Eric Hilliard Nelson was an American musician and actor.
55 Facts About Ricky Nelson
2.
Ricky Nelson placed 54 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and its predecessors between 1957 and 1973, including "Poor Little Fool" in 1958, which was the first number one song on Billboard magazine's then-newly created Hot 100 chart.
3.
Ricky Nelson recorded 19 additional top ten hits and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 21,1987.
4.
In 1996 Ricky Nelson was ranked No 49 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
5.
Ricky Nelson began his entertainment career in 1949, playing himself in the radio sitcom series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
6.
Ricky Nelson's comeback was short-lived as his record label was bought out and folded, and his followup albums were not well promoted by his new label.
7.
Ricky Nelson continued to perform live and take small television roles through the 1970s, though his label dropped him by the end of the decade.
8.
Ricky Nelson released two more albums, with unimpressive results, before his death in a plane crash on New Year's Eve, 1985.
9.
Ricky Nelson was married once, to Sharon Kristin Harmon, from 1963 until their divorce in 1982.
10.
Ricky Nelson was born on May 8,1940, in Teaneck, New Jersey.
11.
Ricky Nelson joined his parents and brother in Los Angeles in 1942.
12.
Ricky Nelson was a small and insecure child who suffered from severe asthma.
13.
Ricky Nelson was described by Red Skelton's producer John Guedel as "an odd little kid", likable, shy, introspective, mysterious, and inscrutable.
14.
The Nelson boys were first played in the radio series by professional child actors until twelve-year-old Dave and eight-year-old Ricky joined the show on February 20,1949, in the episode "Invitation to Dinner".
15.
Ricky Nelson attended Gardner Street Public School, Bancroft Junior High, and, between 1954 and 1958, Hollywood High School, from which he graduated with a B average.
16.
Ricky Nelson played football at Hollywood High and represented the school in interscholastic tennis matches.
17.
Twenty-five years later, Ricky Nelson told the Los Angeles Weekly he hated school because it "smelled of pencils" and he was forced to rise early in the morning to attend.
18.
At age thirteen, Ricky Nelson was making over $100,000 per annum, and at sixteen he had a personal fortune of $500,000.
19.
Ricky Nelson's wealth was astutely managed by his parents, who channeled his earnings into trust funds.
20.
Ricky Nelson played clarinet and drums in his tweens and early teens, learned the rudimentary guitar chords, and vocally imitated his favorite Sun Records rockabilly artists in the bathroom at home or in the showers at the Los Angeles Tennis Club.
21.
Ricky Nelson was strongly influenced by the music of Carl Perkins and once said he tried to emulate the sound and the tone of the guitar break in Perkins's March 1956 Top Ten hit "Blue Suede Shoes".
22.
In early summer 1957, Ozzie Ricky Nelson pulled his son from Verve after disputes about royalties and signed him to a lucrative five-year deal with Imperial Records that gave him approval over song selection, sleeve artwork, and other production details.
23.
Ricky Nelson grew increasingly dissatisfied performing with older jazz and country session musicians, who were openly contemptuous of rock and roll.
24.
In 1958, Nelson recorded 17-year-old Sharon Sheeley's "Poor Little Fool" for his second album, Ricky Nelson, released in June 1958.
25.
Radio airplay brought the tune notice, and Imperial suggested releasing a single, but Ricky Nelson opposed the idea, believing a single would diminish EP sales.
26.
Ricky Nelson was the first teen idol to use television to promote hit records.
27.
Ozzie Ricky Nelson even had the idea to edit footage together to create some of the first music videos.
28.
Ricky Nelson appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967, but his career by that time was in limbo.
29.
Ricky Nelson starred in the episode "A Hand For Sonny Blue" from the 1977 series Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected.
30.
Ricky Nelson knew and loved music and was a skilled performer even before he became a teen idol, largely because of his parents' musical background.
31.
Ricky Nelson worked with many musicians of repute, including James Burton, Joe Osborn, and Allen "Puddler" Harris, all natives of Louisiana, and Joe Maphis, The Jordanaires, Scotty Moore, and Johnny and Dorsey Burnette.
32.
From 1957 to 1962, Ricky Nelson had 30 Top-40 hits, more than any other artist except Presley and Pat Boone.
33.
Ricky Nelson made his film debut in Here Come the Nelsons and had a small role in The Story of Three Loves at MGM directed by Vincente Minnelli playing Farley Granger as a boy.
34.
Ricky Nelson co-starred with Jack Lemmon in The Wackiest Ship in the Army, which was popular enough to give rise to a TV series.
35.
Ricky Nelson guest starred on General Electric Theatre and starred in a romantic comedy feature written and directed by his father, Love and Kisses with Jack Kelly.
36.
Ricky Nelson guest starred on Hondo, and had a support role in The Over-the-Hill Gang with Walter Brennan and Pat O'Brien.
37.
Ricky Nelson had support roles in the TV films Three on a Date and High School USA.
38.
In 1963, Ricky Nelson signed a 20-year contract with Decca Records.
39.
Ricky Nelson was one of the early influences of the so-called "California Sound".
40.
Yet Ricky Nelson himself did not reach the Top 40 again until 1970, when he recorded Bob Dylan's "She Belongs to Me" with the Stone Canyon Band, featuring Randy Meisner, who in 1971 became a founding member of the Eagles, and former Buckaroo steel guitarist Tom Brumley.
41.
In 1972, Ricky Nelson reached the Top 40 one last time with "Garden Party," a song he wrote in disgust after a Richard Nader Oldies Concert at Madison Square Garden where the audience booed, perhaps against some unrelated police action.
42.
Ricky Nelson wanted to record an album featuring original material, but the single was released before the album because Nelson had not completed the entire Garden Party album yet.
43.
Ricky Nelson's comeback was short-lived, and Nelson's band soon resigned.
44.
MCA wanted Ricky Nelson to have a producer on his next album.
45.
Ricky Nelson still played nightclubs and bars, but he soon advanced to higher-paying venues because of the success of Garden Party.
46.
Ricky Nelson became an attraction at theme parks like Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland.
47.
Ricky Nelson started appearing in minor roles on television shows.
48.
In 1957, when Nelson was 17, he met and fell in love with Marianne Gaba, who played the role of Ricky's girlfriend in three episodes of Ozzie and Harriet.
49.
The next year, Ricky Nelson fell in love with 15-year-old Lorrie Collins, a country singer appearing on a weekly telecast called Town Hall Party.
50.
At Christmas 1961, Ricky Nelson began dating Kristin Harmon, a daughter of football player Tom Harmon and actress Elyse Knox and the older sister of Kelly and Mark Harmon.
51.
Kris Ricky Nelson joined the television show as a regular cast member in 1963.
52.
In 1980, Ricky Nelson met Helen Blair, a part-time model and exotic-animal trainer, in Las Vegas.
53.
Ricky Nelson was the only woman he dated after his divorce.
54.
Blair acted as personal assistant to Ricky Nelson, organizing his day and acting as a liaison for his fan club, but Ricky Nelson's mother, brother, business manager, and manager disapproved of her presence in his life.
55.
On December 31,1985, Ricky Nelson died when the Douglas DC-3 on which he was a passenger crashed into trees, poles, and electrical wires, when it attempted to make an emergency landing while in flight between Guntersville, Alabama and Dallas, where he was to perform a New Year's Eve concert.