Talk:Johnnie Ray

Article changes

I added several footnotes. I put back in the detail about Johnnie Ray never appearing on "The Love Boat." Europeans might not know this, but if you were an aging cocktail singer in the late 1970s, you had to appear on "The Love Boat" or else your career tanked. Johnnie Ray did not go on the show, and his career tanked. His career had been almost non - existent in his native United States since the early 1960s. A Love Boat episode could have helped revive it. But that was not to be.

The facts about the 1957 criminal libel trial that ruined "Confidential" magazine come from the 1996 memoir of Ms. Theo Wilson, who was one of the most respected trial reporters of the 1950s. When the judge ordered the editors and publishers of all the scandal magazines (including Hush-Hush and Whisper) to put an end to the smut, they did. Millions of people had been reading the magazines for less than five years, which means the smut, including the dirt on Johnnie Ray, was fresh enough in their minds for them to doubt what they had read. This is relevant to Johnnie Ray's changing relationship with the American media. The point is not what he did in the bedroom, but rather who paid attention to that and whether it mattered very much. We don't know that it did. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dooyar (talk • contribs) 04:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Article quality

I have recently added the {{Wiki}} and {{POV}} tags to this article. The unresourced fancruft currently within is best exemplified by the following paragraph.

"After the loquacious Rushmore shot his wife and then himself to death in early 1958, more open-minded Americans of the time realized that Ray had been smeared deliberately. By that time, however, the rapid rise of rock 'n' roll and his failed 1958 ear surgery had cut him off from the songwriters who were so vital to less rhythmic singers like himself, Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis, who penned little of their own material. When rock 'n' roll proved in the 1960s that it was here to stay, and not a fad for screaming adolescents, Bennett and Mathis continued to score hits penned by songwriters, but Ray recorded rock-oriented material that often seemed wrong for him. His relationship with his last American record label ended in 1961. Ray disappeared from the American television networks until a Hollywood Palace appearance in 1968, by which time serious music fans liked the fact that rock 'n' roll bands wrote nearly all of their own material with the members collaborating."

To be fair, parts of the present article are good (and resourced) - but some are extremely non-encyclopedic. Can someone improve the situation ? "Dear old Johnnie Ray", indeed.

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 22:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with you about the above paragraph being "fancruft." I say there is nothing wrong with it. It places Johnnie Ray's downfall in the context of its time. Nyannrunning (talk) 00:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Editwarring over Love Boat

I'd suggest you start discussing whether the Love Boat thing is notable here on the talk page rather than reverting each other. If the edit war keeps up, I'll put a notice on the page protection request board and have an admin take a look. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 00:03, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

People in Australia claim to keep the flame of Johnnie Ray. They did in the 1980s when he was alive. That's fine. They may have seen The Love Boat, but they don't know how vital it was for an easy - listening singer of the late 1970s and early 1980s to appear on the show. If you weren't rock 'n' roll and you didn't do "Love Boat," then your career was low - profile in the United States of that era. Australians didn't care if you were on "Love Boat" when they remained loyal to an aging performer. But the article needs to focus on Johnnie Ray in the United States. He was American.

It is relevant that at least three musical - comedy performers with whom Johnnie Ray had worked in the 1950s did go on "Love Boat": Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor and Janis Paige. The article should contain just two sentences about this crucial American TV program and those three performers. Is it too much to ask for the two sentences to stay in the article ? It's not a very long article. They are just as relevant as Ray's sex life. The reason Americans didn't know him during the disco / heavy metal era had nothing to do with homophobia. The reason is he never appeared on American network TV. It's that simple. Johnnie himself said for publication in the 1980s, "If you don't appear on a cable TV channel every twenty minutes, then people in Los Angeles think you're retired or dead."

As for sources, the article has plenty of them. Nothing is fancruft. The fact that Johnnie's 1960s downfall had to do with American songwriters is sourced. Nyannrunning (talk) 00:25, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, this is the section being discussed:

Several musical-comedy performers with whom Ray had worked in film and in the legitimate theater in the 1950s found work on The Love Boat starting in the late 1970s. They included Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor and Janis Paige. Johnnie Ray never appeared on this long-running American television show, although Australian promoters flew him to their country to perform every year until 1989.

Reading just the article, the importance of Love Boat is not explained. The explanation is all off the article page. In edit summaries and on talk pages, you mention that any performer of Ray's era, who didn't appear on the show, was lowkey. That may be true, (and it may also be untrue), but it also sounds like a personal opinion and it could even be original research. If it could be put into some kind of context in the article so that the significance is immediately clear, it would be different. It would need to have a source provided so that it reads as more than personal opinion, but if a rock/music/entertainment historian for example, could be quoted, that would be one way of clarifying the point. "If you don't appear on a cable TV channel every twenty minutes, then people in Los Angeles think you're retired or dead." - is a great quote. If you can source it, it would be a really good addition to the article. Regardless of your comments regarding grammar, linking the Love Boat comments to "although Australian promoters....." suggests there is a link between the two. Let's not be too pedantic over the finer rules of grammar. The article should be easy and clear to read. The point is that when people read a sentence they form a particular impression as to what message is intended. If the link is "tenuous" as you say on your talk page, it actually reads as more than tenuous, the way it's written. It could reworded to make it clear that the two issues are not linked. eg "Although Ray's career opportunities in the US were limited during the 1970s and 1980s, he remained a popular performer in Australia, where he performed every year until 1989." I disagree that Ray should be written about mainly from an American perspective. Your comments suggest a kind of American "ownership" of Johnnie Ray and some kind of indignation that "ownership" is being claimed by other countries. Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but that's the impression I get. I believe that because he achieved different levels of success thoughout the world at different times, he should be written about from a world perspective, and certainly in this venue, which is an English language article that can be read by anyone in the world, it's important that a reader in the United Kingdom or Australia also gets information relevant to them. But you are right - the article should address the disparities and make it clear in things like discographies which songs were successful in which market. I completely agree with you on that point. Although I'm not a fan of tables, perhaps a table format would more clearly indicate where the song was and was not a hit. Rossrs (talk) 02:04, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Original research

While doing a reference check, I removed the following lines:

Hospitalized at [[Cedars-Sinai Medical Center]] for three weeks until he died there, his failing health was ignored by all media outlets, American and overseas, until he entered an irreversible coma two days before the end. At that point, CNN [[Headline News]] announced his condition hourly.<ref>I watched CNN Headline News that weekend. The network has transcripts.</ref> Newspaper editors prominently displayed his obituary.

Most of that information isn't needed. There is absolutely no way to determine that every media outlet ignored the condition of his health. Saying that major media outlets ignored it would be fine if it was sourced. Also, stating that a channel has the transcripts of the show and a person remembered watching it is not a reference, that is original research. If the transcripts can be found online, please provide it, otherwise, that reference is not even close to being acceptable. Pinkadelica (talk) 18:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, the media's overlooking Ray's failing health in 1990 is original research. But the insanity of Howard Rushmore isn't. He originated the rumor that Ray was gay. All of this is sourced. Dooyar (talk) 15:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)