[78-L] Johnnie Ray

[rjh334578gmail]

He was the subject of the cover story in Record Research - the first  
issue of my new subscription.  Remember who the editors were and their  
favorite music - jazz of the 1920s, so far as I could ever tell.  I  
learned a lot from that issue, some even about Johnny's hearing loss.   
He was only 20 years off the charts when that issue came out. That was  
pretty recent stuff compared to the bulk of the stuff they championed  
in RR.

    The point here being, like him and his stuff or not, his work is  
still worthy of study and research by somebody, if not me.

That holds true for every name we've bashed here lately.   Some we  
just love to hate, Jolson, Ray, Tatum or Moten, we all have our  
favorites - and our favorite targets.

"I wonder what Dick Todd is doing tonight."

Sent from my iPod - which explainz any bad typjng


On Apr 28, 2014, at 9:18 PM, Malcolm Rockwell <malcolm at 78data.com>  
wrote:

> Yeah, Johnnie was deaf as a post, but only in his left ear. My father
> booked him and I met him a few times at the house in NYC. He  
> eventually
> had hearing aids in both ears (botched surgery). Hearing aids were  
> kinda
> bulky in those days (mid 1950s). I remember him as being kind of a
> soft-spoken guy personally (as opposed to his act).
> Malcolm
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