Never Never

Ted Ross

Never Never

Ditto Records

1959

Ross won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of The Cowardly Lion in The Wiz.

Theodore “Ted” Ross was from Zanesville, Ohio, but his mother, Elizabeth Russell, a nightclub singer in the 1920s and 1930s, moved the family to Dayton when young Ross was seven. He loved the clubs on West Fifth Street--Dayton’s answer to Harlem in the first half of the 20th century. While in junior high, Ross, who was big for his age, would dress up and strut into the Owl Club and The Palace Theater's Midnight Rambles to see great acts such as Duke Ellington.

His nightclub exploits as a teenager weren't very popular at home. He quit Roosevelt High in 1950 and enlisted in the Air Force. Two years later at 18, Theodore Ross Roberts entered an amateur night contest at the Top Hat bar on Germantown Street. Home on furlough, he sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," won $5 that night and found his calling. After leaving the military, Ross worked his way from Great Falls, Montana, to a strip bar in Los Angeles as a singer and emcee.

From his obit found HERE



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