Bubbling Under: Rick Nelson & The Stone Canyon Band- "Life"

One of Rick Nelson's finest moments

Welcome to Bubbling Under. Each edition I cover a song or artist that just missed charting on the Hot 100. This week: Rick Nelson’s career before his brief 1972 comeback

When I started Bubbling Under last Summer, my intent was for Rick Nelson to be my first piece. I kept finding other artists to write about and it never happened until now.

About eight years ago, I randomly became obsessed with Ricky Nelson. It started when I heard this on YouTube:

My favourite used record store was still operating at the time, so I went down there and ransacked their Ricky Nelson section. I even watched a few episodes of Ozzie and Harriet, as well as some of his old movies. Ricky was smart in giving up his day job, he wasn’t a particularly good actor. But he was a very talented, at times underrated, musician who had a large back catalogue of really good music.

I didn’t have a problem, I swear!

It’s been forgotten how big a deal Ricky Nelson was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1963, he had been on a hit sitcom since he was a kid. Nelson stumbled into the family business which happened to be a sitcom where they all played some variation of themselves. Once Rick and his older brother David got married, their wives even appeared on the sitcom as well. Nowadays, they’d just be doing a trashy reality show for Discovery Plus.

Around 1957, Rick started singing on the show. He became a huge deal as a rock singer and was probably the main reason Ozzie And Harriet limped along until 1966. Rick scored two number-one singles and had a slew of top-ten hits. Criminally, his best single during this period, 1958’s “Lonesome Town” only charted at #7.

Rick had been acting in movies sporadically since he was a kid but dabbled in film again during the peak of his fame. Mercifully, he didn’t make as many movies as Elvis. Interestingly, he was cast alongside some big names in both his best-known films. Rio Bravo (1959) paired him with Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, and John Wayne. The Wackiest Ship In The Army (1960) paired him with Jack Lemmon. Nelson comes off as wooden in both of these films. As awful as Elvis’ filmography was, he at least had a stronger screen presence than Nelson. By this point, Nelson was likely more famous as a musical performer than as an actor, and it probably didn’t matter if he continued to make films.

By 1964, Nelson’s success on the charts had waned, most likely due to teenagers becoming more interested in the newfangled British Invasion that had just hit. He made one more movie, Love And Kisses (1965). The film featured his then-wife Kris (older sister of actor Mark Harmon). I’ve never had the strength to watch this one. Directed by his dad Ozzie, it’s the closest thing Rick got to a late-period Elvis movie. The poster shows a dead-eyed Rick playing guitar. His character’s name is listed as “Buzzy Pringle”. It was the mid-1960s, and one of the biggest rock stars from the earlier part of that decade was now severely out of touch.

Nelson made lots of attempts to update his sound and shed his boy-next-door image, but nothing ever really translated into a comeback hit. He changed his name to Rick (for what it’s worth, his given name was Eric, a far cry from Richard). He continued to act on TV including On The Flip Side, which allowed him to sing Bachrach and David compositions. The early 1969 release Perspective included covers of songs by artists such as Harry Nilsson. It was clear that Rick was paying attention to current musical trends as a fan rather than someone desperate for another hit.

Nelson formed the Stone Canyon Band around 1969. Stone Canyon included Randy Meisner, later of Poco and Eagles fame. With his newly formed band, Nelson did score a sizable hit with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me”.

Nelson had a #48 hit with the follow-up, “Easy To Be Free”, but unfortunately, a career as a minor hitmaker wasn’t in the cards.

Nelson had a lot more musical credibility than some of his contemporaries, but unfortunately, nothing ever gelled. “I Shall Be Released” (another Bob Dylan composition) only peaked at #102, and a slew of other singles, including “Life” (which stalled at #109), failed to trouble the charts. It wouldn’t be until his brief 1972 comeback with “Garden Party” that Nelson had another single bother the Hot 100.

“Life”, from Nelson’s 1971 album Rudy The Fifth, was a highlight from this period of his career.

“Life” is a reflective piece of 70’s folk-rock with reflective lyrics. There are some strings but it doesn’t ruin the song. Lyrically and musically, it’s my absolute favourite of his early 70s output. It’s criminal that this didn’t do better.

I never knew the context of this clip before, but here’s Rick Nelson in Medieval costume performing “Life” on the 1972 Kroft Brothers variety special Fol-de-Rol. It’s fairly representative of where his career was at the time.

There was whatever concert incident (I’ve read varying reports on what exactly went down) that led to his brief comeback with “Garden Party”. He had a string of really solid follow-ups that for whatever reason just didn’t attract the same masses his 1950s recordings had reached. Decca/MCA dropped him finally around 1975. He’d signed a twenty-year contract with the label in the mid-1960s before his career nosedived. At the time it probably seemed a wise investment, but his records just weren’t selling.

Nelson signed to Epic where he released more really good music that either went unreleased (the Al Kooper produced “Carl Of The Jungle”) or failed to find an audience. He also had a messy personal life around this time, but there were highlights. He had the chance to host SNL once in 1979 and continued to record and tour until his unfortunate death in a plane crash in 1985 at the young age of 45.

Nelson maintains a fairly large following online. There are plenty of interviews, and his music is widely available. His back catalogue needs to be reevaluated.

Next Week: TBA