Johnnie Ray

This article is about the singer. For the baseball player, see Johnny Ray.

Johnnie Ray
Johnnie Ray from the trailer for his only Hollywood film, There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
Background information
Birth name	John Alvin Ray
Born	January 10 1927(1927-01-10) Hopewell, Oregon, United States
Died	February 24 1990 (aged 63) Los Angeles, California, United States
Genre(s)	Traditional pop music
Occupation(s)	Singer Songwriter musician
Instrument(s)	Singing Piano
Years active	1951–1989
Label(s)	OKeh Records

John Alvin Ray (January 10, 1927–February 24, 1990) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Biography 2.1 Early life 2.2 Beginnings of career 2.3 Success 2.4 Reputation in the United States 2.5 Advent of rock 'n' roll 2.6 Later career and death 3 Hit singles 3.1 1951 3.2 1952 3.3 1953 3.4 1954 3.5 1955 3.6 1956 3.7 1957 3.8 1958 3.9 1959 3.10 1960 3.11 1961 4 Filmography 4.1 Actor 4.2 Television appearances 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

Overview

Popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a "major precursor"^[1] of what would become rock 'n' roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music and his animated stage persona. He was partially deaf because of an injury sustained at the age of 13.

By the late 1950s, his major success was over in the United States. One possible reason for his fast decline was that Confidential and other American tabloid magazines alleged that Johnnie Ray was gay. But they said as much prior to 1957, when they were discredited in a notorious trial on a charge of "conspiracy to commit criminal libel," which makes their impact on Ray's career impossible to determine. A failed surgical procedure to treat his partial deafness in 1958 was probably a more important factor in his decline because the worsening of his hearing loss cut him off from American songwriters on whom he depended. (Though he wrote music and lyrics for his breakthrough hit song The Little White Cloud That Cried, most of his other hits were penned by American songwriters.) Johnnie Ray continued to play major venues in the United Kingdom and Australia until the late 1980s, but he did not release any studio recordings after 1961. He lived in a house in the Hollywood Hills near the Chateau Marmont Hotel from 1976 until his 1990 death, but in 1987 the best gig he could get near his home was at El Camino College.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Ray was born in Hopewell, Oregon, and spent part of his childhood on a farm, eventually moving to Portland, Oregon. Ray was of Native American origin; his great-grandmother was a full-blooded Indian and his great-grandfather was Oregon pioneer George Kirby Gay of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. He became deaf in his right ear at age 13 after an accident during a Boy Scout ritual in which the scouts threw him high in the air and then tried to catch him with a blanket they held taut as they stood in a circle. They failed to catch Ray and he fell to the ground, hitting his ear. He later performed his music wearing a mauve hearing aid. Surgery performed in New York in 1958, when he was 31, left him almost completely deaf in both ears, although hearing aids helped his condition.

Beginnings of career

Ray first attracted attention while performing at the Flame Showbar in Detroit, an R&B nightclub where he was the only white performer. Inspired by rhythm singers like Kay Starr, LaVern Baker and Ivory Joe Hunter, Ray developed a unique rhythm based style that was far closer to what would become known as "rock and roll" than any other music of the time. Much like Frankie Laine before him, Ray was often mistaken for a black artist when his records first earned radio play.

Success

His first record, the self-penned R&B number for OKeh Records, "Whiskey and Gin," was a minor hit in 1951. The following year he dominated the charts with the double-sided monster hit single of "Cry" (penned by a songwriter whom he didn't know personally) flip side "The Little White Cloud That Cried" (a Ray composition). Selling over a million copies of the 45 single, Ray's emotional delivery struck a chord with teenagers, and he quickly became the biggest teen idol since Frank Sinatra almost ten years earlier. Ray has been cited as the historical link between Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in the development of popular music. Ray's unorthodox performing style included many theatrics later associated with rock 'n' roll, including beating up his piano, writhing on the floor and, most famously, crying. Also like Laine, his shows were often compared to religious revival meetings with the singer and audience both reaching an emotional frenzy. Ray quickly earned a plethora of nicknames including "The Atomic Ray," "Mr. Emotion," "The Nabob of Sob," "The Cry Guy" and "The Prince of Wails." In the documentary film No Direction Home, Bob Dylan cites Ray as an early influence, stating that Ray's singing and performance style seemed "voodooed". More hits followed, including "Please Mr. Sun," "Such A Night," "Walkin' My Baby Back Home," "A Sinner Am I" and "Yes Tonight Josephine." His last hit was "Just Walkin' in the Rain," in 1956. He was even more popular in the United Kingdom than in the United States, breaking the record at the London Palladium formerly set by Frankie Laine. Although his star rapidly diminished in his home country, he retained a loyal fan base overseas, particularly in Australia.

