John Washington Dollar, Jr

1933 - 1986  (53 years)

• Name	John Washington Dollar
  Suffix	Jr
  Born	8 Mar 1933	, Kilgore, Texas
  Gender	Male
  _UID	2E1AC32E15CA11D782E700047586F39BF6A5
  Died	13 Apr 1986	California
  Person ID	I141	Linder-Hood
  Last Modified	20 May 2018

  
  

  Father	John Washington Dollar,   b. 30 Aug 1891, , Hotsprings Co., AR ,   d. 30 Apr 1972, Houston, Texas  (Age 80 years)
  Mother	Nellie Mae Morgan,   b. 20 Sep 1896, Morrilton, Conway, Arkansas, United States ,   d. 6 Aug 1991, Katy, Harris, TX  (Age 94 years)
  Married	24 Dec 1912	Bristow, Creek, OK
  _UID	4161AAF5F8E36644AAC616B88B1C79C5E94A
  Family ID	F88	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	Ruth Thompson
  _UID	CA288801BD3CBE4DAF1B42538784736BC75F
  Last Modified	21 May 2018 03:52:48
  Family ID	F98	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 2	Mary
  _UID	6A90942BA83CCA4C9DED2016FD841E819329
  Last Modified	21 May 2018 03:52:48
  Family ID	F99	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 3	Cindy Mills
  _UID	BD00E1C1D739E74AB86A5EC2B1514C336338
  Last Modified	21 May 2018 03:52:48
  Family ID	F100	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 4	Carol
  _UID	4F7B6ACCF9936E4A8C1ED095B2D8222726E6
  Last Modified	21 May 2018 03:52:48
  Family ID	F101	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  He went by the name of Johnny Dollar in his country western singing. He had his own band, he was on the radio,TV and appeared on the Grand Old Opera. He got throat cancer and killed himself. __________ Johnny Dollar, Mr. Action Packed http://www.rockabilly.nl/artists/jdollar.htm A name like "Johnny Dollar" is so overtly showbiz that most people would automatically assume that is was the creation of a seasoned record company promotion department or a cigar-chomping talent manager's overwrought imagination. Surprisingly, though, it's the actual given name of one of the most overlooked early rockabilly and country talents to emerge from Texas' fertile musical soil: John Washington Dollar, Jr. Johnny Dollar sprang upon the Dallas, Texas music scene in the late 1950's sporting dark-haired good looks, a wild rebel attitude and a full-bodied rock and roller's voice to match. This former used car salesman had the right touch of talent and bravado to impress Big "D" Jamboree owner/promoter Ed McLemore and soon become part of Ed's Artist Services talent roster. Johnny's early collaborations with legendary songwriter Jack Rhodes yielded startlingly powerful early rockabilly gems such as Rhodes' "Green-Eyed Cat", "Rockin' Bones" (first recorded by Elroy Deitzel, later made famous by Ronnie Dawson and still later covered by The Cramps), and "Action Packed", which also served as a template for Ronnie Dawson's second 45 rpm release of the same name. Johnny and Jack often held makeshift recording and song writing sessions at Jacks' Trail 80 Courts motel in Mineola, TX which contained a primitive recording studio in one of the motels' empty rental rooms. By the mid-50's, Rhodes was well known as a hot country/pop songwriter who had a particular talent for writing songs in the sassy new "cat music" style that was later to be called rockabilly, and eventually rock & roll. In addition to his song writing talents, Rhodes was a talented businessman and deal maker with legitimate music business connections, making him the focal point for many up-and-coming performers looking for just the right catchy song to break into the charts. Rhodes spotted a potential winner in Johnny Dollar and provided him with many of his best rockabilly efforts to record later for McLemore's Big "D" Publishing Co. in Dallas' Sellers Studios under the direction of session producer Johnny Hicks. He's supported on record by some of Dallas' best home grown rockers of the era: innovative guitarist Howard Reed (later to become one of Gene Vincent's Blue Caps), spectacular teenage piano-pounder C. B. Oliver, and (most likely) Grady Owen on bass (also a Blue Cap-to-be) and an unknown drummer. The result was classic transitional rockabilly, played electric and full blown by a tight, sympathetic ensemble and fronted by a swaggering, tough-talking lead singer who combined the good looks of a Warren Smith or Elvis Presley with a hint of Gene Vincent-style danger and aggression. An unbeatable combination that should have (and surely would have) made Johnny Dollar famous if the results had ever been released on record to the public. Mysteriously, however, they were not and instead they remained trapped in a Bekins Moving Company box on old reels of Scotch audio tape in the closet of a north Dallas home for almost forty years until their discovery in 1997. John Washington Dollar, Jr. was born in a makeshift tent on March 8th, 1933 in Kilgore, Texas to John and Nellie Mae Morgan "Millie" Dollar as the fifth of six children. John and Millie (who were part Creek Indians) moved to the oil boom town from Bristow, Oklahoma in 1932 and leased 20 acres from a local black man at $1 an acre. Johnny and younger brother Jimmy went to school in Kilgore, Fredericksburg, Crab Apple Creek (a one room school) and Junction, before Johnny left home in 1948 or '49 to live with older brother Milford in Sheridan, Texas where he attended Schreiner's Military