Ronnie Carroll

Ronnie Carroll was mainly famous for two things: "blacking up" as a minstrel to impersonate singers of African descent (yes, it really did happen), and representing Great Britain for two consecutive years in the Eurovision Song Contest. He was born Ronald Cleghorn on August 18, 1934, in Belfast and worked in variety theater, where the notion of "blacking up" was a tradition from minstrel shows dating back 100 years and was quite common even as late as the 1950s. During his work in theaters he met his wife, Millicent Martin, another performer who would go on to even more fame i...