Anita Darian

American soprano, actress, and kazoo player, born 26 April 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, USA and died 1 February 2015 in Oceanside, New York, USA. Darian had an extensive and multi-faceted career from the 1950s to the 2010s, ranging from singing in clubs and cabarets, recording television jingles and cartoon voice-overs, to appearing in musical, opera and symphony concerts and recordings. She first gained attention in the mid-1950s as the featured singer with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra. Her first album was "Hawaiian Paradise" (1959) with Bill Jaffee & His Islanders, and her first solo album, "East of the Sun," came out in 1960. Her most widely distributed recording was the The Tokens' 1961 hit single "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," on which she provided a background soprano vocal. She appeared with the New York City Opera, was a City Center regular, and a featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic. She sang on albums of several Broadway musicals, including "The King and I," and "Show Boat" for Columbia Records. She sang and played the kazoo at a performance of Mark Bucci (2)'s "Kazoo Concerto" at one of Leonard Bernstein's famous Young Peoples' concerts, which later earned her a part in the recording of John Corigliano's "The Naked Carmen" (1970). She also appeared in several television productions of musicals and operas from the 1950s to the 1970s.