Van Morrison is a dad again

VAN MORRISON has become a father again at the age of 64.

The veteran Irish singer and his partner Gigi Lee - who is also his manager - welcomed George Ivan Morrison III into the world yesterday.

A statement posted on the singer's website read: "Gigi (Lee) and Van Morrison are proud to announce the birth of their first born son, George Ivan Morrison III.

"Little Van, born Dec 28, 2009 - the spitting image of his daddy. He is a dual citizen of Northern Ireland/United Kingdom and the United States."

A spokesman for Morrison added that the couple kept the birth location private.

Morrison, whose 45-year career spans soul, blues, jazz, R&B and country, has a 39-year-old daughter, singer-songwriter Shana Morrison, from his first marriage to Janet Minto.

He was born in east Belfast in 1945, the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard worker, and Violet Stitt Morrison.

He started his professional career as a young teenager in the late 1950s, playing a variety of instruments in a range of Irish showbands who covered the popular hits of the day.

He shot to fame in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the gritty Northern Ireland R&B band Them with whom he recorded the garage band classic, Gloria.

His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the 1967 release of Brown Eyed Girl.

After Berns' death, Warner Bros. Records bought out Morrison's contract and allowed him several sessions to record Astral Weeks in 1968.

It was initially poorly received but his next one, Moondance, established Morrison as a major artist.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 but declined to attend the ceremony.

In 2008 he performed Astral Weeks live for the first time since 1968.