Remembering Ricky

From Tim Bazzett of Rathole Books:

The realization of encroaching old age sometimes sneaks up on you in strange ways. Yesterday I got out my Rick Nelson boxed set and put on disc one and sat in my rocker listening once again to the insipid but to me still poignant sounds of "A Teenager's Romance," and I thought about that first Ricky record, a 45 rpm on the Verve label. Almost four years older than me, Rick was just sixteen when he cut the tune, but he was already a nationally famous TV star, thanks to his dad's brainchild, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. So he had a built-in audience for his music. I first heard the song on the radio. The WLS deejays out of Chicago were playing both sides of the record in heavy rotation. The A-side was "I'm Walkin'," a cover of Fats Domino's already-popular tune. But if you were just thirteen and feeling the first pangs of puppy love, there was no way you could ignore the plaintive B-side lyrics --
"A teenager's romance is fickle or true.
A teenager's romance is red-hot or blue.
You're either in misery or high on a crest.
A teenager's romance is like all the rest..."
Like a few million other teens across America, I could relate, so it was small wonder that the B-side ultimately charted higher than the A-side.
I wasn't one of those ready-made TV fans. In Reed City in 1957 we could only pull in two and a half TV stations with our much-tortured and twisted rabbit ears. There was the Cadillac station, which boasted such kid favorites as Uncle Glen or Kenny Roberts (the "jumpin' cowboy"). WOOD TV out of Grand Rapids also had a cowboy kid show in Buck Barry's Buckaroo Rodeo, and the older kids could watch Bop Hop, a regional rip-off of American Bandstand (which we didn't get either). Ozzie and Harriet wasn't on the schedule of either station. And that other always-snowy "half station" out of Lansing or Bay City didn't really count. So as a teenager I never saw Rick on his family TV show. I became a Ricky Nelson fan solely because of his records. Of course his face was plastered all over every teen magazine imaginable in the late fifties. And in December of 1958, the year he was the unrivaled top-selling rock and roller in the country (Elvis was in the army), Rick even made the cover of LIFE magazine.
The hits came fast and furious for Rick those first few years -- "BeBop Baby", "Stood Up", "Poor Little Fool", "Travelin' Man/Hello Mary Lou", "Teenage Idol", "Young Emotions", and others. I had them all on 45's and could sing along with both sides of every one. In 1959 I bought my first Nelson album (his third). It was titled, simply, Ricky Sings Again, and was, arguably, one of the best rock and roll albums of the era, and probably the finest LP Rick ever made. He was just eighteen when he cut those twelve tracks, but the Rick Nelson sound, characterized by the classic guitar licks of James Burton and the buttery-smooth backing vocals of the Jordanaires was dead on letter perfect. Rick's voice had deepened and matured and the tight Jimmie Haskell arrangements blended all the elements to perfection. In addition to the hits ("Lonesome Town" and "Believe What You Say"), the album featured "It's All in the Game", "I Can't Help It (if I'm Still in Love with You)" and an infectious western-flavored rocker, "Restless Kid", penned by Johnny Cash. Rick had hoped to get this song into Rio Bravo, the film he was making with John Wayne and Dean Martin, but it didn't make the soundtrack, which was strictly controlled by Dimitri Tiomkin, the top film score composer of the time.
Yes, Rick made a few movies too, but the truth is he was a crappy, wooden actor. Just watch an episode or two of Ozzie and Harriet with its cast of non-actors and you'll see what I mean. And Ozzie liked it that way. It was easier for him to control things. Because Rick's dad, "easy-going" Ozzie, was a control freak, and he poked his fingers into every aspect of Rick's musical career from the very beginning, so their adult relationship was always a rather tenuous and tortured one.
By the early sixties Rick's musical star had probably already peaked, but his Billboard track record was so impressive that Decca signed him to an unprecedented twenty-year million-dollar contract. Then the Beatles and the subsequent "British invasion" struck America, and Rick's career never really recovered, although he did score one final top ten hit in 1972 with the self-penned autobiographical "Garden Party."
I met Rick Nelson in the spring of 1977after a sold-out concert at a club in downtown Santa Cruz. He very graciously signed about a dozen albums I'd brought along and took time to chat with me, expressing a genuine interest in three of his records on the Brunswick label that I'd bought in Germany. He said he'd never seen those covers before. At 37 years old, Rick still seemed very much the same shy, polite kid he'd been at the start of his recording career. Twenty years of fame had not visibly changed him. And perhaps that was at least part of his charm. He had always seemed a lot like, well, like me -- and like millions of other good-son white-bread kids across America and around the globe.
For the remainder of his life, Rick kept making music, some good, some not very good at all. He kept searching for his true voice and seemed poised on the verge of re-discovering his pure California rockabilly sound the last years of his life. Then, on New Year's Eve, 1985, Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash on his way to do a concert in Texas. He was 45 years old. I was crushed when I heard the news. The next day I pulled out all of his albums that I owned. I had over twenty of them. I had kept buying Rick's albums even when no one else was, always hoping for just one more "perfect" album. I studied the covers and re-read the liner notes, perhaps looking for clues as to why I had remained such a faithful fan for nearly thirty years when so many others seemed to have forgotten Rick Nelson, and why I felt such a personal sense of loss at his death.
It's 2006 now and Rick has been gone for over twenty years. I think I've finally figured out why I followed his career with such interest and why I still listen to his songs. I should probably be at least a little bit embarrassed to still be a Rick Nelson fan. I'm old. My hair has thinned and turned grey, my muscles have gone slack and my face is filled with lines. But I'll tell you a secret. Whenever I pull out that one perfect album from 1959 -- its worn cover smudged with the handwritten inscription: "To Tim, Hi! - Rick Nelson -- and cue up the needle in that first track, "Old Enough to Love", and hear the Jordanaires mellow introduction and then Rick's newly-found eighteen year-old baritone, if I close my eyes and listen closely as I rock gently in my chair, for just a little while I am suddenly fifteen again, as "Ricky Sings Again".