Bobby Sherman became one of the biggest music stars of the 1960s and 1970s. Looking back, it’s hard for me to conjure even one friend who didn’t have a crush on him at one point or another.
Sherman released multiple albums, became a well-respected actor, performed in front of thousands of people, and sold millions of records. Eventually, however, he decided to leave the entertainment business for good at the height of his fame.
Now, this wasn’t because the now 79-year-old felt like his skills had deteriorated in any way. No, he had a much more significant cause, one that had to do with saving lives.
Here’s all you need to know about the legendary artist Bobby Sherman!
Bobby Sherman was born on July 22, 1943, in Santa Monica, California, and grew up in Van Nuys, close to Los Angeles.
By age 11, he was said to have learned how to play the trumpet, and later on piano, trombone, piano, and of course, the guitar. Sherman attended Birmingham High School. There, he joined a band and became very interested in singing. Over the years, he reportedly learned how to play an astonishing 16 instruments.
Upon graduating from high school in 1961, Sherman began studying at Pierce College in Woodland Hill, near Los Angeles. It was there that a relationship would change the course of his life for good.
Sherman studied child psychology at Pierce College, and there met his first girlfriend. One night, she decided to take him with her to a cast party for The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Sherman had already started playing music at that point. He sang with different bands in the San Fernando Valley, and plenty of people knew he had a good voice. So it was that when he arrived at the party, Sherman took the opportunity to flex his talent.
“I was always the guy who had the gumption to get up and sing in front of people,” he later said of it.
Bobby had friends at the party who were playing in the band on stage, which likely made things a little bit easier. In any case, he got up in front of everyone and sang Ray Charles’ What I’d Say.
Since it was a Hollywood party, many stars of entertainment were in attendance. Among them were Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood – and Jane Fonda.
After the performance, they recognized his talent, and Mineo decided to take him under his wing.
“People were saying things like, ‘Who’s handling you’ I had no idea what that meant,” Sherman said.
“Well, I was a kid from Van Nuys, you know, and it was, `What do they mean, handling me?’ Then I realized they meant representation.”
He soon learned what Hollywood was like. Only three days later, an agent tipped off by one of the party guests sent Bobby Sherman to an audition. It was for a new television series, and Bobby landed a featured spot on the series Shindig.
That role only lasted two years, but it was all Bobby needed to make his mark. By that point, people all over the country had fallen in love with him, and jobs started to appear from every crack and crevice.
When Shindig was canceled in 1966, Sherman appeared as a guest star on several other shows, including The Monkees, Honey West, and The FBI. Though he’d started to become a heartthrob around Hollywood, it was in 1968 that his big breakthrough came.
Sherman starred as the stuttering Jason Bolt in Here Come The Bridges, remaining on the show for two full years. His character lost his stutter at the end of his tenure, and the show was eventually canceled.
The character of Jason Bolt proved immensely popular with fans; something Sherman realized when he appeared during a telethon in Buffalo. All of a sudden, he wasn’t just an up-and-coming name. Rather, he had become a star.
“The show had just hit the air, and we didn’t even have any records out yet,” Sherman told Tulsa World.
“Greg Morris of Mission: Impossible and Robert Brown and I from Here Come The Brides had been asked to do the telethon, and it was going along and doing very well, when the fire marshall came in and said, ‘We have a problem. You’d better come up to the second floor; You’ve got to greet some people.’
“They opened up this window, and I looked out, and the parting lot of this television station was absolutely a sea of faces,” he added. “It was just unbelievable. And I got a clue then that something was happening.”
The following year became “kind of limbo” for Bobby. However, it was at that moment he turned his interest towards writing songs and trying out his eight-track recording equipment.
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