Collectables Classics [Box Set] [Box]

Performer: Johnnie Ray (Vocal)
Distributor: Select-O-Hits

Notes: Recording information: 10/15/1951-05/10/1959. Arranger: Johnnie Ray . Even though this four-disc set (it comes in an attractive black box with a hinged top) includes seven different albums and a total of 72 tracks from Johnnie Ray's '50s stay with Columbia Records, it still manages to feel somehow incomplete. Gathering the LPs Johnnie Ray (1952), I Cry for You (1955), The Big Beat (1957), In Las Vegas (1958), On the Trail (1959), 'Til Morning (1959), and a brief best of, Here & Now, that was released on CD in 1995, this lengthy collection still lacks the original versions of what are arguably Ray's two best performances, "Cry" from 1951 (it was first released on OKeh Records, a Columbia subsidiary) and his solid cover of the Prisonaires' "Just Walkin' in the Rain" from 1956. Versions of both of these songs are featured here as part of Ray's live Vegas set, with "Cry" embedded in a medley with "The Little White Cloud That Cried," but they certainly don't equal his official single releases of these two key songs. That said, there is plenty of Ray here, maybe almost too much, making this a nice buy for ardent fans, but casual fans would no doubt be better served by a single-disc, career-spanning best-of collection. Nice sturdy box, though. ~ Steve Leggett

Though Johnnie Ray had a number of hits in the first half of the 1950s, it's his 1952 smash "Cry" for which he's best remembered. Partially deaf and secretly gay, Ray cut an unconventional figure onstage, with a theatrical, emotionally wounded persona that split the difference between R&B and more conventional white male pop idols. Ray favored a melodramatic vocal style on hits such as "The Little White Cloud That Cried" that earned him the nickname "The Prince of Wails," and helped establish his reputation as the first white pop star to sing in an authentically black ghetto style.

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