Tony Orlando

Michael Anthony Orlando Cassavitis (born April 3, 1944), better known as Tony Orlando, is an American show business professional, best known as the lead singer of the group Tony Orlando and Dawn in the early 1970s.

Discovered by producer Don Kirshner, Orlando had songs on the charts in 1961 when he was 16, "Halfway to Paradise" and "Bless You". Orlando then became a producer himself, and at an early age was promoted to a vice-president position at CBS Records, where he was in charge of the April-Blackwood Music division. He sang under the name "Dawn" in the 1970s, and when the songs became hits, he went on tour and the group became "Tony Orlando and Dawn". They had several songs which were major hits including "Candida", "Knock Three Times", and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree". The group hosted a variety program, "The Tony Orlando and Dawn Show" on CBS from 1974–76, and then broke up in 1978.

Orlando then continued as a solo singer, performing in Las Vegas and Branson, Missouri. Orlando has hosted the New York City portions of the MDA Labor Day Telethon on WWOR-TV since the 1980s but quit in 2011 in response to Jerry Lewis' firing from the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Tony Orlando and Dawn

Tony Orlando and Dawn was an American pop music group that was popular in the 1970s. Their signature hits include "Candida", "Knock Three Times", "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree", and "He Don't Love You (Like I Love You)".

Early history

Tony Orlando was born Michael Anthony Orlando Cassavitis on 3 April 1944. After almost a decade of singing and with only three Top 40 hits, two in 1961 and another in 1969 as the lead singer for the studio group Wind, he had not had any further successes. He stopped singing entirely, and by 1970 he was a retired demo singer. He began publishing music for April-Blackwood Music, a division of Columbia Records, instead.

Then Orlando received "Candida," a song that other producers and singers had turned down. Orlando was not able to originally lend his name to the song, as he was working for April-Blackwood, and recording under his own name would be a professional conflict of interest. After an insistence by producer Hank Medress that he dub his voice over the male vocals on the original track, the single was released on Bell Records as being performed by the band "Dawn", to protect his position.

Three Times

Three Times (Chinese: 最好的時光; Zuìhǎo de shíguāng; lit. 'Best of Times') is a 2005 Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien. It features three chronologically separate stories of love between May and Chen, set in 1911, 1966 and 2005, using the same lead actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen.

The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Golden Apricot at the 2006 Yerevan International Film Festival, Armenia, for Best Feature Film and received positive reviews. The film was remade in Hindi as Teri Meri Kahaani.

Background

Three Times was originally meant to be an omnibus collection of short films, with Hou Hsiao-hsien directing only one of the segments. The producers were unable to rustle the financing to be able to hire three directors, so instead, Hou took over production.

Plot

A Time for Love

(Chinese: 戀愛夢; pinyin: liàn ài mèng) Set in Kaohsiung in 1966, with dialogue in Taiwanese Hokkien.

A Time for Freedom

(Chinese: 自由夢; pinyin: zì yóu mèng) Set in Dadaocheng in 1911, with dialogue presented only through on-screen captions. The theme of freedom joins with the theme of love - the young courtesan dreams of liberty and Taiwan itself at this time was occupied by the Japanese.

Knock Three Times

"Knock Three Times" is a popular song credited to Tony Orlando and Dawn. The actual singers were Tony Orlando, Toni Wine, and Linda November, prior to the creation of "Dawn" with Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson. The song was released as a single in November 1970, paired with Orlando's other hit song, "Candida" (also written by Toni Wine). The single hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1971 and eventually sold six million copies, also claiming the number-one spot on the UK Singles Chart. The song registered well at Adult Contemporary stations, reaching #2 on Billboard's "Easy Listening" survey.

The composers of this song, L. Russell Brown and Irwin Levine, were thinking of the song Up on the Roof and they wanted to write a song with that kind of lyrical flavor, about tenement living. In the song, the singer has fallen in love with a woman who lives directly below him but has no clue as to her interest, so he asks her to respond by either knocking three times on the ceiling (yes) or banging twice on the pipe (no), and the chorus includes sound effects of the two choices. (However, the song never states her response.)

Tony

Tony is a short form of Anthony or Antonio. It may refer to:

People known by the single name, Tony: