Danny Apolinar, a native of Brooklyn, worked as a freelance graphic artist in the 1950's. Later, he composed cabaret songs and frequently performed as a singer and pianist, first at the Duplex in Greenwich Village in 1960 and later -- alone or with the Danny Apolinar Trio -- in cabarets and piano bars in Las Vegas, Nev., Miami, Chicago, New Orleans, San Juan, P.R., and St. Tropez, France. Danny Apolinar and Hal Hester wrote the music and lyrics for "Your Own Thing," the first rock musical, which opened Off Broadway in 1968. A modern satire based loosely on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as the year's best musical. The show ran for three years in New York and had seven simultaneous touring companies.