Reputation in the United States

As wild off the stage as on as early as 1952, Ray became fodder for American tabloids like Confidential and Hush-Hush that conspired to destroy his phenomenal popularity shortly after they were launched in December of that year. (At one point he had four out of the Top Ten songs listed on the Billboard charts.) Ironically, he was ultimately a victim of the rock 'n' roll genre he did so much to establish. As pop music became dominated by performers who simulated sexual rhythm instead of the underlying angst that was Johnnie Ray's specialty, the thirtysomething Johnnie was soon left by the wayside. A very large majority of everything he ever sang provokes slow dancing or swaying to the music. It is not possible to "fast dance" to a Ray song in the manner that became popular with Elvis and was imitated shortly thereafter by the masses that watched the TV show American Bandstand. That program first went on the ABC network in 1957, the year after Johnnie Ray's last American big hit, which was Just Walking In The Rain.^[3] Ray married Marilyn Morrison a short time after he gave his first New York concert, which was at the Copacabana in 1952. The wedding ceremony, attended by New York mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri, made the cover of the New York Daily News.^[4] Marilyn was supposedly aware of the singer's alleged bisexuality from the start, but the couple separated within a year, anyway. Their separation and divorce were major news items in 1953 and 1954, respectively. The explanations given by the couple and by newspaper columnists such as Louella Parsons were similar to the ambiguous reasons announced by many other divorcing entertainers in that era. Some years later, in the 1960s, Ray's personal manager Bill Franklin was said to be his lover. (It is known that he was the singer's personal manager.)^[5] Johnnie Ray was arrested by a Detroit vice squad officer and prosecuted for indecency while touring in 1959. Despite an acquittal by an all-female jury ten days later, the incident caused some verbal gossip about Ray's homosexual leanings, but only one tabloid article sensationalized, in print, his brush with the law, and it appeared several months later.^[6] Gossip journalism had changed drastically in 1957. The "Hollywood Research" publishing company that had done all the Ray-bashing was ordered to clean up its act in a 1957 criminal trial.^{[7][page # needed]} Among the bitter confessions made by magazine editor Howard Rushmore on the witness stand was an admission that he had written at least one anti-Johnnie Ray story under a pseudonym. His testimony and that of other witnesses, including Dorothy Dandridge, established that Confidential and the other tabloid magazines of 1952 - 1957 had relied on questionable sources.^[8] One anti-Ray article in 1953 had quoted "an eminent psychiatrist" named Dr. Louis Berg claiming that all male homosexuals are affected by a secret menstrual cycle.^[9] The article alleged further that Johnnie Ray's relationship with his only sibling, a sister named Elma who was married at the time, was incestuous.^[10] The tone of such articles changed after Howard Rushmore's testimony in August 1957.

Advent of rock 'n' roll

After the loquacious Rushmore shot his wife and then himself to death in early 1958, more open-minded Americans of the time realized that Ray had been smeared deliberately. By that time, however, the rapid rise of rock 'n' roll and his failed 1958 ear surgery had cut him off from the songwriters who were so vital to less rhythmic singers like himself, Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis, who penned little of their own material. When rock 'n' roll proved in the 1960s that it was here to stay, and not a fad for screaming adolescents, Bennett and Mathis continued to score hits penned by songwriters, but Ray recorded rock-oriented material that often seemed wrong for him. His relationship with his last American record label ended in 1961. Ray disappeared from the American television networks until a Hollywood Palace appearance in 1968, by which time serious music fans liked the fact that rock 'n' roll bands wrote nearly all of their own material with the members collaborating.^{[neutrality disputed]}

Later career and death

Ray had a close relationship with journalist and television game show panelist Dorothy Kilgallen with whom he is widely thought to have had an affair. The boost she gave to his sagging career during his engagement at the Tropicana Resort & Casino in Las Vegas happened shortly before her 1965 death, suggesting that she might have reversed his fate in the music business had she lived. (Kilgallen was almost singlehandedly responsible for the rise to fame of singer/pianist Bobby Short in the United States of the 1950s, according to statements he made decades later.) In early 1969, Ray befriended Judy Garland in the last year of her life. He was her opening act during her last concerts in Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden. Ray was also the best man during Garland's wedding to nightclub owner Mickey Deans in London. Ray's American career revived in the 1970s, but only to a limited extent. He never played any large venues near his Los Angeles home during this period even though he sang on The Andy Williams Show in 1970 and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson three times during 1972 and 1973. His personal manager Bill Franklin resigned in 1976 and cut off contact with the singer a few years later. His lack of television exposure in his home country took its toll, causing him to perform at El Camino College in 1987.^[11] Australian, English and Scottish promoters booked him for their large venues as late as 1989, his last year of performing.^[12] The reason American entertainment bookers and songwriters ignored him in the 1980s was not homophobia but rather the fact that they simply did not know who he was or what his sound was like.^[13] His exposure during the new era of cable television was limited to a few seconds in Dexys Midnight Runners' 1982 music video for "Come On Eileen" and a few seconds in Billy Idol's 1986 video for "Don't Need a Gun". The Dexys video, revived many times on VH1's Pop-Up Video, and later VH1 Classic, used archival footage of Ray from 1954. Only the Idol video required Ray to appear on-camera during his last years. In 1990, Johnnie Ray died of liver failure in Los Angeles. He was interred at Hopewell Cemetery near Hopewell, Oregon.

