Ross Bagdasarian was the cousin of William Saroyan, the author; together, they wrote C'mon -A My House, which was Rosemary Clooney's greatest hit. Bagdasarian took the name Seville from where he was stationed in the military. Alvin, Simon and Theodore were all the first names of producers and technicians he had worked with.
The idea for the Chipmunk Song came from his son, asking when would Christmas come again...in July!
There's a lot of info like this at
www.imdb.com...just type in the name at the top.
Dan
