Rick Nelson, Rock ‘n’ Roll PioneerShereeHomer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.

Abstract

Rick Nelson, Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer Sheree Homer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.There is a conventional wisdom view of Rick Nelson that presents him as a modestly talented 1950s teen idol/rock star who took advantage of his good looks and weekly exposure on the highly successful Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet sitcom to forge a significant base of popular support, particularly among teenage females. Nelson provided a template for the television-driven musical performers that would be followed by the likes of Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, and the Monkees. One version of this story suggests that the real genius behind all of this success was Nelson's father Ozzie, who was a successful musician himself during the big band era and a shrewd businessman.Journalist Sheree Homer signifies by the title of her biography, Rick Nelson, Rock en' Roll Pioneer, that there is much more to Nelson than the conventional story suggests, and she aims to set the record straight. Few among professional rock critics would see Nelson as a pioneer. Some might give him some pioneer status for the video that accompanied Nelson's performance of his mega-hit, Man, on the family television show. That video has on occasion been referred to as the first rock music video ever made. But in Homer's accounting, Nelson's status as a rock 'n' roll pioneer goes much deeper than that video, which is given only a two-sentence reference in this book.Homer's book on Nelson is not a biography in the traditional sense. Thus, it is different from two earlier biographies of Nelson: Ricky Nelson: Idol for a Generation (1990) by San Francisco music critic Joel Selvin and Teenage Idol, Travelin' Man: The Complete Biography of Rick Nelson by Philip Bashe (1992). The earlier biographies are attempts at covering the entirety of Nelson's life, his private life as well as his public one. Homer recognizes that what is most important about Nelson, what makes him most worthy of this kind of attention, is his music. Her book is almost exclusively about the music, and she knows the music and the roots of Nelson's music better than either Selvin or Bashe. Each of these books has something to offer and each is well worth reading, but Homer's book will likely prove to be the most enduring.Nelson had a long, largely successful recording career that extended across four decades. Although most of his hits came in the 1950s and early 1960s, he charted in every decade in which he recorded. Homer shows us that Nelson had a significant and pioneering footprint in two major movements in rock history. First, Nelson was a devotee of Sun Records and its artists, including, most notably, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley. On his first four albums, he recorded six songs strongly associated with Sun Records and several other songs that had been recorded by Sun artists, although not typically thought of as Sun recordings. …