Who Are Those Singers & Musicians? ~ Gene Merlino

 

Mario Gino ‘Gene’ Merlino was born in San Francisco, California on April 5, 1928. He was a stuntman, film and television actor, musician and singer.

He was probably best known as a singer and musician, known for providing the singing voice of Lancelot in the musical film “Camelot” and for being part of the Grammy Award winning quartet, The Anita Kerr Singers, and for being a prolific singer of song poems.

His first exposure to music came from his two older brothers; John was an accomplished accordionist, and Victor took up the clarinet but did not stick with it for long. Gene originally wanted to play trumpet, as he admired Harry James, but instead picked up the available clarinet in his early teens. A few years later he had learned the saxophone well enough to start playing for dances and weddings near his Potrero Hill, California neighborhood.

After graduating from Mission High School, he enrolled at San Francisco State as a Music major, playing clarinet and achieving first chair concertmaster in the college's symphonic band by his sophomore year. He also spent one semester at Eastman School of Music.

In 1950, Merlino left college before graduating when he got his first steady musical job with the ‘Bill Weaver Show’ on KCBS radio, which at that time broadcast out of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. He stayed with KCBS for three years before moving to Los Angeles, California where he joined the jazz bands of Frankie Carle, then Ray Anthony. Anthony then started his short-lived television variety show, ‘The Ray Anthony Show’, in 1956, allowing Merlino to be seen by a nationwide audience. When the Anthony show was canceled in May 1957 after only one season, Merlino joined the Freddy Martin band, who played regularly at the famous Cocoanut Grove club in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Merlino remained with this band until 1963.

In 1965 he was part of the four-man singing group that recorded the theme song for ‘Gilligan's Island’. In 1966, Merlino joined the male singing quartet, The Mellomen, with Thurl Ravenscroft, Bill Lee and Bill Cole, after Max Smith retired. Merlino and the Mellomen appeared in the Elvis Presley movie, “The Trouble With Girls”. Thanks to this, Merlino began to get regular work as a session singer in the various recording studios in Hollywood and Los Angeles, eventually singing for thousands of movies, television programs, radio and television commercials, audio recordings, and song poems, during a career that lasted more than 50 years.

His most famous recordings were as part of the Anita Kerr Singers, who won a 1967 Grammy Award (Best Performance by a Vocal Group) for their performance of "A Man and a Woman" (along with a 1969 Edison Award), and for providing the singing voice for the character of Lancelot, played by Franco Nero, in the 1967 movie "Camelot". In 1973 he was part of the chorus who went on a worldwide tour with Burt Bacharach to promote the movie Lost Horizon, for which Bacharach wrote the music.

Merlino married Lois Elizabeth Draper on November 18, 1953. Merlino met Draper in the symphonic band at San Francisco State, where she played flute. Almost immediately after marrying they moved to the North Hollywood region of Los Angeles, so Gene could foster his singing career, as there was much more studio recording work available in Hollywood and Los Angeles than in San Francisco. They had two children, Monica and John. They lived in various parts of Los Angeles until 1995, when they moved to Camarillo, California. Their marriage lasted for 55 years until Lois died on April 3, 2009, at the age of 78.

Gene Merlino died in Camarillo on January 8, 2024, at the age of 95.

MERLINO, Gene (Mario Gino Merlino) [4/5/1928, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. – 1/8/2024, Camarillo, California, U.S.A.] – singer, stuntman, film, TV actor, musician (saxophone) married to musician Lois Elizabeth Draper [1930-2009] (1953-2009) father of Monica Merlino, John Merlino [1963-    ], member of the he Anita Kerr Singers.

Guns of the Revolution – 1969 [sings “Rain for a Dusty Summer”]