Darryl Cotton is an Australian pop singer, television presenter and actor. Cotton is best known as a founding member of Australian rock group Zoot

Zoot (band)

Zoot are a pop/rock band formed in Adelaide, South Australia in 1965 as Down the Line. They changed their name to Zoot in 1967 and by 1968 had relocated to Melbourne...

 in 1968, along with Beeb Birtles

Beeb Birtles

Beeb Birtles , is a Dutch / Australian musician, one of the founding members of the Little River Band....

, Rick Brewer and, later, Rick Springfield

Rick Springfield

Rick Springfield is an Australian-born singer-songwriter, musician, and actor. He was a member of pop rock group Zoot from 1969 to 1971 and then started his solo career with his début single "Speak to the Sky" reaching the top 10 in Australia. In mid-1972, he relocated to the United States...

.

Career

Following Zoot, Cotton ventured overseas, basing himself in Los Angeles where he worked consistently as a singer/songwriter and performing with such artists as Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...

, The Osmonds

The Osmonds

The Osmonds are an American family music group with a long and varied career—a career that took them from singing barbershop music as children, to achieving success as teen-music idols, to producing a hit television show, and to continued success as solo and group performers...

, Shaun Cassidy

Shaun Cassidy

Shaun Paul Cassidy is an American actor, singer, writer, and producer. He is the eldest son of Academy Award winning actress Shirley Jones, and the second son of Tony award-winning actor Jack Cassidy...

 and Cliff Richard

Cliff Richard

Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

. His songwriting credits include Donny Osmond

Donny Osmond

Donald Clark "Donny" Osmond is an American singer, musician, actor, dancer, radio personality, and former teen idol. Osmond has also been a talk and game show host, record producer and author. In the mid 1960s, he and four of his elder brothers gained fame as the Osmond Brothers on the long...

 & Marie Osmond

Marie Osmond

Olive Marie Osmond is an American singer, actress, doll designer, and a member of the show business family The Osmonds. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s...

, Engelbert Humperdinck

Engelbert Humperdinck (singer)

Engelbert Humperdinck is a British pop singer, best known for his hits including "Release Me " and "After the Lovin'" as well as "The Last Waltz" .-Early life:...

 and The New Seekers

The New Seekers

The New Seekers are a British-based pop group, formed in 1969 by Keith Potger after the break-up of his group, The Seekers. The idea was that the New Seekers would appeal to the same market as the original Seekers, but their music had rock as well as folk influences...

.

In 1978, Cotton returned to Australia to release his solo single, "Don't Let It Get to You" which appeared on the album, Best Seat In The House. Various successful solo singles followed, including the self-penned national top ten single, "Same Old Girl", which earned him a Countdown award for Best Solo Male Performance in 1980, exactly ten years after Zoot had the same award for a group.

Cotton has acted on the Australian soap opera The Young Doctors

The Young Doctors

The Young Doctors is an Australian early evening soap opera. The series was set in the fictional Albert Memorial hospital and primarily concerned with romances between younger members of the hospital staff, screened on the Nine Network from Monday, 8 November 1976 until Wednesday, 30 March...

and appeared in the lead role of a successful stage production of Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...

 and Tim Rice

Tim Rice

Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...

's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

From 1984 Cotton was a co-host on Network Ten

Network Ten

Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...

's The Early Bird Show

The Early Bird Show

The Early Bird Show was a television show aired on Network 10 in Australia from 1985 until 1989. Produced by Dixie Duncan and directed by Spencer Wilson, Ray McKenna and Bob Loxton, the show regularly featured Australian rock singer Darryl Cotton as host, along with Marie Van Maaren and Marty The...

, a popular Saturday morning variety show for children. He also hosted a program called Summer Rock on Adelaide's Nine Network

Nine Network

The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...

.

Later, Cotton released two albums, Rock'n'Good Fun, and a children's album, Just for Kids.

In 1989, Cotton was awarded the Advance Australia Award for his services to the community, acknowledging his keen support and assistance to numerous charities and public organisations.

Cotton performs regularly with the band Cotton Keays & Morris

Cotton Keays & Morris

Cotton Keays & Morris is an Australian rock band formed in 2000 consisting of singer-songwriters Darryl Cotton, Jim Keays and Russell Morris. Each has written and recorded numerous hit songs since the 1960s...

 with fellow 1960s performers Jim Keays

Jim Keays

James "Jim" Keays is an Australian musician who fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player during 1965–1972, and subsequently had a solo career including leading Jim Keays' Southern Cross...

 from The Masters Apprentices

The Masters Apprentices

The Masters Apprentices were an Australian rock band fronted by mainstay Jim Keays on lead vocals, which formed in 1965 in Adelaide, South Australia, relocated to Melbourne in February 1967 and attempted to break into the United Kingdom market from 1970, before disbanding in 1972...

 and Russell Morris

Russell Morris

Russell Norman Morris is an Australian singer-songwriter who had five Australian Top 10 singles during the late 1960s and early 1970s...

. Cotton has also performed and recorded with the Australian Youth Choir.