Ray Peterson

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Ray Peterson (April 23, 1939 – January 25, 2005) was an American pop singer who was best remembered for singing "Tell Laura I Love Her" and "Corrina, Corrina".

Ray T. Peterson was born in Denton, Texas.  As a boy he had to overcome polio. Blessed with a four-octave singing voice, Peterson moved to Los Angeles, California, where he was signed to a recording contract by RCA Victor Records in 1958.[2] He recorded several songs that were minor hits until "The Wonder of You" made it into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart on June 15, 1959. The song would later be recorded by Elvis Presley, with whom Peterson became friends.

Peterson scored a Top 10 hit with the teenage tragedy song, "Tell Laura I Love Her".  In the UK, Decca Records made the decision not to release the latter recording on the grounds that it was "too tasteless and vulgar," and destroyed about twenty thousand copies that had already been pressed. A cover version by Ricky Valance, released by EMI on the Columbia label, was No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks.

In 1960, Peterson created his own record label with his manager Stan Shulman, called Dunes Records, and enlisted the help of record producer Phil Spector with "Corrine, Corrina".

Peterson's dramatic ballad, "I Could Have Loved You So Well", written by Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin  and produced by Spector, only reached #57 on the U.S. chart.  He then tried another death disc, "Give Us Your Blessing", but this time the record only made #70 in the Hot-100. (The later song was covered by the Shangri-Las five years later and became a Top 30 hit.)

His last charting US-Top-30 hit was "Missing You".  By the mid 1960s he had become something of a phenomenon on the west coast of the United States, appearing live in numerous concerts with Paul McCartney-lookalike Keith Allison.

His performances at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, produced by Fred Vail, beginning in 1963 helped fuel a revival of "The Wonder of You," as well as launching his new relationship with MGM Records, an alliance that produced two albums: The Very Best of Ray Peterson which featured most of the Dunes singles, and The Other Side of Ray Peterson, which included many of his nightclub songs. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and by the 1970s when the hit records stopped coming, Peterson became a Baptist Church minister and occasionally played the oldies music circuit.

Peterson was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
Peterson died of cancer in 2005, in Smyrna, Tennessee, aged 65. He left a widow, four sons, and three daughters. He was interred in the Roselawn Memorial Gardens cemetery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

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"Corrine, Corrina" (sometimes "Corrina, Corrina") is a 12-bar country blues song in the AAB form. "Corrine, Corrina" was first recorded by Bo Carter (Brunswick 7080, December 1928). However, it was not copyrighted until 1932 by Armenter "Bo Carter" Chatmon and his publishers, Mitchell Parish and J. Mayo Williams. The song is familiar for its opening verse:
Corrine, Corrina, where you been so long?
Corrine, Corrina, where you been so long?
I ain't had no lovin', since you've been gone

The Mississippi Sheiks, as the Jackson Blue Boys with Papa Charlie McCoy on vocals, recorded the same song in 1930; this time as "Sweet Alberta" (Columbia 14397-D), substituting the words Sweet Alberta for Corrine, Corrina.

"Corrine, Corrina" has been recorded in a number of musical styles, including blues, jazz, rock and roll, Cajun, and Western swing. The title of the song varies from recording to recording, most often with the variant "Corrina, Corrina".

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"Tell Laura I Love Her", a teenage tragedy song written by Jeff Barry and Ben Raleigh, was an American Top Ten popular music hit for singer Ray Peterson in 1960 on RCA Victor Records, reaching #7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Later that same year, the song was recorded and released by Ricky Valance in the United Kingdom, where it went all the way to the #1 spot in the UK Singles Chart. "Tell Laura I Love Her" has been a hit in 14 countries, and has sold over seven million copies.

"Tell Laura I Love Her" is the tragic story of a teenage boy named Tommy who is desperately in love with a girl named Laura. Although they are only teenagers, he wants to marry her, so he enters a stock car race, hoping to win, and use the prize money to buy Laura a wedding ring. The second verse tells how the boy's car overturned and burst into flames—though no-one knows how it happened. Tommy is fatally injured and his last words are "Tell Laura I love her... My love for her will never die." In the final verse, Laura prays inside the chapel, where she can still hear Tommy's voice intoning the title one more time, before it fades out.