Being the protective, image-conscious father he was, Ozzie Nelson took great pains to groom his son, Ricky, as a clean-cut, all-American teen idol in the white-washed, conservative 1950s.

Always the dutiful son, Ricky tried to respect his father’s wishes when it came to overseeing his music career, even if he didn’t always see eye to eye with the old man.

Things came to a head with “Gloomy Sunday.” Intrigued by its unusual chord progressions, according to Ian Cooke, a family friend of the Nelsons, Ricky badly wanted to cut a version himself and put it out.
Ozzie, the family patriarch who built an entertainment empire around the hit TV series “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” had his objections.   

“Ozzie didn’t want him to do it,” recalls Cooke. “He said, ‘Rick, you’re such a popular kid, and this is a song about suicide. We’re afraid kids will go out and commit suicide.’ And Rick said, ‘Oh, no. I’m going to do it.’ And Ozzie said, ‘No, you’re not.’ He said, ‘That’s not coming out.’”
While Ozzie may have won the battle, it was Rick who won the war.

Originally recorded in 1958, Rick’s “Gloomy Sunday” remained in the vaults until 2000, when the Rick Nelson — Legacy box set was released by Capitol Records.

“[Rick] was under so much pressure, because there were other songs he wanted to do, and Ozzie would say, ‘Son, those don’t fit the image of our show,’” says Cooke. “So, the show was a blessing and a curse, because he wanted to do ‘Gloomy Sunday.’ I mean, I would imagine if critics had heard him doing ‘Gloomy Sunday’ way back then, they would have said, ‘Hey, this guy is good.’” And perhaps, Rick wouldn’t have had to fight so hard to escape the stigma of being a teen idol and  gain credibility as an artist.

Who knows if Nelson’s career would have suffered horrible repercussions had the song seen the light of day during his golden period, spanning the years 1957 to 1962, an era that saw him infiltrate the Top 40 an astounding 30 times with his soft, sincere ballads and a sunny, easygoing kind of pop-rockabilly that could, on occasion, turn rowdy and raucous.

Perhaps nothing would have come of it. Whatever the case, it’s all pure speculation. What the whole episode does prove is this: For all his wholesome qualities, his quiet way and all the pressure that comes with being adored by millions and living up to their expectations, Nelson was willing to risk it all to do a song he felt strongly about.

“[He recorded that] when he was 18, 19 years old,” says Cooke. “That was pretty hip, considering we’re talking about teenagers from the ’50s.”

Just picture it: Rick Nelson could have been the Ozzy Osbourne or Judas Priest of his day had the suicide solution of “Gloomy Sunday” — a song most closely linked to Billie Holiday — influenced some impressionable teenager in the ‘50s to off himself. Luckily, that never happened.

Much has been made over the years of the relationship between Ozzie and Rick. To hear Jimmie Haskell, Rick’s longtime record producer, tell it, the two had what he characterizes as “an excellent relationship,” and he takes issue with sensationalized TV movies that have portrayed Ozzie as “an ogre” and Rick as a pliant whipping boy.

As evidence, he points to a moment when Ozzie actually deferred to Rick. After a long, late-night recording session that lasted almost until sunrise, Haskell took what Rick and his band had worked on and brought it to Ozzie for his approval.

“We had finished, like, 4:30 in the morning, so instead of bringing it over [later] in the morning, I dropped by the [TV] studio, where Ozzie was, and left it with the guard to give Ozzie when he came in when he came in,” relates Haskell. “And then, I showed up around 9:30 a.m., and Ozzie said, ‘Oh, I’m glad to see you Jimmie. I hated what you recorded last night. What was the sound of the bass drum? It sounded like somebody kicking a wall down.’ And I said, ‘Well Ozzie, we’re recording again tonight, and I guess we can re-record that.’ And he says, ‘Yeah, I’d appreciate that.’ Just then, Ricky walked in. He says, ‘Oh, hi, Rick. I was just telling Jimmie that the sound of that bass drum sounded like somebody kicking a wall in.’ And Ricky said, ‘I really like that sound, dad.’ And he said, ‘Oh, okay, son. I’ll listen to it again.’”
Already a star, having grown up right before the world’s eyes on the hit TV series “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” which lasted from 1952 to 1966, and the radio show that preceded it, Rick got his feet wet in the music business by covering Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” — one of three tracks he’d record the for Verve label — to, of all things, score points with a girl.

