Dan Navarro

Biography

Dan Navarro was born on September 14, 1952 in Los Angeles, California, USA as Daniel Anthony Navarro, to Gabriel Navarro, a publicist and boxing matchmaker in the ’40’s and early ’50’s, and, later, a retail merchant, and Josephine Navarro, also a retail merchant alongside her husband. At the age of four, his family relocated to Calexico, CA, where he lived until high school graduation in 1969. He attended UCLA, majoring in music, singing with the UCLA Men’s Glee Club and playing French Horn in the UCLA Marching and Concert Bands. Two years after finishing college, he embarked on a songwriting career in 1976, with early cuts by outlaw country legend Rusty Wier and model-turned-singer Flower. After stints working for Tower Records, Great American Food & Beverage Co., Management Three UK and J.R. Navarro Advertising, he returned to songwriting with the release of the smash hit “We Belong” by Pat Benatar, written with Eric Lowen. Together and separately, they wrote songs for The Bangles, Dave Edmunds, Dionne Warwick, The Triplets Dutch superstar Marco Borsato, Japanese girl group Wink, soap star Jacob Young and many more. Three years later, they started the acoustic duo Lowen & Navarro, which recorded 14 albums between 1990 and 2008. In 1988, he began singing in Spanish language jingles, which broadened over time to vocals in films and television, voice-overs in commercials, and much later, ADR and character work in animated features and series. His singing and voice credits include Roxanne (1986), The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), Happy Feet (2006), The Lorax (2009), The Book of Life (2013), Pirates of the Caribbean 5 (2016), Coco (2017), Family Guy and American Dad. His songs have appeared in Deadpool 2, Pitch Perfect 2, Blue Valentine, One Tree Hill and The Office. He continues to record and tour solo after the retirement and subsequent death of Eric Lowen due to ALS. He released a solo album “Shed My Skin” in 2018, which reached Top ten at the NACC Folk chart in August of 2018. He also serves as National Recording Artists / Singers VP for SAG-AFTRA, and has served on the boards of Folk Alliance International, The Recording Academy’s LA Chapter, Levitt Pavilions LA and Pasadena, and as an Advisory Trustee to the ALS Association’s Golden West Chapter. He thinks sleep is for babies and is a known abuser of acoustic guitars.