Highly popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor to what became rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music, and his animated stage personality.

[1] Tony Bennett called Ray the "father of rock and roll",[2] and historians have noted him as a pioneering figure in the development of the genre.

[3] Born and raised in Dallas, Oregon, Ray, who was partially deaf, began singing professionally at age 15 on Portland radio stations.

[2] British Hit Singles & Albums noted that Ray was "a sensation in the 1950s; the heart-wrenching vocal delivery of 'Cry' ... influenced many acts including Elvis, and was the prime target for teen hysteria in the pre-Presley days.

[11] After the United States entered World War II, the family moved to Portland, Oregon, where Ray attended Franklin High School.

Ray credited his deafness as pivotal to his career and performance style, saying, "My need for sincerity traces back to when I was a child and lost my hearing.

[1] He began singing professionally on a Portland, Oregon, radio station at age 15,[14] sharing billing with Jane Powell, then a local young singer.

[18] The live television broadcast of Toast of the Town on January 6, 1952, included the first of his several appearances on the widely-seen program that officially changed its title in 1955 to The Ed Sullivan Show.

[20] One source states that Ray "opened the way for Elvis and the overt sexual energy of rock and roll ... [and] is credited by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Elton John as being a formative influence on their artistic styles".

Two months before Kilgallen's death in 1965, her newspaper column plugged Ray's engagements at the Latin Quarter in New York and the Tropicana Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[27] In 1981, Ray hired Alan Eichler as his manager and resumed performing with an instrumental trio rather than with the large orchestras to which he and his audiences had been accustomed for the first 25 years of his career.

"[28] In 1986, Ray appeared as a Los Angeles taxicab driver[29] in Billy Idol's "Don't Need a Gun" video, and is name-checked in the lyrics of the song.

[30] During this time period, Ray was generally playing small venues in the United States such as Citrus College in Los Angeles County, California.

[31] Other 1980s appearances included the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, Resorts International in Atlantic City,[32] and the Vine St. Bar and Grill in Hollywood, where his show was broadcast live by KKJZ ("K-Jazz") radio.

In February 1987, a high-school gym in Alexandria, Louisiana[33] was the venue for a Big Band Gala of Stars that included short sets by Ray, Barbara McNair,[33] and other aging singers.

In 1986, Ray and sitcom actress Marla Gibbs were among the notables who helped dedicate Billie Holiday's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

[34] While Ray's popularity continued to wane in the United States throughout the 1980s, Australian, English and Scottish promoters booked him for large venues as late as 1989, his last year of performing.

[35] Ray was significantly influenced by gospel music[36] and numerous African American singers, specifically Billie Holiday,[13] Little Miss Cornshucks and LaVern Baker, as well as Judy Garland and Kay Starr.

[37] In 1951, before Ray became well known, he was arrested in Detroit, Michigan, for soliciting and accosting an undercover male vice-squad police officer for sex in the restroom of the Stone Theatre, a burlesque house.

[6] Despite her knowledge of the solicitation arrest, Marilyn Morrison, daughter of the owner of the Mocambo nightclub, married Ray at the peak of his American fame.

[a] According to Ray's two biographers, Jonny Whiteside and Tad Mann, he did not have a close relationship with a man or a woman during the 13 years he lived after Bill Franklin stopped interacting with him and phoning him.

[50] In two books that Shaw has authored, he claims that Kilgallen remained faithful to her husband for 13 years, ignoring rumors of his extramarital affairs because she did not witness evidence of any of them during that time frame.

[50] After years of infidelity, Kollmar became careless, to the extent that in 1953 he brought a male lover into the third-floor master bedroom of his and Dorothy's new home, a five-story townhouse on Manhattan's East 68th Street.

[6] Consequently, American newspapers ran display ads for his concerts but reported nothing about his life, such as marital status, offstage behavior, or health issues.

[6] In 1969, shortly after Ray returned to the United States from a European tour with Judy Garland, an American doctor informed him that he was well enough to drink an occasional glass of wine.

After the offers for television stopped, he continued touring, attracting major media attention outside the United States, until he gave his final concert, a benefit for the Grand Theater in Salem, Oregon on October 6, 1989.

[16][2] Ray performed for many years after the National Enquirer began investigating and reporting celebrity substance abuse, but it made no mention of him during his lifetime.

[59] Music journalist Robert A. Rodriguez noted Ray's contemporary obscurity in his 2006 book The 1950s' Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Rock & Roll Rebels, Cold War Crises, and All American Oddities, writing: Though barely remembered today, to the fifties record buying public Ray was something of a former-day Leonard Cohen or a Morrissey, creating a body of work that was the very definition of depressionfest.

"[60] Archival footage of Ray arriving at London Heathrow Airport in 1954 was featured in the 1982 music video for Dexys Midnight Runners' hit single "Come On Eileen".

Ray is one of the cultural touchstones mentioned in the first verse (concerning events from the late 1940s and early 1950s) of Billy Joel's 1989 hit single "We Didn't Start the Fire", between Red China and South Pacific.