Thursday, January 27, 2005

Johnnie Ray & The Four Lads, "Cry"
(December 29, 1951)

Compared to Tony Alamo's tropical murmurs or Eileen Barton's boop, Johnnie Ray's voice is all distortion, a tape snarled in the deck and unreeling. He is so, so wrong. He lisps some of his consonants while sending out others with a seemingly involuntary jerk of the vocal cord, like an "emotionZUH" nearly worthy of Mark E. Smith a minute in. He emphasizes weird syllables and draws others out awkwardly, and remains flat all over the place while the rhythm section slowly marches on, oblivious to his offenses to propriety. And, yes, in the "use other facts please" department, he was practically deaf. In both ears. And wore a hearing aid. And cried, for real. A lot in fact. Onstage. While singing songs about crying. Has there been any other popular performer who so nakedly offered himself to ridicule? Oh, PLENTY. Rock gave us "yeah yeah yeah" and "mulatto/albino/mosquito/libido" and Dylan's thick, billygoat sound. So, in this one sense, Ray is a signpost for the...no, A future. In Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn says Ray played John the Baptist to Elvis' Messiah. Basing his impressions on the electrifying stage performances Ray gave, he gives respect to the man as a pre-cursor to rock & roll overstatement, all that overdetermined overwroughtness, Dionysiac self-immolation, gumchewing bobbysoxers wetting themselves.

Yet Cohn says nothing about Ray's blackness, which you'd think might be even more revelatory. Use Other facts #2: he sang with LaVerne Baker, loved Billie Holliday, was originally signed to Okeh, and even "Cry" went #1 on the R&B chart before B.B. King knocked him off. Play this in conjunction to what, say, Clyde McPhatter was doing at the time, singing in the Dominoes, and...well, OK, it still sounds fucking odd. But its oddness is locatable in rock-ish forms: his cries and rasp can be seen as a warp of bluesy, even gospely declamations. And his chutzpah, which is all his own, is quite winning. 7

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