“It’s a true story,” says musicologist Jim Ritz, a longtime acquaintance of Rick’s. “I heard it from Rick and several other sources, and I think it’s a true story of him being out on a date with a girl and one of Elvis’ songs comes on the radio, and the girl started screaming and swooning, and just to save face, Rick said, ‘Well, I’m cutting a record.’ She said, ‘Yeah, right.’ And he went to his dad, and Ozzie, being the astute businessman and show business personality that he was, thought that ... maybe they could get an episode out of it for ‘Ozzie and Harriet.’ And so Rick recorded ‘I’m Walkin’,’’ and I think it sold 700,000 copies in a week and went on to sell several million.”

Purely by happenstance, Ricky Nelson found himself with a recording career, afforded advantages other musicians could only dream about. Not only was he uncommonly handsome, but he had the ultimate promotional vehicle: a smash TV show that broadcast his songs to a multitude of viewers.

“Ozzie planted the seed for a whole new genre that would become the music video,” suggests Bruce Belland, original lead singer of the popular harmony vocal group The Four Preps.

A friend of Rick’s from Hollywood High who co-starred for four years on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” — first as Rick’s brother and then, later, as his college roommate — Belland initially was a friend of Rick’s older brother, David, but when Bruce got held back a semester for, in his words, “being a screw-up,” he and Rick became close. They even took typing class together. And they flunked it ... together.

“How you flunk typing, I don’t know,” Belland says with a laugh. “But, we were always joking around, cutting class to go listen to music.”
For one season, The Four Preps served as Rick’s backup singers on the TV show, “ ... and then, very quickly, Capitol [The Four Preps’ label] became uneasy with the thought that we would just be considered The Jordanaires to his Elvis Presley, and not an act on our own,” says Belland.

The Four Preps accompanied Ricky on his first tour, a barnstorming string of sold-out dates in the Midwest that attracted thousands. A barrage of flashbulbs went off everywhere Rick got off a plane.

Swooning after him, teenage girls ripped his clothes to shreds. Life magazine proclaimed Rick a “teen idol.”

“It was a phrase used for Fabian, Frankie Avalon and a gaggle of other dreamboat singers of the era,” says Belland. “[However,] it was a phrase created for Rick.”

Before all that, however, there was the famed Hamilton High School assembly that served as Rick’s coming-out party. Belland’s Four Preps were headlining the show, and they literally had to drag Rick out on stage for his surprise performance — his first live show. When it dawned on the kids who it was that was being hauled out to sing, they rushed the stage.

“He had no idea that he was going to be asked to come out and perform,” recalls Belland. “We had sat around the [“Ozzie and Harriet”] set with our guitars and stuff for weeks while shooting the show and sung with him, because he was dying to get a career starting in recording. The Preps were always the cream of the Southern California high-school crowd, because we’d go around and do free high school shows all the time just to promote our records.”

Nelson, on the other hand, had little need for such stunts. Though he shunned the superficial pap reserved for other teen idols that could safely deliver hits in favor of the more reckless, hard-hitting rock ‘n’ roll of Sun Records and Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley, Nelson had no trouble scaling the charts time and time again.

Haskell accompanied him on many early climbs. The first Rick Nelson record he worked on was 1957’s “Be-Bop Baby,” after the young artist joined Imperial Records, where Haskell worked.   

“He had done one record, ‘Teenager’s Romance,’ for Verve, and then, Ozzie told a music publisher that he was unhappy with the way Verve wasn’t paying too much attention to Ricky,” says Haskell.

Immediately, Haskell noticed Rick’s talent, and his ear for music. “I was most impressed with his conscientiousness, with his ability to learn very quickly and with his feeling for songs,” says Haskell. “Because in the beginning, a couple of songs were chosen for him by Ozzie, and by Lew Chudd, the owner of Imperial Records.”

It wasn’t long, however, before Ricky began picking out his own material. The process involved Haskell poring over hundreds of songs and then whittling it down to the 20 to 25 he would bring to Nelson’s bungalow at the TV studio two to three times a week. Rick would then pick two or three he liked, and that set the wheels in motion for recording sessions.

“I would play demos for him, and he would say, ‘Don’t like that one. Don’t like that one. Oh, I like that,’ says Haskell. “And then, all of a sudden, he would come to the bridge, and he would say, ‘I would never say a line like that. Let’s skip that one.’ He never asked me to call the songwriter back to ask him to change the words in the bridge or anything like that, because he had all these other records staring him in the face.”

