page_title: Johnnie Ray
section_title: Early career and success
hierarchical_section_title: Johnnie Ray / Career / Early career and success
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of Johnnie Ray from the trailer for the film There's No Business Like Show Business.
context_page_description: John Alvin Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Highly popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor to what became rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music, and his animated stage personality. Tony Bennett called Ray the "father of rock and roll," and historians have noted him as a pioneering figure in the development of the genre.
  Raised in Dallas, Oregon, Ray, who was partially deaf, began singing professionally at age fifteen on Portland radio stations. He gained a local following singing at small, predominantly African-American nightclubs in Detroit, where he was discovered in 1951 and subsequently signed to Okeh Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records. He rose quickly from obscurity in the United States with the release of his debut album Johnnie Ray, as well as with a 78 rpm single, both of whose sides reached the Billboard magazine's Top Hot 100 chart, "Cry" and "The Little White Cloud That Cried".
  In 1954 Ray made his first and only major motion picture, There's No Business Like Show Business as part of an ensemble cast that included Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe.
context_section_description: Inspired by rhythm singers like Kay Starr, LaVern Baker, and Ivory Joe Hunter, Ray developed a unique rhythm-based singing style described as alternating between pre-rock R&B and a more conventional classic pop approach. He began singing professionally on a Portland, Oregon, radio station at age 15, sharing billing with Jane Powell, then a local young singer herself.
  He later performed in comedy shows and theatrical productions in Seattle, Washington before relocating to Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, Ray regularly performed at the Flame Showbar, an African-American nightclub, where he developed a local following. While performing at the Flame, Ray attracted the attention of Bernie Lang, a song plugger, who saw him perform with local DJ Robin Seymour of WKMH. Lang went to New York to sell the singer to Danny Kessler of the Okeh label. Kessler came over from New York, and he, Lang, and Seymour went to the Flame. According to Seymour, Kessler's reaction was, "Well, I don't know. This kid looks well on the stand, but he will never go on records."
  It was Seymour and Lowell Worley of the local office of Columbia who persuaded Kessler to have a test record made of Ray. Worley arranged for a record to be cut at United Sound Studios in Detroit. Seymour told reporter Dick Osgood that there was a verbal agreement that he would be cut in on the three-way deal in the management of Ray. But the deal mysteriously evaporated, and so did Seymour's friendship with Kessler.
  Ray's 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 hit single of "Cry" and "The Little White Cloud That Cried." Selling over two million copies of the 78rpm single, Ray's delivery struck a chord with teenagers and he quickly became a teen idol. When executives at Okeh's parent Columbia Records realized that the Caucasian Ray had developed a fan base of white listeners, he was moved over to the Columbia label.
  The live television broadcast of Toast of the Town on January 6, 1952 included the first of his several appearances on the widely seen American program that officially changed its title in 1955 to The Ed Sullivan Show.
  Ray's performing style included theatrics later associated with rock and roll, including tearing at his hair, falling to the floor, and crying onstage. Ray quickly earned the nicknames "Mr. Emotion," "The Nabob of Sob," "The Prince of Wails," and several others.
  20th Century Fox capitalized on his stardom by including him in the ensemble cast of the film There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) alongside Ethel Merman as his mother, Dan Dailey as his father, Donald O'Connor as his brother, Mitzi Gaynor as his sister, and Marilyn Monroe as his sister-in-law. This was his only film other than a cameo as a police officer in Rogue's Gallery. The latter was intended for release to cinemas in 1968 but was withdrawn and was not seen publicly until NBC telecast it in 1972, and it never was distributed to theaters. In the 1980s when Ray was asked why he never had made another widely seen film after There's No Business Like Show Business, he replied, "I was never asked."
  In the 1950s, after both sides of the single "Cry"/"The Little White Cloud That Cried" ran their course, more hit songs followed. They included "Please, Mr. Sun," "Such a Night," "Walkin' My Baby Back Home," "A Sinner Am I," and "Yes Tonight Josephine." He scored a UK number-one hit with "Just Walkin' in the Rain" (which Ray initially disliked) during the Christmas season in 1956. He hit again in 1957 with "You Don't Owe Me a Thing," which reached number 10 on the Billboard charts in the United States. Though his American popularity was declining in 1957, he remained popular in the United Kingdom, breaking the attendance record at the London Palladium formerly set by fellow Columbia Records artist Frankie Laine. In later years, he retained a loyal fan base overseas, particularly in Australia.
caption: Ray in There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
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