Yoyoy Villame started composing songs for the Boy Scouts in his elementary days.
20 Facts About Yoyoy Villame
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Yoyoy Villame became a passenger jeepney driver plying the Baclaran-Pasay Taft-Santa Cruz-Dimasalang route.
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In 1965, Yoyoy Villame returned to Bohol to become a bus driver, where he formed a rondalla band with some fellow drivers; he sang and played the mandolin.
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Yoyoy Villame's first recording was in 1972 and entitled "Magellan", a parody of historicism of Ferdinand Magellan's failed 1521 conquest of the Philippines.
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Yoyoy Villame was the first to brand his music as "novelty" to distinguish himself from his contemporaries, who tried hard to sound like Perry Como or Frank Sinatra.
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Yoyoy Villame sang of Filipinos' daily experiences such as traffic congestion in the song "Trapik".
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Yoyoy Villame became a national figure in 1977 with his near-anthemic "Mag-exercise Tayo", which was adopted by government agencies and public schools as the official music for morning exercise routines after the flag ceremony.
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Originally released under the title "Vietcong Palagdas" with the Embees and the MB Rondalla Band, the song was written from made-up Chinese-sounding words, which Yoyoy Villame allegedly came up with by writing down the names of Chinese stores while waiting for a mechanic to fix his broken-down jeepney in Manila's Chinatown; it borrowed from the tune of Dee Dee Sharp's "Baby Cakes", a 1962 hit.
9.
Yoyoy Villame wrote "Philippine Geography", which lists 77 major islands, provinces, cities, municipalities, and towns in the Philippines from north to south.
10.
Yoyoy Villame established a love team with "Barok Labs Dabiana" and celebrated his fisherman father with "Piyesta ng Mga Isda".
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Yoyoy Villame's song "Take It, Take It" took potshots at the Manila Film Festival scam in the 1990s.
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Yoyoy Villame made more than 25 albums and won several sales awards, among them a double platinum for his album Tirana My Dear and a platinum for McArthur and Dagohoy in 1991.
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Yoyoy Villame won Best Novelty Award for "Piyesta ng mga Isda" at the 1993 Awit Awards.
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Yoyoy Villame began making film in the early 1970s with the help of Chiquito.
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In doing over 50 films, Yoyoy Villame is most noted for his role in the 1974 suspense thriller Biktima.
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Yoyoy Villame moved to Las Pinas, where he became a city councilor for ten years.
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Yoyoy Villame then ran for vice-mayor in 1995 on a platform focused against illegal drugs but lost.
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Yoyoy Villame married his 21-year partner Elizabeth "Tessie" on August 14,1993 at a chapel in San Diego, California; they had seven children, including singer Hannah Yoyoy Villame.
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Yoyoy Villame later converted to the Members Church of God International, known for its television and internet program, Ang Dating Daan.
20.
Yoyoy Villame was buried at Calape Catholic Cemetery in his birthplace of Calape.