In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was Elvis Presley and then there was Ricky Nelson. Elvis was a musical and cultural phenomenon, but Ricky Nelson would be a solid number two, selling millions of albums and charting thirty top forty singles during the years 1957-1962.<\/p>\n
He rose to prominence as an actor on his parents\u2019 TV show, Ozzie And Harriet<\/i>. As Ricky aged, he was given a few minutes at the end of each show to sing a song. This would propel him to the status of teen idol, a term Life magazine coined to describe him in an article.<\/p>\n
His career would come to an abrupt halt with the advent of the British invasion. Musical tastes in the United States were quickly changing and he would be regulated to the oldies bin. He ended up dropping the Y from his name and continuing to produce albums but with little success. The low point of his career came when he was booed off the stage at a Madison Square Garden oldies show for singing a few new songs.<\/p>\n
Rick Nelson began his comeback in 1969 with the brilliant live album,\u00a0In Concert At The<\/i>\u00a0Troubadour, 1969.<\/i>\u00a0Nelson had moved in a country\/rock direction and surrounded himself with a first-rate backing group, The Stone Canyon Band.\u00a0Ricky Sings Nelson<\/i>\u00a0(1970) and\u00a0Rudy The Fifth<\/i>\u00a0(1971) followed and reestablished Nelson as a commercially successful and creative artist. His comeback would be complete with the release of\u00a0Garden Party<\/i>\u00a0in 1972, which reached number 32 on the national charts.<\/p>\n
Garden Party<\/i>\u00a0was a brilliant foray into the country\/rock idiom centered on the autobiographical title song. He took his rejection at the Madison Square Garden concert and turned it into a personal song of redemption and peace. His smooth delivery sold this song about him accepting his place in the musical world. \u201cGarden Party\u201d became a huge single hit and reached number six on the\u00a0Billboard <\/i>Pop\u00a0Chart.<\/p>\n
This album contained a large number of superior tracks. \u201cSo Long Mama\u201d is a bouncy country tune with an almost boogie beat. \u201cI Wanna Be With You,\u201d written by former band member Randy Meisner, could have been an Eagles song. It finds Nelson in a group setting and features superb harmonies. \u201cAre You Really Real\u201d is a sparse ballad that is enhanced by a subtle use of flutes on the breaks. \u201cA Flower Opens Gently\u201d contains some of the most sophisticated lyrics that Rick Nelson produced. It is a song with biting commentary. He pays tribute to our war\u00a0dead with the refrain \u201cGoodbye, so long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garden Party<\/i> finds a mature Rick Nelson brimming with confidence. He wrote six of the album\u2019s ten songs and they ranged from very good to excellent. The equally brilliant album,\u00a0Windfall,<\/i> followed in 1974, but after that, Rick Nelson would figuratively play out the string until his death on December 31st, 1985, in a plane crash. In many ways,\u00a0Garden Party<\/i>\u00a0stands as the last testament\u00a0for an underrated artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":32611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9771],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-44377","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-rick-nelson","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44377"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}