Eric Hilliard Nelson would have been 68 today. (He died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985.)
Ricky Nelson was a teen idol who had something more than good looks going for him – namely, talent. On television, he acted out his real-life role as the son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in the Fifties. As a rock-and-rolling teenager on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, he practically grew up in the nation’s living rooms. In the recording studio, having landed a contract based on his TV stardom, he more than made the grade. No mere rock and roll pretender, Nelson was the real thing: a gentle-voiced singer/guitarist with an instinctive feel for the country-rooted side of rockabilly. And he had exquisite taste in musicians, utilizing guitarist James Burton (formerly a Dale Hawkins sideman, later an Elvis Presley accompanist) as his secret weapon in the studio.
Nelson’s first single – “A Teenager’s Romance” b/w “I’m Walkin’,” the latter a Fats Domino song – made the Top Ten shortly after its release in April 1957. He was sixteen years old at the time. The next year, he reached #1 with “Poor Little Fool” (which was written by Sharon Sheeley, who was Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend). His discerning taste in material – a rare talent in one so young – also led him to “Hello Mary Lou” (his signature song) and “Travelin’ Man,” both of which topped the charts. All totaled, Nelson scored an incredible 33 Top Forty hits in a seven-year period.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Robert Johnson was born on May 8th in 1911.
Though he recorded only 29 songs in his brief career – 22 of which appeared on 78 rpm singles released on the Vocalion label, including his first and most popular, “Terraplane Blues” – Johnson nonetheless altered the course of American music. In the words of biographer Stephen C. LaVere, “Robert Johnson is the most influential bluesman of all time and the person most responsible for the shape popular music has taken in the last five decades.” Such classics as “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Home Chicago” are the bedrock upon which modern blues and rock and roll were built.
Or, as Eric Clapton put it in the liner notes to the Johnson boxed-set, “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived….I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really.”
Don Rickles is 82 today.
Thomas Pynchon is 71.
He is well known for his reclusiveness and elusiveness. After his first novel, V., was published in 1963 and Time magazine sent a photographer to his home in Mexico City, Pynchon reportedly evaded the reporter by jumping out his window, riding a bus to the mountains, and staying there while he grew a beard — and when he returned natives called him Pancho Villa. In 1997, a CNN crew stalked Pynchon in his Manhattan neighborhood and was able to capture him on film. He became upset, called the station, and asked that he not be pointed out to viewers in any of the footage. He said, “Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.” When they asked him about his reclusiveness, he said, “My belief is that ‘recluse’ is a code word generated by journalists … meaning, ‘doesn’t like to talk to reporters.'”
When he received the National Book Award in 1974 for Gravity’s Rainbow, he sent comedian Irwin Corey to the ceremony to accept the prize.
He has, however, made two cameo appearances on the animated television series The Simpsons. In one of them, Marge has become an author and Pynchon provides a blurb for her book. Pynchon appears on the show and says, “Here’s your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!” Then he yells at cars passing by, “Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we’ll throw in a free autograph!”
Toni Tennille is 68. (The Captain, Daryl Dragon, was 65 last August.)
Bill Cowher, the former Steelers coach, is 51, and Ronnie Lott, the football hall of famer, is 49.
Melissa Gilbert is 44. Yup, “Half Pint” from The Little House on the Prairie. She was 10 when the show began. Ms. Gilbert was President of the Screen Actors Guild 2001-2005. (Past presidents include Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Ed Asner and Patty Duke). Ms. Gilbert was the youngest person ever to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Happy Birthday Jill. Sweet story.
And thanks for posting the Rick Nelson video.