Frank Mills Headquarters
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Biography & Photos |
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Frank Mills 'The Music Box Dancer Man' Although Frank played piano in various musical groups in high school, he enrolled in the medical program at McGill University in Montr?l at the urging of his parents. Later Frank dropped medicine for the music courses. After graduation Frank spent two years with the pop group The Bells, enjoying international success with 'Stay Awhile' and several other hit records. By 1972 his own composition and solo recording of Love Me, Love Me, Love (a pop vocal) became a number one hit in several countries. He left The Bells to pursue a solo career and in 1974 went on to record instrumentals instead of pop vocals, "I just felt more comfortable with instrumentals," he says. |
While Music Box Dancer was recorded in those 1974 sessions, it was not to become a hit until 1978, and by Christmas of that year, it was shooting up the charts throughout Europe and Asia. Released in U.S.A. late in 1978, it had reached Number 1 on the pop charts and a Top 40 Country hit by the following April, exactly one year after starting its momentous climb ! Subsequent releases brought him more chart hits including; Peter Piper, The Happy Song, Most People Are Nice, Chickadee and Seascapes.
At last count, Frank received ten platinum and twenty gold albums from various countries. In addition, he has won three Canadian Juno's, been voted best instrumentalist in Japan, received several awards from the U.S. music trade magazines, became a member of the exclusive B.M.I. Million-Airs club, for one million radio airings in U.S.A., and received a Grammy nomination. In November 1993, he received two SOCAN classics awards for outstanding radio performances for the tunes Music Box Dancer and Love Me, Love Me, Love.
Frank has appeared on countless television shows in Canada, U.S.A., Japan and Europe, and has hosted a number of his own specials for the CBC and CTV and other Canadian television networks, including Christmas, Thanksgiving and concert performances.
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His TV specials include: |
Frank Mills appearing on the |
Frank Mills Christmas Special |
While Frank is widely known as a recording artist and television performer, he still views himself as a composer first and foremost. The ultimate measure of a composer's success is how often his compositions are performed and recorded by others. To date, numerous different versions of Music Box Dancer have been produced. It has been recorded by such well-known pianists as Floyd Cramer, Rodger Williams and Eric Robertson, and by orchestral artists such as James Last and 101 Strings. A calypso version was recorded by Germany's Roberto Delgado, while in Sweden, an accordion version was released. This famous tune has even been whistled on one recording and sung in Japanese on another. |
Not to be out done, many of Frank's other compositions have been recorded by others; notably the songs, Prelude To Romance, The Poet and I, Love Me, Love Me, Love, and recently, the ever popular Christmas tune Somewhere A Child Is Sleeping.
As a composer, the question I am most often asked is, |
 Frank on NHK TV in Japan
Filming the Peter Piper Video |
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