Robert Troy Kimball (born March 29, 1947) is an American retired singer and songwriter best known as longtime frontman of the rock band Toto from 1977 to 1984 and again from 1998 to 2008.
In California, he joined three members of Three Dog Night, Floyd Sneed, Joe Schermie, and Michael Allsup to form a band called S.S. Fools.
They released one album on CBS Records, which was considered a commercial failure, causing the band to be dropped from their label and to split up within a year and a half.
In 1976, David Paich and Jeff Porcaro asked Kimball to join them with three other session musicians, who would eventually form Toto.
The pair liked Kimball's ability to sing in an R&B style and to fuse it with hard rock and jazz, which was characteristic and attributed to his Louisiana origins.
This story was an in-joke perpetuated by Toto's original bassist, David Hungate, due to Kimball's home state of Louisiana and his Cajun heritage.
"[citation needed] After splitting from Toto in 1984,[3] Bobby Kimball relocated to Germany for a solo career under producer Frank Farian of the Far Corporation.
[4] Kimball also continued to work as a session artist, singing background vocals with a trio composed of Michael McDonald from The Doobie Brothers and Bill Champlin of Chicago.
Toto instead recruited singer Jean-Michel Byron (a decision said to have derived from Sony, the band's record company at the time).
In January 2010, he did fourteen concerts in Germany on the "Rock Meets Classic" Tour with the Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Prague, featuring Philipp Maier as Conductor and Music Arranger.
The singers with Kimball on this tour were Lou Gramm, the original lead vocalist of Foreigner, and Dan McCafferty, from the band Nazareth.
Kimball recorded a progressive rock album in 2010 entitled Elements under the band name Yoso with former Yes members Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood.
In late 2016, he released a solo album, We're Not In Kansas Anymore,[9] and the same year, music website No Echo featured Kimball on their "Best Male AOR Singers" list.