The next step was deciding the makeup of the band. “Of course, he had his own bass player (James Kirkland, “ ... who he kind of stole from Bob Lumen,” notes Ritz) and guitar player, James Burton,” says Haskell. Actually, as Haskell noted, Burton wasn’t around in the beginning (Joe Maphis played lead guitar on the early Imperial sessions), but he would come later, laying down some of the most
influential guitar licks in rock ’n’ roll history on Rick’s recordings.

Ritchie Frost manned the drums, and then, it was up to Haskell and Ricky to get a piano player. “And it was either Ray Johnson, or a fellow I brought in named Gene Garr, or Leon Russell,” says Haskell.

Whatever combination of musicians made the cut, Haskell had his own way of doing things. “The way I worked it out with the boys in the band was, I would make suggestions and then, they would come up, and they would put it into their own style. In the case of Ray Johnson, he would start playing very cautiously. By the second time we ran through it, he had achieved exactly what I wanted. The third time we went through, he was too far over the top, and I said, ‘Ray, pull it back to way you played it just the last time. That’s what I want.”

Sessions usually involved the group gathering at about 7 p.m. Haskell would rehearse the band, and then, Rick would show up an hour later, after he was done for the day shooting the “Ozzie and Harriet” show.  
“Actually, the day before each session, everybody but the pianist — in other words, James Burton, and the bass player, we started with one and eventually wound up with Joe Osborn, and Ritchie Frost — would rehearse in Rick’s bungalow so they could get a feeling from it,” says Haskell.

As for Burton, according to Haskell, he would play a guitar figure at rehearsal that Haskell would write down. Sometimes, Burton would play that figure the next day; other times, he’d do something better.

However, if Haskell didn’t like it, “I’d say, ‘James, this is what you played yesterday,’” says Haskell. “And I’d go over to the piano and play the notes, and James would say, ‘Aw, if you really want that, OK.’ James really was a genius, and he still is.”

There was no doubt though about who the leader was, though.
“Ricky had an amazing amount of energy,” says Haskell. “We would start at 8 p.m., and then, around 1 a.m., Ritchie would start getting a little tired. We’d make a playback after each take for a run-through, and Ritchie would lie down on the floor and take a little nap, and then Ricky would say, ‘I think we can do one better.’ He was concerned with the sound and feeling of the orchestra. He knew that he could re-do his vocal after they left. But, he also wanted to get a better feel for himself. So, we would do another take, and as I’d walk over to Ritchie, he’d open one eye and look at me and say, ‘One more?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, Ritchie.’”

For backing vocals, The Jordanaires were sometimes brought in — if the price was right. Haskell says Ozzie would try to use them only when they were in town, to save a little money. Later, when Ricky’s popularity was at its zenith, and The Jordanaires weren’t so readily available, he had his own background vocal group. It consisted of Ricky, Jerry Fuller (who wrote “Travelin’ Man”) and Glen Campbell, and sometimes, Dave Burgess.

The whole was always greater than the sum of its parts, resulting in what seemed like a never-ending stream of smashes, from the heartbroken lament “Hello, Mary Lou” (co-penned by Gene Pitney) to plaintive ballads such as “Poor Little Fool” and “Lonesome Town” to the starry-eyed, country-tinged beauty of “Travelin’ Man.” Haskell cites “Waitin’ In School” and “Believe What You Say” — both written by the dynamic, brotherly songwriting team of the Johnny Burnette Rock ’N’ Roll Trio’s Dorsey and Johnny Burnette, a duo that penned many a tune for Rick — as two of his favorites

“People ask me, ‘How did you get that great sound?’” says Haskell. “I said, ‘It started with the feel,’ and the feel was that everybody felt the beat at the same time, at the same instant. Everybody felt the beat. Everybody played the beat together, and if for any reason they didn’t do it on a take, we would re-do the take until they felt good about what they were doing.”

“Travelin’ Man” almost didn’t make it to wax, as Ozzie wasn’t keen on how Ricky pronounced the German city “Berlin” in the song, thinking that he was butchering it. “He was such an old purist,” says Belland. “He said, ‘They’re going to think you’re illiterate. They’re going to think you don’t know any better.”

Such trivial concerns didn’t keep Rick from doing “Travelin’ Man,” and, of course, the single, with “Hello Mary Lou” on the flipside, went straight to #1. It’s funny how things work out, though.

