Tracks: 1) Honeycomb; 2) Boppin’ The Blues; 3) Be-Bop Baby; 4) Have I Told You Lately That I Love You; 5) Teenage Doll; 6) If You Can’t Rock Me; 7) Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Goin’ On; 8) Baby I’m Sorry; 9) Am I Blue; 10) I’m Confessin’; 11) Your True Love; 12) True Love.
REVIEW
Apparently, during his early years on the Verve and Imperial record labels Ricky actively disliked being put in the hands of older session musicians, and kept dreaming about getting his own backing band which would match his age and style until he was finally able to get one. The irony of this is that the self-titled Ricky, released at the end of 1957, still ended up being his only #1 album on the US charts — and, in a rare case of unity between public and personal opinion, arguably his best album ever. And why? Precisely because of the presence of those older session musicians, if you ask me.
Admittedly, the choice of material is strong on the whole — solid rock’n’roll numbers, memorable country tunes, and meaningful ballads. But let us face it, would there really be a reason to waste one’s positive emotions on covers of Carl Perkins and Cole Porter by a 16-year old boy with a sweet, but unremarkable vocal tone, if nothing about the record suggested the presence of a special type of sound? Hundreds of sweet boys were playing watered-down versions of rock’n’roll all over the States by 1957, and at least dozens of them probably got recording contracts; what was it that made Ricky Nelson at the time more than just another pretty face in the crowd?
The answer is that the main heroes of Ricky, rather than Ricky himself (though his presence is certainly important), are producer Jimmie Haskell and sound engineer Bunny Robin. Between themselves, Ricky, and the backing musicians, they manage here to generate a clean, clear, unaggressive, yet fairly punchy sound which somehow manages to thrill and energize you without even trying to emulate the rockabilly wildness of Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, or Jerry Lee Lewis. It certainly precludes the artist from the status of a «rock’n’roll god», yet it just as certainly EXcludes him from the cohort of laughable young imitators churning out bland surrogate for wholesome family entertainment.
Just take a quick look at ‘Boppin’ The Blues’, the first true rock’n’roll number on the album. Carl Perkins wrote the song and originally recorded it in his own giddily sloppy style — and the original recording is quite exciting, but you can’t even hear the bass all too well, and isn’t a deep, bulky bass sound the perfect ingredient for rockabilly fever? Here, though, veteran bass player Judd Denaut (who had first made his name playing with Artie Shaw) lays it down fast and thick, while the sound engineer ensures proper separation from both rhythm and lead guitar. Said guitars, played by Howard Roberts and Joe Maphis (also veterans of the jazz and country scenes), ooze professionalism without completely forgetting the idea of going it rough-and-tough: rhythm guitar lays down a rock-steady boogie line, lead guitar plays choppy, twangy, audacious strings of broken licks to upgrade the «punchiness» level of the sound.
On top of all that, Ricky delivers an unnerving, almost expressionless vocal — «wooden», one might call it, but the total and utter lack of agitation, over-emoting, aggression, passion, etc., is oddly charming on its own; there is a special sort of quasi-mystical coolness to his stable, quiet, and self-confident tone, enhanced by just a tiny bit of echo / reverb which gives the voice an «aura» without making the lyrics incomprehensible à la Gene Vincent. It all combines to regale the young Mr. Nelson with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi; perhaps authority could be a good word. Your average teen idol would woo you over with sweetness and tenderness, but Ricky’s voice is not particularly «sweet» even on the ballads — and, by the way, there are only very few ballads on the record as such: ‘Have I Told You Lately’, ‘I’m Confessin’, ‘True Love’, and that’s about it. All three are sung tenderly, but without a shred of cheap sentimentality, and, once again, with Ricky’s voice perfectly gelling with the thick, deep bass patterns, producing almost the same effect as a good Elvis ballad, but with the bass guitar taking on the precious functions of the bass voice.
