Robert De Cormier

Robert Romeo De Cormier Jr. (January 7, 1922 – November 7, 2017), sometimes known as Robert Corman, was an American musical conductor, arranger, and director. He arranged music for many singers and groups, including Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul and Mary, and worked with Milt Okun. Biography Robert De Cormier was born in Farmingdale, New York, and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. His father was a shop teacher of French-Canadian heritage, and his mother was a Swedish-born guitarist. De Cormier took up the trumpet at age 7, and continued while attending Colby College in Maine and the University of New Mexico. His trumpet playing ended during World War II, when a German mortar shell nearly severed his right wrist while his Army infantry unit was advancing toward the Rhine River. While recovering at a hospital on Staten Island, he began singing with the CIO chorus, which was where he met and started a lifelong association with Pete Seeger. Because of McCarthyism, and the fact that he had joined the Communist Party as a young man, De Cormier used the name Robert Corman as a pseudonym on many Harry Belafonte recordings. After the war, De Cormier attended and graduated from the Juilli