Roger Whittaker, the gentle-voiced British easy-listening singer who had an unlikely pop hit in 1975 with the song “The Last Farewell,” died Sept. 13 in Toulouse, France, following a le…
“Roger was an iconic artist, a wonderful husband and father,” the statement continues. “He touched so many hearts with his music during his lifetime and will always live on in our memories.”
“Durham Town” wouldn’t be his last appearance on the charts. In 1971, he recorded and released “The Last Farewell,” a folk-showtune hybrid song he co-wrote with Ron A .Webster. The record would go largely unnoticed until 1975, when, as Whittaker often recalled, the wife of a program director for an Atlanta radio station happened to hear the song while traveling through Canada. She suggested her husband play the record on his station, and the song caught on with listeners.
By June of that year the record reached the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and would go on to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Over the next forty-plus years, Whittaker would sell millions of albums and tour all-but-constantly throughout Europe and America.
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