The Great Canadian Road Trip: Song #46/250…Diana by Paul Anka

Paul Anka was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1941. Although Anka was born in Canada, he is really a man of the world. His parents were both of Middle Eastern ancestry, with his mother being from Syria and his father from Lebanon. Anka’s first wife, Anne de Zogheb (to whom he was married for 38 years) was Lebanese. He left Canada as a teenager and moved to the United States where he enjoyed his greatest successes as a singer and as a songwriter. He took out U.S. citizenship in 1990.  Later in his life, Anka married again. This time it was to a Swedish model and personal trainer named Anna Aberg. Finally, in addition to his musical success in North America, Paul Anka has gone on to be one of the biggest selling recording artists in Italy and in Finland, of all places. But in Canada, Paul Anka is considered one of our own. He was one of the first big music stars born in Canada to achieve stardom in the United States. He has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada, as well as being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and receiving a star of Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto.

Paul Anka came to prominence in the world of music during the age of the crooners in the 1950s. Anka left Ottawa when he was still in his teens. He traveled to New York City with $100.00 in his pocket in hopes of recording a song or two. Anka ended up recording four songs, one of which was a love letter to a girl from his church back home in Ottawa that came to be known as “Diana”. The girl in question was said to be a young Lebanese-Canadian girl named Diana Ayoub. According to Anka, they were never boyfriend and girlfriend and that Anka’s affection ended up being unrequited. However, those first feelings of young love, coupled with a songwriter’s gift for creating memorable lyrics meant that Paul Anka was able to transform that initial $100.00 investment into a song that sold just under ten million copies around the world. His career as a teen idol crooner with the golden voice was launched. Other hits quickly followed, including “Lonely Boy”, “You Are My Destiny”, “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”, “Puppy Love”, “I’d Never FInd Another You” and the controversial tune of his career, “You’re Having My Baby”. Like many of his fellow crooners, such as Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé and Sammy Davis Jr.,  Anka was knocked out of the Pop charts with the arrival of Rock n’ Roll and, in particular, the British Invasion that brought The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among other top UK acts to US shores. But one of the things that helped Paul Anka not only survive but actually to thrive during the time of the British Invasion and onward for the rest of his professional career was his adaptability. Nothing ever changed in his vocal stylings to limit his singing success, but Anka could read the changing mood of society. Rock n’ Roll stars were the new, hip, cool things on the music scene and crooners such as himself suddenly seemed better suited for an older crowd. In the mid-1960s, Anka became one of the very first singers to take up residency in Las Vegas. While there, he helped create a new way for out-of-favour hitmakers to stay in the limelight. While in Las Vegas, Anka created what is now known as a Vegas-style Revue, complete with dancers, glittery sets and a performer who could be guaranteed to play nothing but the hits. While this helped to extend the professional lives of crooners like himself, Elvis and The Rat Pack, it also meant that Paul Anka needed to diversify his portfolio of skills. Thus, as the late 1960s came along and turned into the 1970s, Anka became a film and television personality. He appeared on many shows such as Make Room For Daddy, The Red Skelton Hour, Kojak, The Fall Guy, Perry Mason and even in animated form during an episode of The Simpsons. In addition to appearing on screen, Anka also focussed his energies into songwriting. Over the course of the last forty years, Paul Anka has written an astonishing array of memorable tunes for other people, including the opening theme for The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, the lyrics to “My Way” by Frank Sinatra, “She’s A Lady” for Tom Jones, as well as three songs with Michael Jackson that were released posthumously after Jackson’s death.

Over the course of a career that saw him record and release his own #1 hit songs, write chart-topping hit songs for other singers, appear on television and in movies, as well as get in on the ground floor when it came to developing the Las Vegas Strip as a goldmine for nostalgia acts, Paul Anka was an astute businessman. While hugely popular bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were finding themselves embroiled in disputes over royalties with their manager Allen Klein, Paul Anka was busy securing the rights to his own personal songs as well as those he wrote for others. As a result, regardless of the ebbs and flows of the music business over the years, Paul Anka had set himself and his family up for financial success. His songs are timeless and the royalty cheques derived from them are a source of neverending income. 

One final piece of trivia regarding one of Ottawa’s favourite sons…unlike many who found success at a young age, Paul Anka has always been a relatively grounded and down-to-earth type of person. This is especially so when it comes to the concept of family. As mentioned earlier in this post, Paul Anka was married to his first wife for almost forty years. From that marriage he and his wife had five daughters, all of whom had names that began with the letter “A”: Amanda, Anthea, Alexandra, Alicia and Amelia.  Anka had one son with his second wife. That son was named Ethan. Out of the six children, Anthea is the only one to have gone into the Arts as she is a writer for Television shows and films. Amanda is involved in the Arts by association, as she has been married to actor Jason Bateman for over twenty years now. Anthea and Amanda, along with their four other siblings all spend time with their father at frequent family gatherings, not unlike those Anka himself enjoyed as a boy growing up in Ottawa.

All in all, Paul Anka is a performer who can be said to have enjoyed success and longevity in a variety of fields related to music, television and film. His talent has allowed him to adapt to the fickle nature of the music business in ways that were thoughtfully planned out. His business acumen has allowed him to stay in control of his affairs which, as a result, has meant that none of his songs has ended up being diminished due to their association with cheesy merchandising or marketing. Paul Anka remains actively working, even as he sails into his eighth decade of life. And to think that it all began for him as a teenager who penned a love letter to his Lebanese crush from Ottawa, Ontario, named Diana. Well done, Mr. Anka. Well done, indeed.

The link to the official website for Paul Anka can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “Diana” by Paul Anka can be found here.

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