Johnnie Ray - Biography
By Johnny Whiteside
Sources: Cry the Johnnie Ray Story by Jonny Whiteside (Barricade Books, 1994)
Singer-pianist Johnnie Ray was a strange, unprecedented force in 1950's American pop music. One of the earliest white artists to actively incorporate the influence of black Rhythm & Blues in his music, he also developed a volcanic stage presentation that combined never before seen physicality and emotional extremes. The torso-tossing Ray, who often displayed spastic paroxysms of tearful agitation, was the first pop singer to remove the microphone from it's stand to not only traverse the bandstand but also go out into the audience itself; he'd hammer the piano with one of his shoes or jump on top of it, wave his arms, send the sheet music flying, tear up the curtains, and throw himself down onto the stage. This revolutionary presentation created a international furor, and won him a legion of fans that ranged from hysterical teenage bobbysoxers to such celebrities as Salvador Dali, Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis, Hank Williams and Elvis Presley. Frank Sinatra, on the other hand, hated his guts.
Born January 10 1927 in the small rural town of Dallas, Oregon, Ray flabbergasted his family when, at age 3, he toddled over to their antique pump organ and began to play "Rock of Ages." A natural-born prodigy, his musical pursuits were curtailed after a boy scout blanket toss went wrong, dumping the thirteen year old onto the ground--a dry straw punctured his left eardrum--he immediately lost fifty percent of his hearing. The condition went undiagnosed for over a year, and, unable to understand what had happened or to hear most of what was going on around him, he became withdrawn and troubled, or, as he often later said "the loneliest boy in the world." Finally fitted with a hearing aid, Ray returned to the piano, grinding out boogies and swing standards at a variety of school events, teenage parties and, after the family moved to Portland, on a local radio talent show. Local club and burlesque package show dates soon followed, and after asking headliner Sophie Tucker for career advice ("Kid, if you want to make it show business, get the hell out of Portland," she told him), he set out for Hollywood in 1949.
Failure, disappointment and frustration in Tinsel Town drove Ray to attempt to book himself across the country, a period when he developed his dynamic combination of smoky-toned vocal sensitivity and convulsive, arms-akimbo theatrics. In Detroit, he soon found himself the only white performer in residence at the Flame Showbar, one of the Midwest's biggest venues for touring jazz and R&B performers. Rising R&B star La Vern Baker was another Flame regular and she took the weird little cat with the bulky hearing aid under her wing, and in 1950, the hard-drinking, admittedly bi-sexual Ray, with such close ties to the black community, was an instantly recognizable misfit--a complete socio-cultural anomaly.
That didn't stop Okeh Records talent scout Danny Kessler from signing Ray on the spot after seeing him perform, and with the Flame's all-black house band Maurice King & the Wolverines accompanying, they cut his first record , the boozy R&B meditation "Whisky & Gin" released on July 27, 1951. "Warbler has an extraordinary sound," Billboard magazine wrote, "A cross between Kay Starr and Jimmy Scott." After influential Cleveland disk jockey Bill Randle got behind the song, his ascent was dizzying--by September of '51 his price more than tripled, from $500 a week to $1,750. He also caught the ear of Mitch Miller, legendary A&R chief at Okeh's parent company, Columbia Records.
Miller brought the singer to a New York recording studio and presented him with the song "Cry." Released in October 1951, backed with Ray original "The White Cloud that Cried," it shot to the top of Billboard's R&B and pop charts within weeks, making him a superstar so quickly that Columbia had not even had time to get any promo shots of Ray out to the press, and most listeners assumed he was a black woman. The mystery only fueled the fire, and after a spectacular debut at New York's Copacabana, and an apocalyptic performance on Ed Sullivan's television show, Ray had the world at his feet. Riots frequently accompanied his appearances, not only at home but in Britain and Australia. He scored several more hit records (most notably a 1956 version of the Prisonaires "Just Walking in the Rain'"), but Miller's studio guidance ultimately diluted Ray's ferocity and by the late 1950s, many of his records were over-produced bubblegum nightmares. While he had paved the way for Elvis (who frequently attended Ray's shows from 1956 through the early 1960s), his offbeat blend of R&B heat and smoldering balladry fell by the wayside after rock & roll's arrival.
Ray's penchant for liquored-up high jinks also resulted in several arrests, and he became a perennial target for the day's lurid scandal magazines. By the early sixties, he was hospitalized with a severe cirrhotic condition, but after he quit drinking , fired his managers and retreated to Spain for a year, he managed to rehabilitate himself enough to ensure steady bookings around the world. Columbia had cut him loose, and he continued to record, first for Liberty and then an increasingly low profile series of independent labels. Although he would never make the charts again, his fan base overseas never abandoned him; a 1974 engagement at the London Palladium earned him a fifteen minute standing ovation that was reported in newspapers around the world (his two week run was also extended to six sold-out weeks, another first for the fabled venue).
However, by that time he started drinking heavily again, and despite a boost from the mid-70’s nostalgia craze, his prestige was significantly diminished. Annual international tours kept his bank account fat (no other American performer visited Australia as often Ray did), and the endless parties at his Hollywood Hills home kept him happy. By the late 1980s, Ray was enjoying widespread recognition from a variety of sources--British singer Morrissey would don a hearing aid in homage to Ray, he was cited in song lyrics (Dexy‘s Midnight Runners’ “Come on, Eileen” Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”), had appeared in a Billy Idol video and seemed poised for a Tony Bennett-style reintroduction. It never happened. He died in Los Angeles, from liver failure, on February 24 1990.
