Burton Cummings
b. 31 December 1947, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Burton Cummings was the lead vocalist on the majority of the recordings by the Guess Who during that Canadian group's reign during the '60s. Upon leaving the group for a solo career in the mid-'70s, three years after the group's guitarist Randy Bachman had left to form Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Cummings signed a solo deal with Portrait Records, a new CBS subsidiary. Cummings’ first single for the label, Stand Tall, was also his greatest solo success, a US Top 10 hit in late 1976. He continued to record for that label until 1978 and charted three more times before being dropped. He emerged on the small Alfa label for one last US chart single You Saved My Soul. Cummings recorded three solo albums for Portrait, two of which sold reasonably well in 1976 and 1977, and he cut one for Alfa in 1981, which saw little action. Still considered a major talent in Canada by the end of the '80s, Cummings and Bachman briefly regrouped for a Guess Who reunion tour and live video release.