Beyond the Marquee

An obscure John Alvin Ray, a small town hopeful from Dallas, Oregon became an international singing star in 1952 after changing his name and becoming the bridge between the mellow big band singers and today’s rock and roll performers. Johnnie Ray would come full circle and in another of his accomplishments disprove ‘you can’t go home again’. After a 1989 concert in Salem, Oregon which would be his last public performance, he had faint memories of his meetings with Kings and Queens and heads of states. With reflections of what he had achieved and lost, now a broken man came home again as obscure as when he had left. If there is anything positive about death it would be Johnnie Ray died young at 63 which allowed most of his boyhood classmates a chance to say goodbye at that concert. After 37 years Johnnie had come home to see the only true friends he would ever know. Unfortunately, the Dallas area had grown a lot in that time. New residents had no idea who Johnnie Ray was or cared. Borrowing lyrics from his music Johnnie Ray wanted to know if the folks he used to know still remembered him. Of the millions world wide who knew him, only a few hundred came to remember him.
The world of Johnnie Ray was over .His reign has now diminished to a simple brass headstone that reads John Alvin Ray Jan 10, 1927-Feb 24, 1990. With his death, Johnnie Ray as he was known to millions no longer existed. As Dallas ages, so does the memory of Johnnie Ray who single handedly changed the world of music. There are talks of memorials and museums. It is doubtful anything will materialize as they don’t commemorate the forgotten.