August 31: Irish Superstar Van Morrison is 68-years-old today.

-----

Born George Ivan Morrison in Northern Ireland - Known as "Van the Man" to his fans - started his musical career as a teenager playing guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone while covering popular records.

Morrison rose in popularity in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band "Them." Their first big hit was the classic, "Gloria," followed by the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967, "Domino" and "Wild Night," studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely viewed as among the greatest ever made.

Morrison has received six Grammy Awards, been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and has appeared on several "Greatest Artists" lists: In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Van Morrison forty-second on their list of "Greatest Artists of All Time"; in 2006, Paste ranked him twentieth in their list of "100 Greatest Living Songwriters"; Q ranked him twenty-second on their list of "100 Greatest Singers" in April 2007, and he was voted twenty-fourth on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in November 2008.

 

-----

 

For more about Van, visit his Website at -

 

http://www.vanmorrison.com/index.html

 

####