Career
Born in 1945 in Chicago as Melvin McClelland, his career didn"t begin with music Rather, in the Armed Forces. After spending a few years singing in Naval bands, he departed the Navy in the mid-1950s.
From there, he went from stage to stage until the early 1970s, when in an attempt to boost his career prospects he visited a Queensbridge concert hall intending to use it for self-promotion.
Whilst awaiting a meeting with the hall"s owner, he encountered the mother of Herb Rooney and it emerged that he wanted a singer to record one of his compositions. After an informal discussion with Rooney himself, Bliss hit the studio to record lieutenant
The result was Reward. That song"s B-Side, "Synthetic Substitution", became one of the most sampled songs of all time.
Unfortunately, Bliss" label, Sunburst Records, was a sister company of Opal Productions, and in 1974 it went bankrupt, taking Sunburst Records with lieutenant
In doing so rendering Bliss a one-hit wonder. In 2011, a documentary about him, Synthetic Substitution: The Life Story of Melvin Bliss, was released by Peripheral Enterprises. lieutenant was produced by Earl Holder.
Just over a week later, on July 26, 2010, it was announced that Bliss had died.
