Biography of Pat Boone

He was clean-cut, polite to his elders, and glorified the nutritional value of milk. To folks who hated everything the new music stood for, Pat Boone was the perfect '50s rock & roller. But no matter how music historians judge the career of Pat Boone, nobody can dispute his enormous sales figures. The well-scrubbed crooner in the white buckskin shoes sold many millions of copies of his sanitized R&B covers during the '50s, helping to facilitate acceptance of rock & roll in the pop marketplace.Boone's family ties are impressive -- he's related to frontier legend Daniel Boone through bloodlines and to country great Red Foley through marriage to his daughter. After debuting on the small Republic imprint in 1954, Boone signed with Dot and took the pop world by storm over the next couple of years with covers of R&B items by Fats Domino, Little Richard, the El Dorados, the Flamingos, Ivory Joe Hunter, and too many others to list here.With his college-boy good looks and an affinity for smooth ballads, Boone crossed over into TV and films, scoring #1 hits in 1957 with "Love Letters in the Sand," from the movie Bernadine, and the theme from the movie April Love, both of which he starred in."Moody River" marked Boone's last chart-topper in 1961, although he gamely tackled everything from novelty rockers ("Speedy Gonzales") to surf songs ("Beach Girl") to sustain his success. These days, you're most likely to encounter Boone and his family (which includes Debby Boone of "You Light Up My Life" fame) on the contemporary Christian circuit or doing work for charitable organizations, the white bucks and crewcut long since retired. ~ Bill Dahl