Darryl Cotton
Australian singer-songwriter, TV presenter (1949-2012)

Darryl Grant Cotton (4 September 1949 – 27 July 2012) was an Australian pop, rock singer-songwriter, television presenter and actor. He was a founding member of Australian rock group Zoot in 1965, with Beeb Birtles, and were later joined by Rick Brewer and Rick Springfield. As a solo artist Cotton released the albums Best Seat in the House (1980), It's Rock 'n' Good Fun (1984) and Let the Children Sing (1994). In April 1980 his biggest solo hit, "Same Old Girl", which was co-written by Cotton, peaked at No. 6 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart. He acted in the TV soap opera The Young Doctors (1979), and on stage as Joseph in the theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (1983).
He presented TV shows Summer Rock (1979 and 1980) and The Early Bird Show (1985 to 1989). In 1996 he formed Burns Cotton & Morris with fellow 1960s pop singers, Ronnie Burns and Russell Morris. In 2000 Burns retired from the trio and, with Jim Keays, they became Cotton Keays & Morris. In May 2012, Cotton was diagnosed with liver cancer and died on 27 July 2012, aged 62.
“Darryl Cotton” enters the record as australian singer-songwriter, TV presenter (1949-2012). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Darryl, Cotton and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Darryl Cotton” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Darryl, Cotton and Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5225362. VIAF identifies the subject as 44117036. The Library of Congress control number is no2008118266. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2012, 1965 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Darryl Cotton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.