“Do you know how Rick found that song? His manager and a couple of his musicians had an office in Hollywood somewhere — I think on Hollywood Boulevard,” says Belland. “And it was next door to the A&R man and producer for Sam Cooke. Jerry Fuller wrote it for Sam Cooke. And if you think about it, you can hear Sam Cooke doing it. Well, Sam’s manager or producer or somebody in his office played it and didn’t particularly like it, and when it was through, he just put it back in the envelope and tossed it in a wastebasket. And a guy from Rick’s office, one of Rick’s musicians next door, came over and said, ‘We just heard through the wall that song. Is Sam going to do that song?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not right for Sam.’ He said, ‘Well, do you mind if I take that demo?’ Jerry Fuller told me this, so I have reason to suspect it’s true. And [the guy from Rick’s office] took it next door and played it for Rick later, and Rick loved it and cut it, and it was a huge hit for him.”

And Haskell was there to helm the recording, as he did for “Hello Mary Lou,” a song that holds a special place in his heart.

“One day, as we were running through ‘Hello Mary Lou,’ I didn’t want to saddle Ritchie Frost with having to play cowbell and drums, so I played cowbell, because I have a pretty good sense of time, and so, as Ricky walked in, we were rehearsing it, and I was on cowbell, and he said, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good,’” says Haskell, who’d been turned down many times when he asked to help with handclaps. “And I said, ‘Do I get to play it on tape?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’”

Another one of Rick’s biggest hits was “Poor Little Fool,” written by Sharon Sheeley. Not a fan of the song reportedly, Rick reluctantly released it, but it seems he never really made his peace with it.
“He never performed it on the ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ show, and it was his first release on Imperial that didn’t come with a picture sleeve,” says Ritz. “I think he thought it was a wussy song, and it made him look like a wuss.”

Interestingly, for all the work he did with Rick, Haskell didn’t get production credits on Rick’s records. To his credit, he holds no grudges.
“Well, I was working with Rick in the days when producers were only beginning to get production credit,” says Haskell. “When the singles came out, I don’t even know if my name was on [them]. When the albums came out, Ozzie spoke to me and said, ‘Jimmie, we’re certainly going to list you as an arranger and a friend, but if you don’t mind, we’re not going to list you as the producer, because we want people to think that Ricky produced it.’ It wasn’t until years later that I realized that neither Lew Chudd nor Ozzie were the type of businessmen who wanted to pay extra money, and had I been listed as producer, I would have gotten a producer’s fee. I think in those days producers got one or two percent. Eventually, they got three percent, and it was only until years later when blockbuster producers started getting five and six percent.”

On Imperial, Rick Nelson was a cash cow second only to Elvis. Then, along came Decca to sweep Ricky and Ozzie off their feet with a sweetheart 20-year record deal in 1963.

They didn’t know it then, but the days of churning out one chart-topper after another were about to come to an end.
As Rick was maturing as an artist, problems arose between him and Ozzie.

“The only time there became any real tension or conflict in his career was when [Ozzie] and Rick started to have a division of opinion about what songs he should record,” remembers Belland. “Then, Rick finally decided to establish himself and kind of did the Brian Wilson thing, where he just asked Ozzie if he wouldn’t mind leaving.”

Of course, Ozzie had a successful musical background himself, having started out as a bandleader. “Ozzie Nelson had 17 Top 10 records with his band, and his mother was the band’s singer, Harriet Hilliard,” says Belland.

The apple didn’t fall far from the tree with Rick. “Talk about inherited musical instincts,” says Belland. “So, yeah, Rick had a real ear for talent, and for good players and guys who really had some chops and for songs that had a good hook. He was an absolute natural, and he was very, very serious about it, very committed about it.”

However, there were times when he wasn’t inspired. “Even on the show, we did some songs that Rick just didn’t even want to go near them, and, in some cases, you would see he wasn’t even playing the right chords on the guitar ’cause he was pantomiming the guitar,” says Belland. “He was just kind of halfway going, or sleepwalking through the song, which Rick had a tendency to do anyway. He looked like he was sleepwalking even when he wasn’t (laughs). He didn’t have a whole lot of expression in that big, old puss of his.”

