Columbia’s ‘Johnnie Ray’ Short but Sweet

At just under 24 minutes, “The Best of Johnnie Ray” must be one of the shortest compact discs in existence.

But the key tunes in the nine-song Columbia Records collection showcase the contributions of a man whose place in rock history has been greatly under-appreciated.

Ray served as a small yet significant bridge between the smooth, generally formal pop style of the ‘40s and the more intense and informal approach that would characterize the late-’50s rock revolution.

Ray, who died Feb. 24 in Los Angeles of liver failure at age 63, worked in a mostly conventional pop framework on record in the early ‘50s, but he applied such strong rhythm & blues instincts on such Columbia Records hits as “Cry” and “The Little White Cloud That Cried” that the singles sounded revolutionary at the time.

Though Ray’s records mostly sound dated now because of the timid, pop-framed musical backings, you can hear in his vocal interpretation the soulful drama and abandon that would become a fixture in modern pop music.

It was ironic then that the arrival of rock in 1956 meant the end of Ray’s reign as a major record seller. Where he had 13 Top 20 hits before 1956, he only had two after that pivotal year.

Even if he had been a rebel in the earlier pop world, Ray was rejected by the new teen rock crowd as someone who belonged to a different era. The emphasis was on the new and the young, and Ray--who was 29 when Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” entered the sales charts--just didn’t fit.