Originally published on October 07, 2005

Pat Boone

The Original 'American Idol'

When you mention Pat Boone, there are normally two reactions:

either, "I love his music; what a great guy," or, "What a goody-two-shoes." Boone is celebrating 50 years in the entertainment business. A great-great-great-grandson of Daniel Boone, he has sold over 45 million units and had 38 top 40 hits, including five No. 1s.

 

Boone has been recognized by Billboard as the No. 10 rock recording artist in history, and there is an online grass-roots effort to get him inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (www.backpat.org).

 

Beginning his career: "My dad was a building contractor; Momma was a registered nurse. Nobody in our family was ever in the entertainment business. Momma played a little ukulele. I have a brother who is one year younger than me, and Momma would teach us to sing harmony to songs. My mom and dad had records by Bing Crosby, and I would fantasize about what it would be like to be a singer. In school, whenever there was any sort of a program that called for somebody to sing, I would put up my hand. In junior high and high school I entered contests and sang in school programs.

 

"An old vaudevillian named Ed Jordan was the manager of a local theater, and on Saturday afternoons, before the matinee and the cartoon, he would present three or four acts. The theater was full of screaming, frantic kids running up and down the aisles and throwing popcorn all over the place. Jordan would come out and say, 'Be quiet. We're going to have a stage show, you're going to pick your favorite, and the winner gets a banana split.' I must have appeared there two dozen times, and I got several banana splits.

 

"Jordan began to introduce me as a young Bing Crosby. I was 13. I did a local radio show called Youth on Parade on Saturday mornings. It was a teen talent show with a guy named Frank BoBo playing the piano, accompanying all of us. I appeared on some local television shows and did some talent contests."

 

His first national exposure: "At West High there was a contest, and the first prize was a trip to New York and an audition with The Ted Mack Amateur Hour. I had just graduated from high school and was known as Blue Moon Boone, because whenever there was any sort of program I would always sing 'Blue Moon.' For this contest I picked 'Side by Side' and 'I Believe' and put the two together in a very unlikely medley.

 

"There was a girl named Shirley Foley who was a terrific opera singer. The crowd gave her a very big hand, and I thought, 'Well, she's the winner.' I was waiting by the car, and somebody came out of the gym and said, 'Pat Boone, where are you? Get in here. You've won!' I went in, Shirley was weeping, and I felt horrible. I said, 'This is amazing, and thank you, but I really think Shirley would have a better chance of getting on the show.' They said, 'No, you've got to go,' so I went, auditioned and got on.

 

 

"That summer I had committed to lead the singing for a gospel meeting so far out in the country, they didn't have phones. One day I was eating lunch at a farmer's house when a car came barreling into the yard, scattering chickens, dogs and pigs. The guy driving knocked on the screen door and said, 'Is there a kid named Boone in there? We've got to get you over to the switchboard in the next town. There's somebody on the phone trying to reach you from New York City.'

 

"He took me to the switchboard, and the woman who worked it got the guy on the phone. He said, 'You've won The Ted Mack Amateur Hour. We've got to get you to New York for your second appearance on Saturday.' I went back and sang Eddie Fisher's 'I'm Walking Behind You on Your Wedding Day' and won again. I won the next week, for the third time, and that qualified me for the finals.

 

"Meanwhile, Shirley and I got married and moved to Denton, TX in January and soon learned that we were expecting our first child. In April they called from New York and said, 'We want you to come back and compete with the other three-time winners.' While I was there, Arthur Godfrey had a Monday-night talent show called Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Three performers would compete, and whoever won would be on his morning show for the rest of the week. I thought, 'I'm in New York, so I'll go over and audition.'

 

"To my astonishment, I won and was on Godfrey's show for the rest of the week. The Ted Mack show disqualified me because you can't win a professional show Monday and then be declared an amateur winner Saturday. There was a college scholarship if I won the Ted Mack show, and I thought I had ruined everything."

 

His first record: "On the way back to Denton I stopped in Nashville to see my folks. Randy Wood of Dot Records asked to see me. He said, 'I think you ought to make a record. Let me find a song, and I'll call you.' We shook hands, didn't sign anything, and I went to Denton. I was going to be a schoolteacher, and I was preaching at a little country church.

 

"Randy called eight months later. It was March of '55. He said, 'I've got a song called "Two Hearts, Two Kisses."' It was an R&B hit by Otis Williams & The Charms. A&R guys were starting to discover R&B songs that they could make pop versions of. I flew to Chicago and worked on it for about four hours. The next day we found out that Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, The Lancers and The De Castro Sisters were all jumping on the same song, so Randy sent me to 20 cities in 18 days, and he went to probably 20 more cities, so we covered the country.