Even so, when Rick and his dad had disagreements, they settled them without drama. “[And] it was in such a quiet way,” says Belland. “[Ozzie] was a dictator on the set, but boy, he was so mild and so subtle and tactful about it all. I never saw him raise his voice to Rick or get red in the face about Rick. He would just kind of give Rick a look and a nod, and they’d disappear off into a room off set somewhere.
When they came back, it was all resolved.”

The effort was there when Rick moved to Decca. Nevertheless, for all his gifts, Rick couldn’t quite capture the magic of those halcyon days on Imperial, with the exception of “Fools Rush In.” His first year on Decca, hits were coming at a trickle, and 1964’s “For You” proved to be his last hit of the ’60s.

“They had some success with ‘Fools Rush In,’ and it’s great,” says Cooke. “He took Brook Benton’s version and just kind of rocked it up a bit more and added the cowbell of ‘Mary Lou,’ and you know, Burton had a phenomenal guitar solo.”

Many reasons for Rick’s waning popularity as a recording artist have been offered, the main one being the onset of the British Invasion and the phenomenon of The Beatles, which killed the careers of a lot of ‘50s rock ‘n’ rollers.

Cooke has another theory. “He had such respect for his dad, and Ozzie was all over his music, and Rick was kind of a laid-back cat,” he says. “And Ozzie had some strong ideas, and he came from the more conservative background side of the business and kept thinking, ‘Well, hey, this rock ’n’ roll thing is going to die out. Let’s get back to [doing] these standards.’”

Flashes of Rick’s brilliance came through in cuts like “Mean Old World,” by Billy Vera, “ ... and that’s an R&B song. It just jumps out of left field for you, but it was really good,” says Cooke.

Overall, though, the material Rick had at his disposal was spotty, and the same fate that befell many of his contemporaries, including someone like Dion, also doomed Rick. “They started making him what they call the ‘all-around, well-rounded entertainer,’ and basically, they would take them out of what was their niche and what they did best and try to make them Frank Sinatras,” explains Cooke. “Rick, unlike all the other cats, the Philadelphia guys especially, and Bobby Darin and them, had no interest in being Frank Sinatra. He was Carl Perkins. That was where Rick was at.”

Another missing ingredient: the guitar fireworks of Burton. “That was the other thing you noticed. As Rick’s stuff was sliding up and down the charts, Burton’s guitar playing was lessened also,” says Cook. “When you listen to Another Side of Rick, it’s like they just took a pair of scissors and just sliced the hell out of the guitar solo.”

As the ’60s progressed, Rick began to experiment more and broaden his horizons, including learning jazz guitar. Not always was it of his own choosing, though.

At Decca, against his will, he had to work with large orchestras, something Haskell always wanted to do.

“He was into many, many things,” says Haskell. “I had always wanted to work with large orchestras. Rick never really cared for large orchestras.”

When Rick went to Decca, Haskell was no longer his producer of record, “ ... but, I continued to produce him, because the producer of record for Decca showed up at the first session and realized that Rick and I had a special relationship, and he didn’t wanna [upset it]. He was a real nice guy.”

As Rick grew more independent and the dry spell chart-wise continued, he cast his lot with country music — a move Campbell endorsed — and eventually, he formed the Stone Canyon Band. An interesting cast of characters drifted in and out of the band (some having played with the likes of Poco, Dolly Parton, The Eagles and others) which many credit as having started the whole California country-rock scene of the early ‘70s.

At least John Beland, a one-time member of a reformulated Flying Burrito Bros. in the ’80s who served as the Stone Canyon Band’s musical director in the late ’70s, thinks so. It was Beland who was asked by Rick’s manager to help him put a new version of the Stone Canyon Band together for his debut in Las Vegas. The only leftover was steel-guitar legend Tom Brumley.

“I think Rick was very proud of the Stone Canyon Band era,” says Beland, who formed Linda Ronstadt’s first backup band, Sweetwater, and has worked with a diverse group of artists, including Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, The Bellamy Brothers and Garth Brooks. “It’s crucial to note that the history of country rock did not begin with The Eagles, but with Rick’s band. He introduced The Troubadour audience to steel guitars, golden harmonies ... very reminiscent of groups to come like Poco, The Eagles and the Burritos. The Stone Canyon Band era is mostly forgotten. But, it’s importance in the history of west coast country rock cannot be overstated.”

