Barry Wood (February 12, 1909 - July 19, 1970) was an American singer and television producer. He is best known for being Frank Sinatra's immediate predecessor as the lead male vocalist on the long running NBC radio program Your Hit Parade.
Born Barry Rapaport in New Haven, Connecticut, Wood was the younger brother of bandleader Barney Rapp. He attended Yale (where he swam and played water polo). After his graduation in 1930, he played saxophone and clarinet and sang with several bands (Abe Lyman, Paul Ash, Vincent Lopez). He was also a sideman for Buddy Rogers's band. He left Rogers in 1940 and became a staff singer with the Columbia Broadcasting System He eventually signed on at Your Hit Parade, where he maintained his popularity for several years and was promoted as the nation's "sweater boy" (a counterpart to the sweater girl pin-ups popular in the World War II era).
Wood was identified with several popular wartime songs. In 1941 he introduced and recorded Irving Berlin's "Any Bonds Today?" and "Arms for the Love of America". In 1942, recording as Barry Wood and the Wood Nymphs, he had a hit with "We Did It Before (And We Can Do It Again)", written by Charles Tobias and Cliff Friend; this song became a popular wartime anthem, and was later used in a number of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons.
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| Irving Berlin & Barry Wood |
According to music critic Will Friedwald, Wood had "an interesting voice, gray and appropriately woody", and a "sort of robust charm", but "his super-stiff rhythm makes him tough to listen to today."Sinatra replaced Wood on Your Hit Parade in 1943. Wood had his own show on NBC from 1943 to 1945, first called The Million Dollar Band and then (with Patsy Kelly as co-star) the Palmolive Party. In 1948, his quarter-hour radio program, Barry Wood Show, was syndicated by Frederick Ziv via electrical transcription.
In 1948-1949, Wood hosted and produced Places Please, a three-nights-a-week variety TV show on CBS,but he is best remembered for NBC's Wide, Wide World, which from 1955 to 1958 celebrated the wonders of the continent from the Grand Canyon to the Florida Keys.As a member of Henry Jaffe Enterprises, Inc., Mr. Wood was executive producer of the Bell Telephone musical series from 1959 to 1965. He later served for two years as executive television producer for Metromedia, Inc. For some time he was director of color television at N.B.C. and then director of special events.
He died from a heart attack in a Miami Beach hotel in Florida, July 19, 1970 aged 61.He had planned to live in New York in semiretirement while working for a public relations firm.
(Edited
from Wikipedia and The New York Times)