Ross Bagdasarian and the Story of the Chipmunks

In 1958 the Armenian American Ross Bagdasarian created the fictional music group Alvin and the Chipmunks, which released real music albums for many years. Its members were three fictional chipmunks. He sang for all of them himself, recording the voices and then speeding up the recording, and puppets were used in live performances. The characters were named after the heads of the Liberty Records label: director Alvin Bennett, founder and owner Simon Waronker, and chief engineer Theodore Keep.

After Bagdasarian’s death, his son Ross Bagdasarian Jr. carried on the work. In 1979 he and his wife created the girl chipmunks. Between 2007 and 2016, four feature-length family comedies about the three chipmunks were made, based on the chipmunk story of Ross Bagdasarian Sr.

The photograph shows a smiling Bagdasarian embracing a large picture of the three chipmunks.