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John Alvin Ray (January 10, 1927–February 24, 1990) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist.
Extremely popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a "major precursor" 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.
Ray was born in Hopewell, Oregon, and spent part of his childhood on a farm, eventually moving to Portland, Oregon. His publicity agent claimed, correctly, that 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 Johnnie and he fell on 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 continued to make his life possible without sign language.
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.
His first record, the self-penned R&B number for OKeh Records, "Whiskey and Gin," was a minor hit in 1951. Later that year, he would be dominating the charts with the double-sided monster hit single of "Cry" (penned by a songwriter whom he didn't know personally) backed by "The Little White Cloud That Cried" (a Ray composition). Selling over a million copies of the 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 UK than in the U.S., breaking the record at the London Palladium formerly set by Frankie Laine. Although his star rapidly diminished in the US, he retained a loyal fan base overseas, particularly in Australia.
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.)
Ray's American career revived in the 1970s, but only to a limited extent. His personal manager Bill Franklin resigned in 1976 and cut off contact with the singer a few years later. Johnnie Ray never appeared on The Love Boat, which became a high-profile network television haven for performers of earlier generations, many of them best known for musical comedy, whose popularity had faded. (Ray had performed in Guys and Dolls at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas in 1958. Two of his co-stars in There's No Business Like Show Business appeared on The Love Boat.) The reason entertainment bookers and songwriters ignored him in the 1980s was not homophobia, but rather the fact that they simply didn't know who he was or what his sound was like. In the 1980s, Ray appeared at televised European fundraisers for the March of Dimes, but his American television exposure was limited to a few seconds in an MTV video for Dexys Midnight Runners (originally aired in 1982) and a few seconds in a Billy Idol video (1986). (These artists are from the United Kingdom, where Johnnie Ray remained popular.)
A chronic alcoholic, in 1990 he died of liver failure in Los Angeles at the age of 63.
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