Ricky Nelson: "Poor Little Fool"

July 28, 1958 (3 weeks)

By rights, everyone should have hated Ricky Nelson. He was born to parents who were already radio stars in the US and their fame would only increase as they made the effortless move to television. Ricky and his older brother David would join their folks on the hugely popular sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet which made them show business royalty. Not content to be stuck in their shadow, the younger Nelson boy decided to become a rock 'n' roll singer at the age of sixteen and quickly succeeded in that field too. So much for paying your dues. You might say Ricky Nelson was Hollywood's original nepo baby.

The other thing that must have frustrated his contemporaries is that he didn't make an ass of himself when he became a recording artist. A lot of young entertainers who subsequently made the jump from TV to music would go on to do so with crass commercialism as their guide but Nelson took what he was doing seriously from the off. We're still a couple years away from him dropping the boyish 'Ricky' to the more somber 'Rick', a decade away from his move to country music and it wouldn't be until he was in his thirties that he wrote and recorded history's first protest song about celebrity entitlement but even at just barely eighteen he was already out to prove that in music he was the real deal. And he was, at least some of the time.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of "Poor Little Fool" is that it was written by a young woman who was about the same age as Nelson. Sharon Sheeley had been a teen model who, much like the subject of this blog entry, suddenly decided to try her hand at songwriting. This happened to be the first song she wrote. Humph, these bloody show offs. My first attempt at a song was some drivel about dreaming of becoming a star. People who hit the ground running make me sick.

But back to Sheeley and her first composition. I find it fascinating that a song about a young man who gets lured in by a girl with "carefree, devil eyes" was written by a woman. Did she sneak a little sarcasm in? The roots of it are said to go back to when she dated Don Everly of The Everly Brothers so it was probably written from the female perspective before switching it around but I like to think that she was sneering a little at the gullible dumbass who fell for the wrong girl. Better yet, sneering at the selfish jerk who now plays the victim as soon as his girl got some sense. Nothing in Nelson's reading would suggest an ulterior motive on Sheeley's part but I'm happy to speculate.

Much of Ricky Nelson's very jam packed forty-five years is of interest, from his childhood stardom all the way to his tragic death. Unfortunately, his music didn't always live up to the man himself. He had his moments but "Poor Little Fool" isn't quite one of them. Everything about it is just all right. It's sort of cool that his voice sounds like it belongs to someone at least twice his age but I'm not convinced that this maturity does Sheeley's work justice. He continued to play it near the end of his life by which point he seemed better suited to it. Elvis Presley's backing singers The Jordanaires do a great job rescuing it from sheer dullness so there's that. I don't quite dislike it as much as I feel I ought to but I certainly don't love it either. And, for the record, this has nothing to do with me being jealous of Nelson. Sheeley and her ease with songwriting, on the other hand...

Score: 5