Early Life
Arnold Dorsey was born in Madras, India, as one of ten children to British Army NCO Mervyn Dorsey and his wife Olive. He is an Anglo-Indian, his mother being of Indian heritage. Dorsey's family moved to Leicester, England, when he was ten. He soon showed an interest in music and began learning the saxophone. By the early 1950s he was playing saxophone in nightclubs, but he is believed not to have tried singing until he was seventeen, when friends coaxed him into entering a pub contest. His impression of Jerry Lewis prompted friends to begin calling him "Gerry Dorsey", a name he worked under for almost a decade.
Though Dorsey's music career was interrupted by his national service in the British Army Royal Corps of Signals during the mid-1950s, he got his first chance to record in 1958 with Decca Records after his discharge. His first single, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", was not a hit, but Dorsey would record for the same company almost a decade later with very different results. Dorsey continued working the nightclubs until 1961, when he was stricken with tuberculosis. He regained his health and returned to nightclub work, but with little success.
Read more about this topic: Engelbert Humperdinck (singer)
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