Topic: Tommy Sands

Tommy Adrian Sands (born August 27, 1937) is an American pop music singer and actor.

Born into a musical family in Chicago, Illinois, Sands' father was a pianist and his mother a big-band singer. While still young, he moved with his family to Shreveport, Louisiana. Sands began playing the guitar at age eight and within a year had a job performing twice weekly on a local radio station. He was only 15 when Colonel Tom Parker heard about him and signed him to RCA Records.

Sands' initial recordings achieved little in the way of sales but in early 1957 he was given the opportunity to star in an episode of Kraft Television Theatre. He played the part of a singer who was very similar to Elvis Presley, with guitar, bouffant hair, and excitable teenage fans. On the show, his song presentation of a Joe Allison composition called "Teen-Age Crush" went over big with the young audience and, released as a 45 rpm single by Capitol Records, it went to No.3 on the Billboard Hot 100 record chart. His track, "The Old Oaken Bucket", peaked at #25 in the UK Singles Chart in 1960.