On a late Wednesday afternoon, Donny Osmond hops on the phone for an interview. In five hours, he’ll be donning a flashy jacket onstage at Harrah’s on the Las Vegas Strip, where he’s spent the past three years taking fans on a whirlwind ride through his dynamic career five nights a week.
His voice is in recovery mode, he says, after he got caught up in the adrenaline of the crowd the other night and overdid it a little. But that still doesn’t keep him from bursting into occasional song throughout the course of our conversation, as he reflects on the remarkable longevity of his career and what his future as an entertainer holds.
It’s something he’s thought a lot about recently — especially as he’s found a way to condense the diverse chapters of his ongoing career into a fast-paced hour-and-a-half show in Las Vegas.
That’s 60 years in 90 minutes.
The day of our interview happens to be a significant date for Osmond: It marks exactly 53 years since his cover of “Go Away Little Girl” hit No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts. He was 13.
And it marks three years since he released his latest album, “Start Again” — at the age of 63.
With a career so vast, his network of acquaintances, collaborators and friends is unsurprisingly wide.
Osmond has worked with and been guided by entertainment giants who have since passed on — legends like “Moon River” crooner Andy Williams, who put a 5-year-old Osmond on his variety show in the early ‘60s and helped prepare him for the spotlight; and comedy queen Lucille Ball, whom he starred alongside in an episode of “Here’s Lucy,” where he performed his international top 10 hit “Too Young” while wearing a bedazzled purple jumpsuit. Five years later, Ball would appear on the “Donny and Marie” show and perform “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”
Others, like King of Pop Michael Jackson — who initially bonded with Osmond when the two were navigating stardom as teens — were gone too soon, beat down in an industry that doesn’t often respect the best interests of its key players. And, of course, Elvis Presley, who also holds a special place in Osmond’s heart — and not just because he was the inspiration behind those rock ‘n’ roll jumpsuits of The Osmonds era.
Osmond was an impressionable teenager when he first crossed paths with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Watching Elvis perform at the Hilton in Las Vegas in the early ‘70s left no doubt in Osmond’s mind that he was the King. Onstage, Elvis was on fire, lighting it up in his one-of-a-kind jumpsuits and treating each show as if it were his last.
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