His string of 31 Top 40 hits spanned 14 years, and he still sells tickets to the teen girls who loved him in the 1960s and to a new generation of fans.

Born Stanley Robert Vinton in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in 1935 (23 years after Perry Como was born in the same town), Bobby's Pennsylvania Polish roots set him apart from the many Italian crooners of the early Sixties. With a bandleader, Stan Vinton, for a father, Bobby Vinton got the support and training he needed to make the best use of his vocal talents. The band he started at age 16 earned enough to pay for part of his education at Duquesne University.

College and an Army hitch kept him from being a national teen phenomenon, but Bobby and his band appeared on Guy Lombardo's TV show, and soon Bobby Vinton had his first hit, "Roses Are Red (My Love)," which shot to Number One in the summer of 1962. Over the course of the next two years, Bobby hit #1 back-to-back with "Blue Velvet" and "There! I've Said It Again," and later with "Mr. Lonely." He mixed in plenty of other gems, including "Blue on Blue" and "I Love How You Love Me."

Just as people began to suspect that his hit-making days were numbered, Bobby Vinton pulled "My Melody of Love" from his bag of tricks in 1974. This #3 hit endeared him to the Polish population of the entire United States with its chorus in Polish. Though this was his last big hit, it led to a continuing relationship with the ticket-buying public in enormously popular live shows stretching from Vegas to Atlantic City and, eventually, to Branson, Missouri. Bobby now has his own venue in Branson, the Bobby Vinton Theatre. Bobby chose to pattern his new theatre building after the old Hollywood theatres, and so it is laden with murals and, of course, blue velvet curtains.