Funny, the things you don't learn on TV.
Consider, for example, the career of Roger Whittaker. Millions of Americans know him as that genial balladeer hawking his hits on the late show.What the ads don't show is that the mellow guy with the mellifluous baritone is an international hit machine.
He has recorded 43 albums, written 400 songs and received 185 gold, silver and platinum albums. In England, Australia, Germany and several other countries, his songs regularly ride the charts. And in the United States?
"Not as many people know me here. And I rather like it that way," says Whittaker, his British accent immaculate over the phone from Milwaukee. "Sometimes people come up to me when I'm in a restaurant and they say, `Are you who I think you are?' It's quite nice, actually."
Judging from Whittaker's schedule, it could become quite common. He'll spend much of 1990 in the U.S. promoting his new made-in-Nashville album, "I'd Fall in Love Tonight." This month he's traveling the country presenting his Whittaker Family Christmas Tour.
It's a mix of his hits like "Durham Town" and "Mexican Whistler," holiday classics like "Winter Wonderland," plus a little family: his 16-year-old daughter, J.J., who sings, dances and dabbles in acting.
Yet Whittaker, who logs 250,000 miles on the road every year, insists he's not yearning to become a household name here: "That's not a burning desire. I'm more interested in entertaining the people who come to my shows."
Whittaker has felt that way since he was a child serenading the neighbors in his native Kenya (his father was hurt in a motorcycle accident, and a doctor thought the weather there might help).
He majored in biochemistry in college, but recorded music on the side. His second release, "Steel Man," hit the charts his senior year, and the young biochemist became a starving artist in England.
In 1967, Whittaker won a prize at a Belgian music festival, started touring Europe and within a year had two songs in the Top Five of the British charts. Others quickly followed, like "Mammy Blue," "New World in the Morning" and "I Don't Believe in `If' Anymore."
In 1976, "The Last Farewell" caught the fancy of a radio program director's wife in Atlanta; listeners liked the song; and Whittaker wondered if his style would sell in the U.S. To find out, he took to television.
His two TV albums have sold more than 1.5 million copies - and have sometimes branded Whittaker as a huckster - a Slim Whitman in aviator glasses. The notion puzzles Whittaker but doesn't bother him.
"They can say what they like," he says. "My records sell in stores here, too."
Whittaker's view of his career is as straightforward as his songs are soothing: "When you have five kids," he says, laughing, "you get pretty level-headed."
That outlook has helped him weather storms in his personal life. He and his wife, Natalie, rode out rough times in their marriage after his initial U.S. success, a struggle detailed in his autobiography, "So Far, So Good."
Family also supported him after the murder of his father. Last April, bandits broke into his parents' home in Kenya, killed his father and tortured his 83-year-old mother.
"It's been purgatory," he says. "But my mother told me to go on tour. She said, `You can't just stop your life. Go on and do what you were going to do.' She was right - it's been very good therapy."