Cecil Altman Boone (June 1, 1935 – January 20, 2023), known as Nick Todd, was an American pop singer. He had two

hit record A hit song, also known as a hit record, hit single, or simply hit, is a recorded song or instrumental that becomes broadly popular or well-known. Although ''hit song'' means any widely played or big-selling song, the specific term ''hit record'' ...

s called "Plaything" and "At The Hop", which reached No. 41 and No. 21, respectively, on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphics, graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can repres ...

. "Plaything" debuted in October 1957 and "At The Hop" debuted in December 1957, the same month

Danny & the Juniors Danny & the Juniors were an American doo-wop and rock and roll vocal group formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Originally consisting of Danny Rapp, Dave White, Frank Maffei and Joe Terranova, the group was formed in 1955. They are best know ...

version Version may refer to: Computing * Software version, a set of numbers that identify a unique evolution of a computer program * VERSION (CONFIG.SYS directive), a configuration directive in FreeDOS Music * Cover version * Dub version * Remix * ''V ...

reached No. 1 on the chart. The president of

Dot Records Dot Records was an American record label founded by Randy Wood (record producer), Randy Wood and Gene Nobles that was active between 1950 and 1978. The original headquarters of Dot Records were in Gallatin, Tennessee. In its early years, Dot sp ...

, Randy Wood, did not want him using the same last name as his brother, so he made up "Todd", which is basically "Dot" (Records) spelled backwards. Both

recordings A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, re ...

were backed by

Billy Vaughn William Vaughn, popularly known as Billy Vaughn (born Richard Smith Vaughn, April 12, 1919 – September 26, 1991) was an American musician, singer, multi-instrumentalist, orchestra leader, and A&R man for Dot Records. Biography Vaughn was bor ...

and his Orchestra. Nick Todd earned a master's degree in social work from the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...

and during the 1970s was executive director of West Tennessee AGAPE, a family service organization. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he continued work as a social worker, song leader among the churches of Christ, and instructor in Social Work at

David Lipscomb University Lipscomb University is a private Christian university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It is affiliated with the Churches of Christ. The campus is located in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville; it also maintains one satellite locat ...

Personal life and death

Nick Todd was born in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...

, and was the younger brother of pop singer

Pat Boone Patrick Charles Eugene Boone (born June 1, 1934) is an American singer, songwriter, actor, author, television personality, radio host and philanthropist. He sold nearly 50 million records, had 38 Top 40 hits, and has acted in many films. Boone ...

who was born a year earlier to the date. Todd died on January 20, 2023, at the age of 87.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Todd, Nick 1935 births 2023 deaths American male singers Boone family (show business) Singers from Jacksonville, Florida