Korla Pandit - Besame Mucho
From Album: "Korla Pandit ~ Odyssey".
Korla Pandit (September 16, 1921 – October 2, 1998), born John Roland Redd in St. Louis, Missouri, was a musician, composer, pianist, organist and television pioneer. He was known as the Godfather of Exotica.
His first work for radio was in 1938 with the Central Broadcasting Company in Des Moines, Iowa. Arriving in Los Angeles, California by 1939, John Roland Redd donned a turban and performed under the name Juan Rolando. His sister, Frances Redd, was an actress in the film Midnight Shadow (1939), and his turban resembled the one worn by John Criner's character, Prince Alihabad, in Midnight Shadow.
During the mid-1940s, as Juan Rolando, he played the organ on the Los Angeles radio station KMPC, and he also performed in various supper clubs and lounges. In 1944, he married Disney artist Beryl June DeBeeson, and the two reinvented his image, eventually replacing "Juan Rolando" with "Korla Pandit" and fabricating a romantic history for him as a baby born in New Delhi, India to a Brahman priest and a French opera singer, who traveled from India via England, finally arriving in the United States. ~ From Wiki
