- published: 13 Jun 2016
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Ville Hermanni Valo (born November 22, 1976) is a Finnish singer, songwriter and frontman of the Finnish rock band HIM. He has received the "Golden God" award in 2004 by the heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer. Valo has a baritone vocal range, and has maintained a 4 octave range in full voice, from F1 to F5, Valo was ranked number 80 in Hit Paraders Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.
Ville Hermanni Valo was born in the Vallila district of Helsinki. His father, Kari, is Finnish and his mother, Anita, is of Hungarian descent. Soon after his birth, the family moved to the riverside community of Oulunkylä where they lived throughout his teenage years. In 1984 his younger brother and only sibling Jesse was born. In his late teens, he worked at his father's sex shop and later moved out on his own when he was 18.
As a child, Valo was exposed to the songs of popular Finnish performers such as Tapio Rautavaara and Rauli Badding Somerjoki. In various interviews he has cited his favourite artists include Tapio Rautavaara, King Diamond, Rauli "Badding" Somerjoki, Elvis Presley, Neil Young, and Dir En Grey, as well as bands such as Fields of the Nephilim, The Sisters of Mercy, Black Sabbath, Type O Negative, Depeche Mode, Iron Maiden, Kiss, and The Stooges.
James Last (also known as "Hansi") (born Hans Last, 17 April 1929, Bremen, Germany) is a German composer and big band leader. His "happy music" made his numerous albums best-sellers in Germany and the United Kingdom. His composition, "Happy Heart", became an international success in interpretations by Andy Williams and Petula Clark. According to the British Hit Singles & Albums book, he has reportedly sold in excess of seventy million albums worldwide.
Last's father was an official at the public works department of the city of Bremen and he grew up in the suburb of Sebaldsbrück. He learned to play the piano from the age of 12, then switched to double bass as a teenager. His home city was heavily bombed in World War II and he ran messages to air defence command posts during raids. At 14 he was entered in the Bückeburg Military Music School of the German Wehrmacht.
After the fall of the Nazis, he joined Hans-Gunther Österreich's Radio Bremen Dance Orchestra in 1946. In 1948, he became the leader of the Last-Becker Ensemble, which performed for seven years. During that time, he was voted as the best bassist in the country by a German jazz poll for three consecutive years, from 1950–1952. After the Last-Becker Ensemble disbanded, he became the in-house arranger for Polydor Records, as well as for a number of European radio stations. For the next decade, he helped arrange hits for artists like Helmut Zacharias, Freddy Quinn, Lolita, Alfred Hause and Caterina Valente.