Jame Ray - by Mick Patrick

I was called upon to write a few paragraphs about James Ray a couple of years back. My tappings never did get published and were cast aside for possible future use. I just came upon them lurking on my old laptop……..

Life was grim for James Ray (real name James Ray Raymond) until a talented new songwriter and a dynamic A & R man entered his world and changed it around.

Having already enjoyed Top 30 hits under his own name and as the éminence grise behind both the Fireflies and Dicky Doo & the Don’ts, by 1961 Gerry Granahan had founded the Caprice label and immediately charted again with his discoveries the Angels and Janie Grant.

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. Clark would frequently sit at the piano and play his latest compositions for Granahan who advised him that his songs were good but his voice was not and 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 in the five-foot-tall Washington DC-born 20-year- old a talent of Ray Charles-like proportions and immediately signed him to Caprice, bought him a new wardrobe of clothes and found him somewhere to live.

Before the year was over singer Ray and composer Clark were basking in the glory of “If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody” riding high on the pop charts and in the R & B Top 10. Subsequent James Ray releases included the hit “Itty Bitty Pieces”, “Got My Mind Set On You” (a huge hit for George Harrison many years later) and the original version of Ben E. King & Dee Dee Sharp’s “We Got A Thing Going On”.

Rudy Clark went on to sign with Bobby Darin’s T.M. Music publishing company and write such great songs as “It’s In His Kiss” and “Good Lovin’”. “If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody” was successfully revived by Brit-popsters Freddie & the Dreamers in 1963 and three years later in soulful style by Maxine Brown.

James Ray Raymond died in the ’60s from an overdose of drugs. What a waste.

Hey la,

Mick Patrick