Hit singles

1951

• "Cry" (with The Four Lads), Columbia 30th St Studio, NYC, October 16, 1951; Mundell Lowe (g) Ed Safranski (b) Ed Shaughnessy (d) Buddy Reed (p)
• "Give Me Time" (with The Four Lads)
• "(Here Am I) Brokenhearted" (with The Four Lads)
• "The Little White Cloud That Cried", Columbia 30th St Studio, NYC, October 15, 1951; Mundell Lowe (g) Ed Safranski (b) Ed Shaughnessy (d) Stan Freeman (p) Lucky Thompson (sax)
• "She Didn't Say Nothin' At All"
• "Tell The Lady I Said Goodbye"
• "Whiskey And Gin"

1952

• "All of Me"
• "A Sinner Am I"
• "Candy Lips" (with Doris Day)
• "Coffee and Cigarettes (Think It Over)" (with The Four Lads)
• "Don't Blame Me"
• "Faith Can Move Mountains" (with The Four Lads)
• "Let's Walk That-A-Way" (with Doris Day)
• "Mountains in the Moonlight"
• "Out in the Cold Again"
• "Please Mr. Sun" (with The Four Lads)
• "The Lady Drinks Champagne"
• "Walkin' My Baby Back Home"

1953

• "Full Time Job" (with Doris Day)
• "Ma Says, Pa Says" (with Doris Day)
• "Somebody Stole My Gal"

1954

• "Alexander's Ragtime Band"
• "As Time Goes By"
• "Going-Going-Gone"
• "Hernando's Hideaway"
• "Hey There"
• "If You Believe"
• "Such a Night"

1955

• "Flip Flop and Fly"
• "I've Got So Many Million Years"
• "Ooh! Aah! Oh!"
• "Paths of Paradise"
• "Song of the Dreamer"

1956

• "Ain't Misbehavin'"
• "Everyday I Have The Blues"
• "How Long How Long Blues"
• "I Want To Be Loved"
• "I'll Never Be Free"
• "I'm Gonna Move To the Outskirts of Town"
• "Just Walkin' in the Rain"
• "Lotus Blossom"
• "Sent For You Yesterday"
• "Shake a Hand"
• "Who's Sorry Now"

1957

• "Build Your Love (On a Strong Foundation)"
• "Good Evening Friends" (with Frankie Laine)
• "Look Homeward Angel"
• "Should I?"
• "Soliloquy Of a Fool"
• "Street Of Memories"
• "Up Above My Head" (with Frankie Laine)
• "You Don't Owe Me a Thing"
• "Yes Tonight Josephine"

1958

• "I'm Beginning to See the Light"
• "I'm Confessin'"
• "The Lonely Ones"
• "Up Until Now"

1959

• "Cool Water"
• "Empty Saddles"
• "I'll Never Fall in Love Again"
• "It's All in the Game"
• "Red River Valley"
• "Twilight On the Trail"
• "Wagon Wheels"
• "When It's Springtime in the Rockies"

1960

• "I'll Make You Mine"

1961

• "Lookout Chattanooga"

Filmography

Actor

• There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
• General Electric Theater (1 episode, 1955)
• Shower of Stars (1 episode, 1955)
• Rogues' Gallery (1968)
• CHiPs (2 episodes, 1979-1980)

Television appearances

• The Jack Benny Program (1 episode, 1953)
• Toast of the Town (7 episodes, 1953-1959)
• The Colgate Comedy Hour (1 episode, 1954)
• The Jimmy Durante Show (1 episode, 1956)
• Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium (2 episodes, 1955-1960)
• Shower of Stars (1 episode, 1956)
• Frankie Laine Time (1 episode, 1956)
• The Jackie Gleason Show (Guest Host, 1 episode, 1957)
• What's My Line? (2 episodes, 1954-1957)
• The Hollywood Palace (1 episode, 1968)
• The Joey Bishop Show (1 episode, 1968)
• Frost on Sunday (1 episode, 1968)
• The Andy Williams Show (1 episode, 1970)
• The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (3 episodes, 1972-1973)
• American Bandstand's 25th Anniversary (1977)
• Fall In, the Stars (1977)
• The Merv Griffin Show (1 episode, 1977)
• Juke Box Saturday Night (1979)

References

Further reading

• Guinness Book of British Hit Singles - 16th Edition - ISBN 0-85112-190-X
• The Guinness Book of 500 Number One Hits - ISBN 0-85112-250-7

External links

• The Johnnie Ray International Fan Club
• Ray, Johnnie (1927-1990)
• Biography
• Johnnie Ray at the Internet Movie Database
• Johnnie Ray memorial at Find A Grave