Bagdasarian[a] was born on January 27, 1919, in Fresno, California to an Armenian-American family.[8] His father was a grape-grower.[9] He had two elder brothers: Richard Sirak (1910–1966) and Harry Sisvan (1915–1989).[8] The novelist William Saroyan, with whom he was very close, was his first cousin.[10][11]
Bagdasarian graduated from Fresno High School in 1937.[8] He went to New York to work with his cousin Saroyan with the intention of becoming an actor.[9] When World War II started, he enlisted and served four years as a control tower operator[12] and rose to the rank of a staff sergeant (SSgt) in the Army Air Forces.[13] He spent time in England, France and Spain;[9] his later stage name "David Seville" originated from the fact that he was stationed in the city of Seville in Spain and he liked the city.[9][14]
After the war, he returned to Fresno and married Armenouhi "Armen" Kulhanjian, and they tried for a time to be grape growers. They were unsuccessful and they moved to Los Angeles where he started a career as a songwriter.[9]
In 1955 Bagdasarian signed with the then newly established Liberty Records. In early 1956 he had a transcontinental hit with the novelty record "The Trouble with Harry" (inspired by the homonymous Hitchcock film) credited to Alfi & Harry,[24][25] although Alfi & Harry was just one person, Bagdasarian himself.[26] It reached No. 44 on the Billboard chart[27] and was a bigger hit in the United Kingdom reaching No. 15.[28]
In 1956, he wrote an instrumental "Armen's Theme" named after his wife. The executives at Liberty Records suggested that he adopt a pseudonym as they thought his name too difficult to pronounce.[9] In December 1956, he charted with his first record credited to his David Seville pseudonym, and "Armen's Theme" reached No. 42 on the Billboard chart.[29]
Bagdasarian's rise to prominence came with the song "Witch Doctor" in 1958,[30] which was created after he experimented with the speed control on a tape recorder bought with $200 (around $2,000 adjusted for inflation as of 2022) from the family savings.[31]Liberty Records released this novelty record under the David Seville name. It is a duet between his real voice and accelerated version.[16] The record went on to become a Billboard number-one single by April 28, 1958, and further established him as a songwriter.[20] It sold 1.5 million copies.[32]
Shana Alexander, writing for Life magazine in 1959, noted that Bagdasarian was the first case in the "annals of popular music that one man has served as writer, composer, publisher, conductor and multiple vocalist of a hit record, thereby directing all possible revenues from the song back into his pocket." Alexander also found it remarkable that Bagdasarian "can neither read nor write music nor play any musical instrument in the accepted sense of the word."[38] Bagdasarian owned Chipmunk Enterprises, which sponsored Chipmunk-related sales. By 1963, some 15 companies were using or planned to use Alvin figures. By that year, Billboard magazine estimated the total income from the Chipmunks' record sales (including overseas sales) and record club sales to be around $20 million (around $171 million adjusted for inflation to 2021 dollars).[30]
In the following years, the Chipmunks released several hit songs: "Alvin's Harmonica" (1959), "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" (1959), "Alvin's Orchestra" (1960), "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" (1960), "The Alvin Twist" (1962), and the album The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits in 1964 during the British Invasion.[16]
Bagdasarian then produced The Alvin Show, a TV cartoon broadcast on CBS from October 1961 to September 1962.[15]
Bagdasarian married Armenouhi "Armen" Kulhanjian (1927–1991) in 1946.[2][b] They had three children: Carol Askine (b. 1947), an actress; Ross Jr. (b. 1949); and Adam Serak (b. 1954), a fiction writer.[2][31][17] They lived in Los Angeles from 1950.[20][16] As of 1963 he owned a grape ranch in California called the Chipmunk Ranch.[30] In the mid-1960s, he bought Sierra Wine Corp., a winery that supplied product, among others, to E & J Gallo Winery.[17]
Bagdasarian willed the Chipmunks franchise to his wife and three children.[31] Ross Jr. said in an interview that he "worshipped" his father and felt a need to continue his work.[31] He resumed the franchise with his wife Janice Karman in the late 1970s, after finishing law school,[20] and became the complete owner when he bought the rights from his siblings in the mid-1990s.[17]
^ abSometimes known as Bagdasarian Sr. to distinguish from his son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr.. He is listed as Ross S. Bagdasarian in the California Birth Index,[4] World War II Army Enlistment Records,[5] and in California Deaths and Burials.[6] William Saroyan, his cousin, gave his full name as Sipon Rostom Bagdasarian.[7]Mark Arnold gives it as Rostom Sipan Bagdasarian.[8]
^She was widely referred to, including by Bagdasarian,[39] as "Armen".[31][40][41]
^Studwell, William E. (1996). "From "Jingle Bells" to "Jingle Bell Rock"". Music Reference Services Quarterly. 5 (1): 5. doi:10.1300/J116v05n01_01. ...for the pseudonym he used for the chipmunk enterprise, David Seville, is far better remembered than his real name.
^"California Birth Index, 1905-1995," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VGNS-4XQ : 27 November 2014), Ross S Bagdasarian, 27 Jan 1919; citing Fresno, California, United States, Department of Health Services, Vital Statistics Department, Sacramento.
^"United States World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8GX-N9T : 5 December 2014), Ross S Bagdasarian, enlisted 05 Jan 1942, Fresno, California, United States; citing "Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938-1946," database, The National Archives: Access to Archival Databases (AAD) (http://aad.archives.gov : National Archives and Records Administration, 2002); NARA NAID 1263923, National Archives at College Park, Maryland.
^Studwell, William E.; Lonergan, David (2014). The Classic Rock and Roll Reader: Rock Music from Its Beginnings to the Mid-1970s. Routledge. p. 177. ISBN9781317720683.
Arnold, Mark (2019). Aaaaalllviiinnn!: The Story of Ross Bagdasarian Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films and The Alvin Show. BearManor Media. ISBN978-1-62933-432-5.
