LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Chris Isaak
built 161 days ago
Chris Isaak is a crooner in the Roy Orbison mould who had been active on the music scene a long time before he broke through in the late '80s. The son of a forklift truck driver, Isaak spent time participating in an exchange program at a university which led him to study in Japan. He ... worked as a tour guide for a film studio and held teenage boxing ambitions, ultimately leading to his distinctive flattened nose.
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Chris Isaak's fans always knew he'd be a star. Mostly it was that voice: brooding, melancholy, impossibly romantic. Then there was the attitude: hip, cool, stylish, but ... very working-class, very regular guy. Everything isn't always on the surface with Isaak, and his music and his performances reflect that.
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Although he bristles at being labeled a “retro” act, Chris Isaak's mournful, melancholy ballads, full of ache and lost love, suggest 1950s rockers like Elvis Presley. Mass audiences learned of the Stockton, California native with 1991's hit “Wicked Game,” which David Lynch used in his film Wild at Heart. Singing success has led to film roles, beginning with bit parts in Married to the Mob (1988), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). His first significant role... came in Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1994, opposite Bridget Fonda), in which Isaak played the father of the boy believed to be the reincarnation of Buddha. In 1998 he played doomed Apollo 1 astronaut Ed White in Tom Hanks's miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Isaak is set to star in his own weekly television comedy The Chris Isaak Show (2001)
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Chris Isaak clearly loves the reverb-laden rockabilly and country of Sun Studios. In particular, he transfers the sweeping melancholy of Roy Orbison's classic Monument singles ("Crying," "Oh, Pretty Woman," "In Dreams") to the more stripped-down, rootsy sound of Sun. His stylized take on '50s and '60s rock & roll eventually made him into a star in the early '90s, thanks to the hit single "Wicked Game." Isaak began performing after he graduated from college, forming the rockabilly band Silvertone. The group, which featured guitarist James Calvin Wilsey, bassist Rowland Salley, and drummer Kenney Dale Johnson, would become the singer/guitarist's permanent supporting band. Isaak released his first album, Silvertone, on Warner Bros. in 1985.
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Chris Isaak will be eternally indebted to Frank, Dino and those other Rat Pack types who created lounge music, bachelor-pad keys and highballs in hand. And sometimes he sounds like the very reincarnation of Elvis Presley.
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Chris Isaak sings really sad songs but is funny as hell when he's not holding a guitar. Here, the witty, debonair singer-songwriter plays himself, with his real life band members playing, you guessed it, musicians backing up some guy named Chris Isaak. There's ... an ensemble of totally fictitious characters played by totally real actors. Cameras roll as Isaak and company go on the road and into the studio. Cable viewers couldn't be happier. "Northern Exposure" writer-producers Diane Frolov and Andrew Scheider are helming the series.
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Chris Isaak