Important, yes, but commercially speaking, that period was mostly disappointing, with a couple of exceptions: one being the 1969 cover of Bob Dylan’s (he reportedly thought Nelson was a great interpreter of his songs) “She Belongs To Me” and 1972’s comeback single, the final big hit of his career, “Garden Party.”

Walking along at a mid-tempo gait, like so many of Rick’s biggest hits, the relaxed rockabilly of “Garden Party” belied the sting and strong statement of individuality contained in its lyrics. No doubt, “Garden Party” was the real Rick, laid bare for all the world. It was the only hit he had that he wrote himself.

“I must say, Rick was a stubborn sort and really headstrong sometimes, and he simply would not bow to fan pressure to just come out and be little Ricky Nelson re-doing all of his old original hits,” says the Preps’ Belland. “He wanted to blaze new trails, and he was really into rockabilly. That was his favorite music. And he wanted to come out and prove that he was still growing and still maturing and still exploring new areas and getting new sounds together. And he loved the Stone Canyon Band.”

What drove Rick to write “Garden Party,” which went all the way to #6 on the Billboard charts, is a matter of some conjecture. One school of thought says that it came from what he perceived as a negative reaction to his new country-rock material from the audience at a package oldies benefit concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

Cooke thinks there was more to it, saying, “His first tour of Britain in February 1972 gave him the impetus to write ‘Garden Party.’ When performing at Royal Albert Hall during the ’72 tour he had a fantastic reception. In attendance were Paul McCartney, Elton John, Olivia Newton John ... Rick had four encores, and they had to carry him off the stage, and girls were ripping his shirt off. George Harrison was on his way to the concert when he had his infamous car crash. George lived next door to Rick in L.A. in the early ’70s, and they were friends. In fact, George had Rick and (his wife) Kris to his Friar Park Mansion before the ’72 Royal Albert Hall concert.”

Whatever influenced him to write “Garden Party,” there’s no doubt it made the world stand up and finally take notice of Rick’s artistry. “It was the first time they really paid attention to him as an artist,” says Matthew Nelson, one of Rick’s twin sons and half of the pop-metal duo Nelson, with brother Gunnar.

And It put him back in the spotlight, garnering him attention from strange quarters.

“After the whole ‘Garden Party’ record blew up, Rick comes back to New York City to play Carnegie Hall,” relates Cooke, “and how or why, I don’t know, but [Rick and Andy Warhol] met, and Andy took a liking to him, both personally and certainly physically. And Rick was not going that route. Rick probably had more women than God... but Andy Warhol got all excited about doing a documentary on Rick.”

To that end, Warhol threw a party for Rick that was attended by such luminaries as James Taylor and Carly Simon. The plans never came to fruition, like others that had been hatched regarding Rick.

“Paul McCartney wanted to produce Rick for several years,” says Cooke. “Corporate politics snuffed out that opportunity. Then, Lindsay Buckingham was interested in producing Rick after the Playing To Win album, but they were both incapacitated by with personal demons at the time. They just hung around and got blasted. Also, Paul was trying again to produce Rick before he passed away. That was on a Stuart Coleman interview on the BBC before Rick’s Royal Albert Hall performance in November 1985.”

Although “Garden Party” put Rick back on top, his record company wasn’t impressed. Dennis Sarokin was a guitarist and sang backing vocals for the Stone Canyon Band for a spell, and he said, “It was pulling teeth is the polititest term I can use” to get the label to back Nelson. In fact, the MCA/Decca label, according to Sarokin, viewed its contract with Nelson as “an albatross around management’s neck.”

Things could have turned out differently had the McCartney project panned out, or if Buckingham and Nelson had teamed up on a recording. Unfortunately, they were left to the realm of possibility.
There were, however, some highlights post “Garden Party,” including a triumphant performance on “Saturday Night Live.”

“Saturday Night Live was Rick’s shining moment of the late ’70s,” says Beland. “We had just finished recording a new version of Bobby Darin’s old hit ‘Dream Lover,’ and we all knew it was a smash, and we knew playing it on SNL would catapult it right to the top of the charts. However, CBS, in all their ignorance, held up the single until after the show, losing the moment and resulting in an impressive, but less than expected, showing on the charts. It was a travesty.”

It was the last year of “Saturday Night Live” with the original cast. Rick did four songs with a band that included Billy Thomas on drums, John Davis on bass and Elmo Peeler on piano. But, Beland knew that after CBS’ folly, Rick’s career would stagnate, and he left. Bobby Neil took over on guitar until Rick’s death in 1985.

