From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Fri Mar 8, 2002  1:15 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Johnny Dollar
 
JOHNNY DOLLAR

Born John Washington Dollar Jr., 8 March 1933, Kilgore, Texas
Died 13 April 1986, (probably) Nashville, Tennessee

Few people outside the Dallas area had heard of Johnny Dollar before the
release of his "Mr. Action Packed" CD in the summer of 1998. The quality
of the rockabilly music on this posthumous release is such that it's very
hard to understand why these recordings were trapped in a tape box
for forty years.
Johnny Dollar sprang upon the 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 mix
of talent and bravado to impress Big "D" Jamboree owner/promoter
Ed McLemore and 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.
In the second half of the sixties, Dollar switched to country and scored a
# 15 hit on the Billboard country charts with "Stop the Start" on Columbia
in 1966. After divorcing his fourth wife in the late seventies, he became
depressed and began to drink heavily. In the early eighties he was
diagnosed with throat cancer. The loss of his voice after an operation
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 in April 1986.

Further reading: http://www.rockabillyhall.com/JohnnyDollar.html
and the liner notes to the CD: "Mr. Action Packed". (US: Dragon Street
Records, UK: Rollercoaster).