 

"I went to every rack jobber and department-store buyer. I'd walk into radio stations. People were hearing the record, but they hadn't seen me. The promotion guy would walk into Detroit and say, 'I've got young Pat Boone, who's got this hit.' They thought Pat Boone had to be black, and I'd have to show them identification before they would accept that I was Pat Boone and wasn't black. The record took off and went right into the top 10 and sold a million copies. I was so exhausted. I thought, 'If this is the record business, I don't want a lifetime of this.'"

 

Deciding not to teach: "I moved to New York and enrolled in Columbia University. We were expecting our second child. Randy found this Fats Domino song that had been No. 1 at R&B and wasn't going to cross to Pop. It was 'Ain't That a Shame.'

 

"After I recorded it I stayed in school and even took a full load. My goal was Phi Beta Kappa. By the time I graduated, in '58, I'd had my first record, in '55; I was top 10 at the box office — I got my first movie out before Elvis did — I had my first million-seller just a little bit before Elvis; and I went on TV in '57, with my own network show on ABC. I made all A's at Columbia and graduated magna cum laude but did not make Phi Beta Kappa on a technicality."

 

Founding a record company: "I started it out of anger and opportunism. I was angry that major labels were dropping major artists in favor of young kids and ignoring 70 million baby boomers. The entertainment business has largely written off that whole generation. They're just looking for people from 13 to 30. I thought this was wrong but that it might also be an opportunity. With a friend, Jim Long, who also had an idea like this, I formed Gold Label. We're creating new opportunities for these artists. In the beginning you didn't get on this label unless you had sold millions of records, had gold records and were still performing. It's for the legends who have made it."

 

Celebrating 50 years in the business: "If a fiction writer wrote all of this, you'd say it could never have happened to one person. I've sung for presidents and queens. I played cricket in England and caught out the English captain, which an American couldn't and shouldn't do. I sunk a left-handed hook shot on The Tonight Show over Bill Russell. I pushed Willie Mays out of the batting cage in Arizona and took batting practice with the Giants. I did all of this at a very early age.

 

"Before I graduated from college, and in the midst of all of this, while I was making April Love and Bernadine, I was writing my first book, Twixt Twelve & Twenty, which was the No. 1 nonfiction best-seller for two years. I fulfilled my ambition to be a teacher before I was out of college because that book of helpful advice to teens was syndicated in national magazines and papers and then went into every high school library in the country. My desire was to be a schoolteacher, and my purpose was to help kids go in the right direction. I carried that into my career."

 

His latest projects: "I have this huge final career campaign. My goal is to put out five albums in one year and hit the charts with each one in a different genre. I did an album of R&B classics with the original performers. We went to the artists and said, 'Will you do a new version of your classic hit and sing it with Pat?' Without exception, they said sure. I do 'Tears of a Clown' with Smokey Robinson; 'Way of the World' with Earth, Wind & Fire; and 'We are Family' with Sister Sledge. The name of the album is We Are Family, and it is coming out right after the first of the year.

 

"We've already released American Glory, which is the first album of America's great patriotic songs and military anthems in 50 years. I was concerned that kids today would never hear 'I'm Proud to Be an American' or 'This Is my Country' or 'Battle Hymn of the Republic,' so I recorded those and produced a video. There's also a song called 'Under God,' which was my answer to this atheist who is trying to take those two words out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Because he doesn't like it, he wants to shut up 99% of America.

 

"We're going after Country with Ready to Rock. It contains the song 'NASCAR Time,' which is rapidly becoming the NASCAR anthem. The F.Y.E. stores are getting ready to do a video in-store promotion in 2,000 stores. A gospel album is next, Glory Train, with a tribute to Billy Graham. We're getting ready to ink a deal with Wal-Mart nationwide. David Pack, Billy Dean and I wrote and produced it. Hopeless Romantic is a love-songs album. It's a group of songs I've recorded over the last several years, including Michael Jackson's 'She's Out of my Life' and the Four Tops hit 'Still Waters Run Deep.' Then there's an album of R&B classics. There is a sixth album, too, Latin Love, on which I sing six songs in Spanish and eight songs in Italian."

 

Favorite radio format: "'Music of Your Life.'"

 

Favorite song: "'Amazing Grace.'"

 

Favorite song he's recorded: "'Exodus.' I wrote the words for the Ernest Gold melody."

 

Favorite television show: "Everybody Loves Raymond. I can't stand that they took that show off. Also Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I love seeing lives changed, and I cry every time."

 

Favorite book: "Past, present and future, it's got to be the Bible."

 

Favorite movie: "Song of the South."

 

Favorite restaurant: "Great Earth."

 

Beverage of choice: "Milk and A&W diet root beer."

 

Hobbies: "Any kind of sports — basketball, golf, tennis. I still want to play, but my knees are hurting because I've run all the cartilage out."

 

E-mail address: "www.patsgold.com."

 

Something about him that would surprise our readers: "I'm a frustrated comedian. I've always been in awe of people who make other people laugh. I've studied what they have and sort of picked it up by instinct."