His music career began in the 1950s with his debut album Ragdoll Blues. Released on Solidtrain Records, "Pretty" Boy melded the musical stylings of Chuck Berry's rock and roll lick's with the range, tone, and intensity of George Jones. After the success of Ragdoll Blues, "Pretty" slipped into a hiatus of obscurity, living in the countryside chasing the elusive barn mouse.
Like so many of us, the music coming out of Greenwich Village in the 1960s instilled the feelings of beatnik restlessness, a yearning to discover the "true America", and urban bohemia. Bob Dylan's freewheelin' lyrics, Lenny Bruce's satirist anecdotes, and the Civil, LGBTQ+, and Veterans rights demonstrations influenced "Pretty" Boy to release his sophomore follow-up "Greenwich to Greenwood".
The tastemakers and record executives realigned their values (and checkbooks) with a genre that would be endorsed by the proto-yuppie and rejected by the youth of the 1970s who were too busy following the Dead. Maybe it was his fascination with Donna Summer. Maybe it was a sudden epiphany involving dancing and Studio 54. "Pretty" Boy gathered a studio brass section, chicken-scratch guitars, and soaring reverberated vocals.
After decades in the spotlight, "Pretty" Boy retired to Denver where he regales the neighborhood with stories of playing cards with Waylon Jennings, listening to the early takes of "Sound of Silence" at the Village Underground, and the apparent "influence" for John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever.
The little man who inspired this series is a Seal Mitted Ragdoll named Pretty Boy. A man beyond his years but a meow as youthful as his spirit.
