On October 17, 1971, Ricky Nelson took the stage at Madison Square Garden. He was playing a Rock & Roll Reunion show with Bo Diddley, Little Richard and the great Chuck Berry. Nelson started singing his old hits, like "Hello Mary Lou", one of my personnel favorites, and people where loving it. But Nelson also played Country rock, so he started singing a country version of the Rolling Stones "Honky Tonk Woman".  When Nelson heard the crowd start booing, he promptly walked off stage.

A hit song was written that night by Ricky Nelson, called "Garden Party", and it's a song that when I hear it, I  can't help but start singing the lyrics.  I was a Ricky Nelson fan for as long as I can remember. I even remember watching "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" in which he starred with his brother and parents. But mainly, I loved his songs.

"Hello Mary Lou", "Travelin' Man",  "Poor Little Fool", "I'm Walking", are just a few of the hits from Ricky Nelson. The guy had it all. Great looks, great voice, a good songwriter and was loved all over the world. From the late fifties to the early sixties he owned the airways. But all good thing come to and end, and so it did with him. A little group from Liverpool, England came to America, and his type of music died a quick and painful death. That band was the Beatles. 

By this time his hair had grown shoulder length and he was heavily into the country rock genre. When he mixed in new material with his old music, the audience began to boo. Some say there was an altercation, and the fans weren't booing Nelson at all. But, either way, he walked off the stage and wrote these lyrics on a paper napkin. "I learned my lesson well, you see you,  can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself". But it was who and what others he was talking about that had people speculating about the lyrics.

 There was no mistaken the lyric, "Yoko brought her Walrus, there was music in the air". Everyone knows that Lennon had written a song "I am the Walrus". But other verses were harder to decipher. Such as "Mr Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes, wearing his disguise.". Mr Hughes was really a great friend and neighbor of Nelson's, George Harrison of the Beatles.  Harrison when travelling, often gave his name in hotels as Mr. Hughes and was going to do an  album of Bob Dylan covers, although it never came to fruition.

Then there was "If you're going to a Garden Party, I wish you a lot of luck, If memories where all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck." This is widely believed to be a tip of the hat to Elvis Presley, who drove a truck before he went on to become the King of Rock & Roll. Whatever the lyrics, this song went to number one with a bullet, and for a time Nelson was just as popular as ever. It didn't last long.

 In 1985, Nelson joined a nostalgia tour of England. After returning home, he began a tour of the South. After a show in Alabama, while on his way to a New Years Eve Sock-Hop in Dallas Texas, his plane crashed in De Kalb,Texas and he, along with his fiancee' and other band members died.  He was buried in Forest Hills, CA. Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame in 1987, Bob Dylan wrote a tribute to Nelson about his influence on his own music.The one and only Stephen King used him as an inspiration in a short story called "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band".  Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him 91st on their "100th Greatest Artists of all Time". 

This post will not probably get a lot of hits, or comments or anything really. Sometimes I write them for myself. This is one of those times. Ricky Nelson had a big impact on a lot of people my age. But even though it was the caveman days and we used rocks for records, there is a path that young people can and need to learn to get the full appreciation for todays music. Rock & Roll came from  various and diverse  back grounds. The Blues, Jazz, and especially the Black churches, where Elvis himself used to go. Ricky Nelson carved out his own name in the history of Rock & Roll!

From 1957 to 1962, Nelson had thirty Top-40 hits, more than any other artist at the time except Presley (who had 53) and Pat Boone (38). Many of Nelson's early records were double hits with both the A and B sides hitting the Billboard charts.