Johnny Burnette

John Joseph Burnette (March 25, 1934 – August 14, 1964) was an American singer and songwriter of rockabilly and pop music. In 1952, Johnny, his brother Dorsey Burnette, and their mutual friend Paul Burlison, formed the band that became known as the Rock and Roll Trio. His career was cut short on August 14, 1964, when he drowned following a boat accident, aged 30.

Johnny Burnette was born to Willie May and Dorsey Burnett Sr. in Memphis, Tennessee, United States.

He showed an aptitude for sports, being on the school baseball team and playing linebacker on the football team. Both he and Dorsey were also keen amateur boxers and later became Golden Gloves champions. After leaving high school, Burnette tried his hand at becoming a professional boxer, but after one fight with a sixty-dollar purse and a broken nose, he decided to quit boxing. He went to work on barges traversing the Mississippi River, where Dorsey also worked. Johnny worked mainly as a deck hand; Dorsey worked as an oiler. After work, they would go back to Memphis and perform songs in local bars with a varying array of sidemen, including another former Golden Gloves champion, Paul Burlison, whom Dorsey had met at an amateur boxing tournament in Memphis in 1949.

In 1952, the Burnette brothers and Burlison formed a group called the Rhythm Rangers. Johnny sang and played acoustic guitar, Dorsey played bass and Paul Burlison played lead guitar. For economic reasons, the three moved to New York in 1956 and managed to get an audition for Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. Winning the competition three times in a row gained them a place in the finals and a recording contract with Coral Records, and they renamed themselves the Rock and Roll Trio. They also gained a manager, the bandleader Henry Jerome, and a drummer, Tony Austin (a cousin of Carl Perkins).

Promotional appearances were arranged on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Steve Allen's Tonight Show and Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, together with a summer tour with Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent. On Sunday September 9, 1956, they appeared as finalists on the Original Amateur Hour at Madison Square Garden, singing "Hound Dog". Despite this activity, the three singles this rock and roll trio had released over this period failed to reach any national hit parade. This might be due to a result of Elvis Presley who appeared on a CBS television program that was broadcast live from Los Angeles, CA at exactly the same time that this Burnette trio had performed on ABC televised "Original Amateur Hour" in New York. Furthermore, the CBS show that had broadcast Elvis in Los Angeles, had garnered an 82.6% share, or 60,710,000 viewers, whereas the ABC and NBC networks had garnered less than 5 million viewers each.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.