The Revelation of Johnnie Ray

In 1951, his song “Cry” changed the world

In late 1951, the song “Cry” appeared on the pop charts, and a strangely emotional young man became a superstar. Teenagers rushed to get it, as critics rushed to hate it. “They scream that he ‘can’t sing.’ Yet he is a sensation, and his platter of ‘Cry’ has sold 2,000,000,” a journalist notes in early 1952. His fans weren’t just girls. Bob Dylan recalls he was “the first singer whose voice and style I totally fell in love with.”

The sound was strange, electric, powerful. Calling “Cry” a “revelation,” Susan Sontag recalls in 1978, to Rolling Stone: “I heard it on the jukebox and something happened to my skin.”

The blond, sexually fluid man at the birth of Pop music—who opened a path to men being feeling—is little remembered. I went in search.

There’s hints of him in a few places, like in the 1982 hit song “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners.

Poor old Johnnie Ray,
Sounded sad upon the radio;
He moved a million hearts in Mono.
Our mothers cried;
Sang along, who’d blame them.

He’s in Billy Joel’s 1989 song “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” A 1994 biography by Jonny Whiteside is out of print.