Biography
-
Born
1943 (age 81)
-
Born In
Newton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
Ricky Coyne was born in 1943 in Newton, Massachusetts, but grew up in Waltham and Watertown. He became interested in music in the early 1950s and was influenced by Country artists. When the Rockabilly sound came from Memphis, Tennessee, in 1956 and the famed Sun Records artists like Carl Perkins, Sonny Burgess, Warren Smith, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bill Justis rose to fame with this new brand of music, Coyne was amazed. Another big influence on him was Johnny Burnette's Rock'n'Roll Trio that recorded for Coral Records.
Ricky Coyne (standing) and his Guitar Rockers
That same year, he formed a Rockabilly band at the age of 13 with himself on vocals and lead guitar, Rich Valletta on rhythm guitar, Brian Duffy on drums and Randy Martin on piano. Coyne recalls: " It seems the day after I began hearing the amazing music of blues and country mixtures, i.e. Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, early Ray Charles on Atlantic etc." He called his band "The Guitar Rockers", named after Bill Flagg's 1956 hit "Guitar Rock" and soon they were performing a lot of local dances with then popular DJs in Boston. One of the young vocalists that appeared with the band sometimes was Mel McGonnigle, who used the Guitar Rockers as his backing band when he recorded his first single at the Ace Recording Studios in 1958. Coyne and the Guitar Rockers caught the attention of Event Records' executives and were signed to a contract. Their first single was "Rollin' Pin Mim" b/w "I'll Love You
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
