Marv Simpleton

Marvin "Marv" Simpleton (born October 1, 1936 in ) is an American businessman, musician, singer-songwriter, composer, novelist and writer known for his work for Carwardine Parks, of whom he is the Chief Operating Officer of. Simpleton also owns the Simpleton Guitar Company, a guitar & bass sales, customization and manufacturing company based in, and co-owns Marv & Bernie's Southern BBQ Pit with his brother Bernie, with locations at Carwardine Colony and in Virginia Beach.

Marv has written & composed many songs for Carwardine Parks (including all the songs for A Carwardine Colony Mystery as well as the majority of the Carwardine Parks jingles), often in collaboration with Frank W. Carroll, Dan Waltman, Ian Monteil and/or C.J. Valentine. He also wrote the majority of the original songs for The Get Along Gang '87. He has also written June 25th: Half Christmas With Green Santa.

Life and career
Simpleton was born on October 1, 1936 in and grew up in. He graduated with honors from in Wilmington, and attended  where he met Christopher R. Carwardine.

In the 1960s, Simpleton was part of The Cyclists, a regionally popular garage band in the Delaware Valley area, with his brother (and Carwardine CFO) Bernie Simpleton, musical partner Frank W. Carroll and fellow "original" Carwardine Colony employees Dennis Macchiedo and Al Beadsworth.

Discography

 * The All-American Demolition Crew (1969; with The Cyclists)
 * Independence Mall (1990)
 * Marv Simpleton's Magical Musical Encyclopedia (2019)

Trivia

 * He is often known as "The Marv" by employees.
 * Jingles he has written for Carwardine Colony:
 * "Carwardine Kids" (1995-96)
 * "Cool Carwardine" (2004-05)
 * He originally was planning to compose the background music for Carwardine Colony. At first, they resorted to production music due to budget issues, but eventually the park raised enough of a budget for Marv and other composers to create original background music for the chain.
 * Marv is one of the principal composers employed by Carwardine Parks, the others being Greg Everett and Ian Monteil.
 * His style often depends on his co-composer. Works co-composed by Frank W. Carroll (Simpleton/Carroll) or Dan Waltman (Simpleton/Waltman) generally have more of a big band or Dixieland sound with occasional forays into other genres (mainly hard rock and blues rock), works co-composed by C.J. Valentine (Simpleton/Valentine) generally have a rock sound generally made up of electric guitars, electric bass guitars and samples, and works co-composed by Ian Monteil (Simpleton/Monteil) represent various different genres depending on the track while generally having a sample-heavy sound.