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| RICKY NELSON | |
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Eric Hilliard "Ricky" Nelson (born 8 May 1940), appeared on his parents' radio show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, from the age of four. The show transferred to TV in the early 1950s. Performances in the TV show led to a consistent string of hit records beginning with I'm Walkin' in 1957. Ricky enlisted the aid of some of the best rock guitarists of the time, including James Burton and Joe Maphis, and some of the best rock and rockabilly song writers, including Johnny and Dorsey Burnette and Gene Pitney. The result was a cut above the typical "teen idol" music of the late fifties and led to Ricky becoming the second top selling rock star of the era (after Elvis).
Rick married Kristin Harmon in 1961. They had four children but divorced in 1981. Rick's run of about thirty Top 40 hits ended with the "British invasion" in the early sixties, a change of recording companies (from Liberty to Decca) in 1963 and the end of the Ozzie and Harriet TV series in 1966. Ricky continued to produce good quality recordings, with an increasingly country style, and to be a popular club and concert performer. His band, the Stone Canyon Band, was a pioneers country-rock group. Rick had another minor hit with Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me in 1970 and major hit with Garden Party in 1974. (According to members of his band, the legend that Ricky wrote the song as a result of being booed for performing Honky Tonk Woman at a concert in Madison Square Garden is not strictly true. The booing, which did inspire the song, resulted from a drunken brawl in the audience not Rick's performance.).
Rick's twin sones, Mathew and Gunnar, performing as Nelson, had a number one hit with (Can't Live without) Your Love and Affection) in 1990. |
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Bestselling Ricky Nelson CDs |
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Ricky Nelson items now available (at eBay): |
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Click here for Ricky Nelson sheet music. |
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Copyright (c) 1996-2004 Peter Thorogood. All
rights reserved.
Information on these pages is presented for educational and
research purposes. As it deals with historical subjects, specific
items of information are necessarily derived from many other
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of the author.
All graphics and sounds used in these pages are either original
or have been obtained from sources which granted permission to
use them. However, the author of these pages does not necessarily
have the right to grant that permission to others.
Midi versions of tunes are included as reminders of the original
recordings and not as substitutes for them. It is hoped that
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Anyone who feels that any item in these pages may have
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can be taken.
By the time he was 21, Ricky (now calling himself
"Rick") had developed a more mature, country-rock
style. His biggest hit, Hello, Mary Lou (written by Gene Pitney
and with James Burton on guitar) was typical of this period.
On 31 January 1985, a small plane on
which Rick was flying
bust into flames after making an emergency landing on a highway.
Rick, his fiancée (Helen Blair) and five members of the Stone
Canyon Band were all killed.
