On this day (March 11) in 2021, Ray Campi, sometimes called the King of Rockabilly, died peacefully in his Los Angeles, California, home at the age of 86. Born in 1934, Campi’s music career began in the late 1940s. Initially finding little success, he left his native New York for California, where he became a high school English teacher. Then, he was coaxed out of retirement in the early 1970s. Before long, he was touring Europe and drawing massive crowds who were hungry for high-energy throwback tunes.
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Campi was born in New York but grew up in Texas. There, he learned to love country music from the likes of Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, and other early greats. By the end of the 1940s, Campi had taken on the mokiker Rambling Ray and was singing on Austin-based radio stations, according to Vintage Rock. He also auditioned for The Louisiana Hayride and Capitol Records, but was turned away…