100 million copies 27 individual prints reached the million-record mark.Ĭhristened Pierino Como in Canonsburg, Pa., and one of a family of 13 children, Como pursued a career as a barber before he launched his singing career. In the 1950s, 11 of his singles sold well over 1 million copies each. Telling of the success of the appeal of that good feeling early on in his career, during just a single week in the 1940s, the music industry pressed and sold 4 million Como records. It has also come to represent an overall good feeling. In a singing (and sometimes acting) career that spanned over six decades, the name Perry Como has come to mean that warm, smooth, easy-listening, general-audience, slow-flame romance that characterized popular music in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

Bing crosby records sold