The Music of Johnny Rivers
()
About this ebook
Johnny Rivers is one of the great rock entertainers in the business and throughout his career has readily adapted to a changing music scene, scoring major hits as a rocker, balladeer, folk artist, soul singer/bluesman and even Christian tunesmith. His hits include: Maybelline, Memphis, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Poor Side of Town, Baby I Need Your Lovin', Summer Rain, Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancing), and countless others. During the mid sixties, his records were constants on radio playlists. The Music of Johnny Rivers tells of his rise to fame and includes a discography of his many records.
Robert Reynolds
Based in Calgary, Robert is an emerging author who spends his days working in the oil and gas industry but has been a big fan of the spy thriller genre ever since his childhood when he read one of his grandfather's original James Bond paperbacks from the late 50's. He is married with a young daughter and when he's not day dreaming about dangerous adventures in exotic locales he enjoys running and other outdoor pursuits.
Read more from Robert Reynolds
Three E's of Doo-wop: The Echoes; The Elegants; and The Excellents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of the 4 Seasons Featuring Frankie Valli Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThunder Bay: Mystery and Intrigue In Northern Michigan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVanilla Doo-wop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErnesto Juarez Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of the Tokens: A Lion Sleeps... Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Matter of Finances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of Bobby Goldsboro Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Fine Gray Rain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of Del Shannon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Four Evers: The 4 Seasons' Connection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGay and Lesbian, Then and Now: Australian Stories from a Social Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Perilous Place Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutlast the Rain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rabbit's Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDion and the Belmonts: Early Doo-wop and Rock and Roll Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Christmas Eve--A Christmas Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dark and Curious Place: Vietnam War Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMackinac Drift Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWith The Angels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlong the Quay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDestruction of Earth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNovah Burns Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDragon Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrouble's Garden Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Music of Johnny Rivers
Related ebooks
The Music of Johnny Rivers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Way I Walk: The Music of Jack Scott: Musicians of Note Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of Bobby Vee: Musicians of Note Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of Del Shannon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBonita Springs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHepcats & Rockabilly Boys Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds: Musicians of Note Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music ... From Hank Snow to The Band Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of the 4 Seasons: Musicians of Note Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSurviving the Warzone: Growing up East New York Brooklyn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe History of Canadian Rock 'n' Roll Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Bang, Baby: Rock Trivia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJoey Smallwood: Schemer and Dreamer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNightwatch: An Inquiry Into Solitude: Alone On The Prairie With The Hutterites Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsD'Iberville and St. Martin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Records of Cincinnati Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Some Lonesome Picker: The Music of John Stewart: Musicians of Note Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirst in Line: The Incredible Life of Leonard Stick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSt. Louis Jazz: A History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLouis Jordan: Son of Arkansas, Father of R&B Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Flatlanders: Now It's Now Again Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRock ’N’ Rhymes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Early Cupertino Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Cowboy Song: The Authorized Biography of Thin Lizzy's Philip Lynott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHoughton Lake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChronicles of Old Los Angeles: Exploring the Devilish History of the City of the Angels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Resurrection Of Johnny Cash: Hurt, redemption, and American Recordings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Entertainers and the Rich & Famous For You
I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: An Oprah's Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Counting the Cost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elvis and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Open Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fallen Idols: A Century of Screen Sex Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Around the Way Girl: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Is This Anything? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scrappy Little Nobody Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mommie Dearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Mormon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm Your Huckleberry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Music of Johnny Rivers
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Music of Johnny Rivers - Robert Reynolds
Introduction
Success didn’t come easily or swiftly for southern transplant John Ramistella. Over several years until he hit the big time, he recorded for at least eight different record companies, most of which were small-time players in the music industry. In fact, his fame didn’t begin with his records as much as it did with him thrashing out rousing dance beats in a Los Angeles discotheque called the Whiskey à Go Go —under the name Johnny Rivers.
Celebrities and music lovers flocked to the club in droves.
Signed by Imperial Records, home of early R&R recording giants Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson, Rivers’ new live
dance/rhythm records shot up the charts during the mid-60s.
He’d continue to roll out hit after hit, first with a series of energetic live recordings, then R&B tunes, a folk standard, a self-composed smash #1, some Motown covers and hits from a stable of first-rate songwriters that he’d discovered. One of them would go on to pen countless top hit tunes for a variety of other singers.
A master song interpreter, Johnny Rivers constantly reinvented himself musically.
His career thrived through the sixties and seventies as his records continued to make regular visits to the record charts. He achieved a #1, #2, two #3s and nine more singles at various reaches within the Top 25. Seventeen albums registered on the Top LP charts, one of them topping out at a lofty #5. In the eighties, he released a pair of Christian/gospel albums and the nineties and on saw a return to contemporary albums more in line with his rock and roll roots.
Johnny Rivers was no one-hit wonder, nor was he limited to simply strumming his guitar and belting out rocking tunes from an earlier era. Rivers sang hits, wrote hits, produced hits, started his own hit producing record company, co-founded the Monterey Pop Festival and continues today to perform before large audiences and to support various charitable organizations.
This is how it happened.
Part One
Chapter 1 Ramistella
John Henry Ramistella was born in New York City on a crisp autumn day, November 7, 1942. Thousands of miles east, Allied forces were invading North Africa in opposition to Nazi aggression. Halfway around the world to the west, Australian and Japanese forces clashed fiercely along Papua, New Guinea’s Kokoda Trail. It was an ominous time for someone so innocent to come into this unpredictable world.
