Music / Film & TV
Johnny Desmond
1919–1985 · singer, entertainer
Detroit-born big-band singer, the featured vocalist of Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces Orchestra in wartime Europe and a popular radio and television star afterward.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 65- Birth name
- Giovanni Alfredo De Simone
- Detroit years
- 1919–1939
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Giovanni De Simone grew up in an Italian American family in Detroit. He sang in the St. Joseph's parish choir from the age of eleven and on a local radio station as a boy, but at fifteen he left to work in his father's grocery. He attended Northwestern High School and briefly the Detroit Conservatory of Music, then went into nightclubs playing piano and singing. In 1939 he formed a vocal group, the Downbeats, which Bob Crosby hired in 1940 as the Bob-O-Links. Going solo in 1941, he became Gene Krupa's featured singer. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army, which in practice extended his singing career: from November 1943 to July 1945 he was the vocalist of Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces Orchestra in England and France, with his own American Forces Network show, A Soldier and a Song. After the war he sang on NBC's Teentimers Club, spent years on Chicago's The Breakfast Club radio show and became a recording and television personality.
Highlights
- Attended Northwestern High School and the Detroit Conservatory of Music
- Formed the Downbeats (later the Bob-O-Links) in 1939
- Featured singer with Gene Krupa's band (1941–1942)
- Vocalist of Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces Orchestra, 1943–1945
- Longtime singer on the radio program The Breakfast Club
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1930s
Northwestern High School (now Detroit Collegiate Preparatory Academy at Northwestern)
West-side high school that Desmond attended.