- He took up the trumpet at age 7, and continued while attending Colby College in Maine and the University of New Mexico. His trumpet playing ended during WWII, when a German mortar shell nearly severed his right wrist while his Army infantry unit was advancing toward the Rhine River. He was recovering at a hospital on Staten Island when he began singing with the CIO chorus.
- He grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. His father was a shop teacher of French Canadian heritage, and his mother was a Swedish-born guitarist.
- Because of McCarthyism, he used the name Robert Corman as a pseudonym on many Harry Belafonte recordings.
- Founded the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus in 1993.
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