JAMES RAY

JAMES RAY

Born James Ray Raymond, 1941, Washington, D.C.
Died circa 1963

Life was grim for James Ray until his life was turned around by a dynamic musical entrepreneur and a talented new songwriter.

Gerry Granahan, who had scored a Top 30 hit with "No Chemise Please" in 1958, formed his own label, Caprice Records, in late 1960, in New York City. He had almost immediate chart success with his discoveries the Angels ("'Til", # 14) and Janie Grant ("Triangle", # 29).

Delivering demos to the Caprice office on a regular basis was Rudy Clark who, in addition to being the local mail carrier, was an enthusiastic songwriter in his spare time. Granahan liked his songs, but not his voice and advised Clark to bring in someone who could really sing. Clark took Granahan at his word and brought in James Ray whom he had discovered performing in a club. The singer was destitute at the time and living rough on the rooftop of an apartment block. Granahan saw great potential in the 20-year old Ray and immediately signed him to Caprice, bought him a new wardrobe of clothes and found him somewhere to live.

Ray's first record was Clark's composition "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody" (Caprice 110), released in October 1961. The production was taken care of by Granahan himself, while Hutch Davie supplied the arrangement and accompaniment. Davie had played piano on Jim Lowe's million-selling "The Green Door" in 1956 and had released a few honky tonk piano singles on Atco, including "Woodchopper's Ball", which went to # 51 in 1958. "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody" was/is an excellent record, now a minor classic, and peaked at # 22 on the pop charts and # 10 R&B. In the UK it was released on Pye International, but the song did not chart there until 1963, when it was revived (butchered is perhaps a better word) by Freddie and the Dreamers from Manchester, as part of the Merseybeat phenomenon that was taking the UK by storm. Maxine Brown charted with the song in 1966 (# 63).

Granahan and Davie then recorded an entire LP with James Ray. The album, simply titled "James Ray", included "Itty Bitty Pieces", which was issued as the follow-up single and peaked at # 41 (pop) in the spring of 1962, and "I've Got My Mind Set On You", both written by Rudy Clark. The latter also came out as a single in 1962, on Dynamic Sound 503, but this is probably a re-recording of the Caprice track. (Can anyone confirm this?) George Harrison had picked up a copy of Ray's Caprice LP (now a collector's item) in New York in 1963 and always wanted to record "Got My Mind Set On You" himself. He finally did it in 1988, scoring a # 1 US hit in the process. Rudy Clark went on to sign with Bobby Darin's T.M. Music publishing company and write such hits as "It's In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)" and "Good Lovin'".

James Ray Raymond died in the 1960s from an overdose of drugs. Some sources say he already died in 1962, Joel Whitburn writes "He died soon after his success as a singer" and others date his death towards the end of the sixties. The Social Security Death Index has no entry for him, not under Raymond nor under Ray.

Ray's Caprice LP was reissued on CD by Collectables (COL-5199) in 1994, but is now probably out of print.

Acknowledgements: Mick Patrick (Spectropop message).

Dik

Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny

James Ray remains a tragic footnote in the annals of R&B history -- a gifted singer best remembered for the classic "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody," he died of a drug overdose while his career was still in its infancy. Born James Ray Raymond in Washington, D.C., in 1941, the diminutive vocalist first surfaced on the Gallant label in 1959 with "Make Her Mine," credited to Little Jimmy Ray (also a nod to his uncanny vocal similarities to R&B legend Little Willie John). The record flopped, and like so many details of Ray's brief life, his activities over the next two years are largely a mystery. By 1961, he was homeless, singing on street corners for spare change and living on the roof of a D.C. apartment building -- there he was discovered by aspiring songwriter Rudy Clark, who in turn introduced him to producer and Caprice Records founder Gerry Granahan, whose previous signings included the Angels and Janie Grant. Granahan immediately signed Ray to Caprice, purchasing him a new wardrobe and setting him up in an apartment of his own -- in October 1961, he released the Clark-penned "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody," which crossed over to the pop Top 40 on its way to cracking the R&B Top Ten. The single was also issued in the U.K. in 1962, and a cover rendition was a staple of early Beatles live sets -- another British Invasion act, Freddie & the Dreamers, recorded their own smash version the following year. In the interim, Ray began work on his self-titled debut LP, releasing his second single, "Itty Bitty Pieces," in the spring of 1962. The record was a minor hit, and while the follow-up, "I've Got My Mind Set on You" (like its predecessors authored by Rudy Clark), earned little attention on radio, it nevertheless captivated Beatle George Harrison, who in 1988 scored a solo number one hit with the song. By that time Ray was long dead, however -- a majority of sources suggest his fatal drug overdose occurred sometime in 1963, although the circumstances of his passing are largely unknown and not even the Social Security Death Index contains an official entry.Clark went on to even greater success, however, writing a series of now-classic hits including "It's in His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)" and "Good Lovin'."