Academy. Johnny and John Sr., who ran a Shell oil station in town, were always at odds with each other and after Johnny left home he was rarely seen by the family for long stretches of time, making his background very hard to trace during this period. He joined the Marines at age 17, where he supposedly acquired a taste for singing and entertaining. After he left the service, he drifted to west Texas where he picked up singing jobs as he could, worked as a roughneck in the oil fields, as a truck driver and as as a lumber yard man. In 1952, Johnny started recording for Shelby Singleton's D Records and cut a record called Walking Away at his own expense. When nothing happened with the disc, he became a deejay at stations in Louisiana and New Mexico, formed a band called The Texas Sons, and began performing in Shreveport at the famous Louisiana Hayride, which was regularly broadcast over radio station KWKH. He tried his hand at releasing a record again, this time for Winston Records, called Lumberjack, but again it failed to garner much attention. By 1957 or '58, he drifted back to Texas where he took up the rockabilly style that Elvis Presley and others were making popular, eventually talking his way into the good graces of Ed McLemore and joining the Big "D" Jamboree cast. Some of his live performances from those shows are included on this disc, as well as the previously unreleased rockabilly studio recordings which make up the body of this record. It was these recordings that later influenced current rockabilly legend Ronnie Dawson, who styled much of his early arrangements and performances after Dollar's recorded works. Compare Johnny's version of Action Packed, for instance, with Ronnie's later single (available on the double CD "Rockin' Bones: The Legendary Masters" Crystal Clear) to see just how close the performances were. The Big D Music connection is also strongly evident here, notably because producer/DJ/MC Johnny Hicks virtually ran the publishing company and conducted many of the sessions for both Dollar and Dawson, often even using the same studio, backing musicians and scores. It seems incredible now that none of these exceptional recordings ever came out during their heyday. As the popularity of the first wave of rockabilly artists began to wane in the late 1950's, Johnny evidently became discouraged with music as a career and switched to selling financial investments in Oklahoma. According to brother Jimmy, it was here that he met country artist Ray Price, who happened to be a principal in the company Johnny was working for and gave Johnny his first real break in the big time. Price liked the personable singer and got him signed with Columbia Records (now Sony Music) where he became known as Johnny $ Dollar and "Mr. Personality", enjoying a string of respectable C&W hits such as Tear-Talk (Top 50) and Stop the Start (of Tears in My Heart) (Top 15). He was nominated in 1966 and 1967 respectively for Billboard and Records World's "Best New Artist" award, and later in 1967 he moved to Dot Records (Your Hands), and then to Date Records where he enjoyed some success with The Wheels Fell of the Wagon Again and Everybody's Got to Be Somewhere. He soon changed labels again, this time to Chart Records in 1968, where he had a pair of notable truck driving hits with Big Rig Rollin' Man and Big Wheels Sing For Me (1969). His final hit was for Chart in 1970 withTruck Driver's Lament, which made the Top 75. When the hits began to dry up, Johnny left the stage behind and became a Nashville-based producer for Jim Cartwright, Bonnie Cash, the New Coon Creek Girls, Jimmy Dickens and Teddy Nelson, receiving a platinum and a gold album for Nelson's record sales in Europe. Unfortunately, after he divorced his fourth wife, Carole Dollar, he appeared to lose his way, became depressed and began to drink heavily. According to his nephew, Dr. Charles Yeargan, Johnny was diagnosed with throat cancer in the early 1980s and underwent an operation to remove the cause of the disease, effectively destroying his voice in the process. The loss of his voice and the subsequent reappearance of the cancer by the mid-1980s plunged Johnny into an even deeper depression, resulting in more drinking bouts and ending with him taking his own life on April 13th, 1986. Always the so-called black sheep of the family, Johnny's music career and drifting ways always stood at odds with the rest of his kin, most of whom went into the ministry at some time or other. Younger brother, Reverend James "Jimmy" Dollar, remembers the time that Johnny was asked why he didn't follow the rest of his family into the seminary, to which he wryly replied "Hell, my job is to keep them supplied with customers!". There's no doubt that there would have been plenty of customers for Johnny's rockabilly music if it had been released on record by a label and received some reasonable radio play. Now, with the rediscovery of this music some forty years since it was first recorded, maybe Johnny Dollar can finally laugh and say "It's My Day", baby! - David Dennard, 1998 Sources: Definitive Country by Barry McCloud, Perigee Books Bear Family Records The Nashville Banner From the liner notes of Mr. Action Packed Dragon Street Records, 1998. Courtesy of Rock Therapy Records