WWII would rage for two more years, but the world’s enemies would soon be halted and defeated. By the middle of 1945 Germany and Japan surrendered and those who’d been fighting returned home and melded back into the workforce. There were more workers returning home than there was work.
At the age of five, and with the elder John Ramistella out of work, little Johnny’s Italian/American parents packed up the family and moved 1,300 miles southwest to Baton Rouge—Louisiana’s capitol, itself some 81-miles northwest of New Orleans, the Big Easy. Each mile of tired pavement took them farther from the snow and ice of East Coast winters and carried them further into the Deep South—a land of Cypress knees, Spanish moss and scented magnolia blossoms.
Quaint old plantations from an earlier period sprouted up along slumbering bayous, where gators lounged in the sunlight on the muddy banks. Narrow bridges that seemed to have been spawned in Tennessee Williams plays spanned the Mississippi, as the mother of all American rivers slid slowly through silt-rich delta country. Below the roadways, cargo laden barges labored their way upstream in the greenish-brown waters toward Memphis and St. Louis, Hayti and Cape Girardeau. A forlorn horn echoed along the river and then they were across the bridge and angling southward, mile after humid mile. Then out of the delta mist appeared the outskirts of the river town.
At the time of their arrival roughly 40,000 inhabited Baton Rouge, a far cry from the millions of impatient citizenry crowding the sidewalks of NYC. It was quite a change for the Italian Ramistellas coming from the Northeast seaboard and the hustle and bustle of one of the world’s largest cities to the laidback semi tropical small town Baton Rouge.
The city, they say, was christened as such more than 300-years before by French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, upon spotting a reddish cypress pole adorned with bloody fish and animal remains atop a Mississippi River bluff—bâton meaning stick
, rouge meaning red.
This bloody warning served as the primitive boundary between the hunting grounds of the Bayougoula and Houma Tribes.
The land there is basically flat delta country with the lazy Mississippi curling back upon itself like an old cottonmouth that’s been run over by a Gulf Coast oil truck. Oxbows and mosquitoes are abundant on this flat as a flapjack retched piece of soil. Snake infested swamps and stagnant bayous. Hanging moss and rundown Confederate estates.
Towns like Plaquemine, Atchafalaya, Gross Tete, Ponchatoula and Slaughter were but a short drive away through the swamps and marshes. Depending on which way a person went, you could find Bayou Goula, Maurepas, French Settlement, Dutch Town, Thibodaux, and Shexnayder.
No major metropolitan area other than New Orleans was further south than Baton Rouge until you got to Florida—not even Mobile was farther south. To claim that Baton Rouge resided in the Deep South
was a major understatement.
FIVE-YEAR OLD JOHNNY Ramistella’s uncle headed the Louisiana State University Art Department and his connections led to little Johnny’s father getting work painting houses. There was plenty of hard work to keep an honest man busy, as new paint didn’t have a prolonged life in that damp, humid place along the lazy, muddy Mississippi.
More familiar with the speech of Italianos, Puerto Ricans and Irish, the Ramistella kid would come to find that folks down that way dabbled in a little Cajun, a smattering of French, a dash of Creole, with some Anglish tossed in for good measure. It seemed that southern folks jawed away with lazy drawls like they were about to fall asleep.
Nor was he clear on their culinary choices. These southern folks dined on mudbugs (crawfish, crawdads), chitliins, etoufee, cornbread, jambalaya, hush-puppies, beignets smothered in powdered sugar and washed it down with an ice-cold bottle of Dixie Cola. Times were slow and gentle there.
At the edge of town, smoky locomotives chugged through dense forests as lonesome whistles moaned across watery bayous and boggy marshland. There in the warmth of day, hardworking John Ramistella Sr. made long sweeping strokes with his paintbrush, taking care of the family’s needs.
On those lazy, sweltering Baton Rouge days shirtless, barefoot lads might lay back in the tall grass with a Moonpie and RC Cola, listening to steel wheels rumble along rusty tracks, while dreaming of taking a Sentimental Journey
on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.
The boys sipped their Royal Crowns and dreamed of riding those rails. Clack, clack, clack...
Johnny would later remark about this time of uncertainty in his young life as, we weren’t poor, we were double poor.
[1]
THE 1940S WAS A MAGICAL era with console radios blaring in most every living room—it was called the Golden Age of Radio, in fact—bringing into the nation’s households static-laden news of the day; vivid play-by-play athletic broadcasts described so precisely that you felt as if you were at the ballpark; hilarious situation comedies such as Fibber McGee and Molly, The Burns and Allen Show, The Great Gildersleeve, Amos and Andy, and Blondie; thrilling drama and mystery theaters with ensemble casts, like The Whistler, Lights Out, The Green Hornet, Dick Tracy, and Inner Sanctum; and a variety of extremely popular live entertainment shows like the Arthur Godfrey Show, Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club and Houseparty. Even small fry had their shows: Big John and Sparky, Junior G-Men, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, the Cisco Kid, Space Patrol, Clyde Beatty, The Howdy Doody Show—and on Sunday mornings, a child could follow along in the newspaper as a narrator read the Sunday Funnies over the air. Certain console models even had a self-contained 78-RPM phonograph so families could play their favorite records anytime they liked.
There was little question that some form of radio dominated home entertainment—that and perhaps a serious game of canasta.
With evening coming on, folks propped open their windows to catch a southern breeze and the homes that