If there is a real problem, it is that the album totally lacks highlights. It has a style, deeply ingrained in all of its tracks, but since all the tracks are covers and the style is applied to all of them in equal doses, nothing really sticks out. The highest charting single off the album was ‘Be-Bop Baby’, one of two songs written specially for Ricky by Pearl Lendhurst, but in terms of composition and atmosphere it is no more and no less of a generic, lightweight country tune than any other similar number on the album — I actually prefer the cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Honeycomb’ by a hair, maybe because it has sharper bass clicks and funny stop-and-start moments, whatever. I prefer the fast and rocking numbers even more, but I could not really say which one is my favorite, or if anything even simply catches the eye in particular.
Okay, one song catches the eye in particular, largely due to an accident: ‘If You Can’t Rock Me’, amusingly, shares its title with a much later Rolling Stones song of the same name — but this one is credited to Willie Jacobs, an old Texan schoolmate of Roy Orbison who had a few recordings with his pals in 1956 credited to «The Strikes». The original recording was fast and energetic, but under the command of Haskell and Robin, it becomes an unstoppable bass train with even more tough bass «zoops» added by the lead guitarist during the solo — a fun, crunchy sound. Not fun and crunchy enough, though, to tower and hover over any other fast number on the record.
Some CD editions of Ricky extend the album’s duration from 12 to 14 tracks, throwing on the classic single ‘Stood Up’ / ‘Waiting In School’ (the latter song probably being mostly familiar to post-boomer generations from Pulp Fiction): this is where you first get to hear Nelson’s soon-to-be regular guitar player James Burton, though here he is still playing rhythm guitar while Joe Maphis delivers the same «zoops» as on ‘If You Can’t Rock Me’. Written by the Burnette Brothers (but, strange enough, not recorded by them), ‘Waiting In School’ is like the white schoolkid’s anthemic answer to the black schoolkid’s ‘Ring Ring Goes The Bell’ — a little easier on the dissatisfaction angle, a little heavier on the having pure, innocent fun angle — but who’s to say it isn’t pure, innocent fun? "Five, six, come get your kicks / Down on the corner of Lincoln and Fourty-six" clearly owes its punch to "get your kicks on Route 66", but Route 66 is, after all, a faraway and obscure reality, whereas every big city probably has its own Lincoln and 46th intersection (people are still debating this one: they probably meant L.A., where Ricky and the Burnettes were living at the time).
And this, too, may have been a big part of Nelson’s success: there is a whiff of urbanization of the country sound in his recordings which is not often found among his contemporaries — most of which swing either too far to one side, retaining that sweet country-bumpkin taint (Perkins), or to the other, completely wiping it out (Vincent). Ricky, on the other side, has this «country boy done gone naturalized in the city» feeling to him — a fake one, perhaps, since the boy had always been a big city dweller, but reeking of authenticity all the same if you refrain from identity-checking. But even if this opinion sounds like total bullshit to you, there is no denying that there is a bit of mystique to the classic Ricky Nelson sound, and that behind all those pretty looks hides a very serious attitude to music making, certainly uniquely serious for a 16-year old, and certainly sufficient to dispel any possible suspicions that Nelson’s early successes were only due to the influence of his father — unquestionably, that influence helped his career a lot, but no, it wasn’t merely out of old loyal love for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet that listeners were enthralled by ‘Be-Bop Baby’ and ‘Waiting In School’ back in 1957.
Only Solitaire: Ricky Nelson review page
Gotta agree with you George about Ricky. Surely not among the topmost names of the time, but there is something quite strange, eerie, and even gripping about how Ricky sings. I mean for fuck’s sake, he sings even such upbeat songs as Boppin’ The Blues and Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On with that stern, cold, solemn mood, and even if formally they sound like a total mismatch, that intrigue of how he managed to entirely strip them down in his “wooden” way makes them pretty cool (but weird) oddities.
In fact, that’s the real tragedy of his career for me: I honestly feel had people recognized this unique strange phrasings of his and given him the right material, I think he might have even had a shot at greatness because I feel he could have produced at least a couple more tunes as awesome as “Lonesome Town” and “Gloomy Sunday” if given appropriate material and pressed towards. Maybe that could have happened, maybe it couldn’t, but I still quite like “Honeycomb” and “Be Bop Baby”, and the whole album, even if formally pretty ordinary, is so bizarre to me in spirit that it was quite an interesting listen. Good review George anyways!