Rick died in a fiery plane crash on New Year’s Eve of that year. That day, Sam Nelson, Rick’s youngest son, had spent the day skateboarding with a friend. Sam saw the wreck on TV, and that’s how the family learned of Rick’s death.

“I was in my car, and I heard it on the radio, and I passed out,” Matthew Nelson remembers. “I was supposed to be on the plane with him, and he was my best friend, and quite frankly, I have a love-hate relationship with the media because of that. They always say the names of the victims are being withheld until the family is notified.” That wasn’t the case for the Nelsons.

Though Rick wasn’t the perfect father — he was on the road for long periods of time, and there were allegations of drug use — Sam formed a special bond with his dad. “When he came in, he was very much a presence,” says Sam, “and he smoked cigarettes and wore Polo cologne — or I think it was Drakkar Noir actually — and that combination of smells ... it created this aura of mystique for a child to be larger than life.”

Being away from home a lot, Rick wasn’t able to keep his marriage to actress/artist Kris (Harmon) Nelson together, and, as Sam Nelson says, “ ... my mom and dad had gone through a pretty brutal divorce for many, many years ...” and so, he didn’t get to see much of the man he called “pop.”

Still, they made the most of the time they had together, and Sam thinks he came to understand Rick. And it was Rick’s lifelong fight to erase the stigma of being a teen idol and a product of his family’s star-making machinery that made Rick seem somehow heroic.

“ ... My grandfather Ozzie... he was the captain of the ship, and when he walked into a room, people listened,” says Sam, a Capitol Records A&R producer in Catalogs now, as well as a musician in his own right.
“As the son of that, I think that was probably pretty intimidating, and a situation in which it was very, very difficult to find your own voice. But, I think my dad did what he could. It takes a lot of courage to come from that and really do what you can to really shine in your own right, and I think he did that.”

The world outside of music-industry insiders is still just beginning to understand just how talented Rick was. According to Matthew Nelson, who is serving as a sort of curator of Rick’s recordings, Sun Records’ Sam Phillips said he would have signed Ricky in a second, but he couldn’t physically be there to record because of his TV commitments.  
Watching Rick work for all those years, Haskell gained an appreciation for Rick’s rhythm guitar playing.

“Nobody mentions his guitar playing,” Haskell says, “but I’ll tell you, the great rhythm guitar is an essential part of any rhythm section. There are rhythm sections without rhythm guitars, and there are rhythm sections with rhythm guitars. And the rhythm sections with rhythm guitars sometimes suffer because the guitar player is not on tight with the beat, which Ricky was.”

And Rick was a much better singer than his critics thought — at least according to Haskell he was. “I mean, listen to a record like ‘My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It,’ where he hits the highest note of any singer that was singing at the time. And then ‘Lonesome Town,’ where he hits the lowest note of anybody who was singing at the time. Oh, he had big range.”

That’s not all. For the movie “Rio Bravo,” Rick had to play the part of a gunfighter and, as Haskell remembers, “ ... he learned it so well, the story I heard is one day on the set, he pulled the gun out so quick, John Wayne said, ‘Wait, wait, wait. There’s no way I can even come close to that.’”

But, it’s the man Rick Nelson was that his friends and family remember. “He was a kid trapped in a 40-year-old frame,” says Beland. “Rick was kind and humble, but he also knew the studio inside and out. He was very animated in the recording process, when allowed the freedom and respect to do so.”

“The people who really listened to the music — the guys like McCartney, John Fogerty, Chris Isaak, Kris Kristofferson — they got it,” says Matthew. “They understood it, and if you got to know my dad, he wasn’t the kind of guy who waved his flag.”

Being a somewhat reluctant star, it’s easy to dismiss Rick’s influence on rock ’n’ roll’s growth as a pop-culture phenomenon. “Well, I mean, it’s my personal belief that Rick Nelson was one of the most underrated artists of all time,” says Gunnar. “He had some great contributions, and, of course, some great music. If you were to take it at face value, that would be enough, but when rock ’n’ roll was considered too salacioius ... he was responsible for smuggling rock ’n’ roll into American living rooms and making it a much more legitimate, mainstream art form.”  

And those who worked with him thought the world of Rick. “ ... One of the nicest guys and purest singers I’ve met,” John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, “and although we met only once, he treated me like he had seen me on the other side of the TV all those times I watched him growing up.”