Johnnie Strickland (June 23, 1935 in Weldon, North Carolina – June 13, 1994 in Halifax, North Carolina), also known as Johnny Strickland, was an American rockabilly and rock 'n' roll musician.

Life

Not much is known about Strickland's life. Music journalists like Bill Millar or Adam Komorowski, experts in the field of rock 'n' roll, have not been successful in finding out further biographical data. Strickland was from North Carolina and made his first recordings in 1958 in Nashville, Tennessee. He recorded the single She's Mine / You've Got What It Takes (with Hank Garland on guitar) for Roulette Records, which was released in November 1958. Good sales in the US prompted the record company to release Strickland's single in Europe, where the record was only released in limited numbers.

However, Strickland's subsequent singles failed to replicate or surpass the success. In early 1961, his last single, That's Baby / Fool's Hall of Fame, was released as Roulette didn't renew his contract. All sessions were recorded in Nashville with studio musicians. Strickland also worked as a songwriter during these years. With Thomas Lawrence, probably a friend of Strickland, he wrote many of his own songs such as She's Mine and also composed Born to Rock, which was recorded by John Ashley for Dot Records.

After that, Strickland did not record any more songs. According to Bill Millar, he recorded a total of ten songs for Roulette, suggesting that there are some previously unreleased Strickland songs in the Roulette archives. In 1988, all eight songs released were released on a double LP with Jimmy C. Newman entitled Carry On. Due to a misprint on some records of his first roulette single, which wrote his first name Johnny, it has also been misspelled on many compilations since the 1970s, so that the second (and generally more common) spelling in particular became common.

Strickland died in 1994.   Read original text here (German) >>> Johnnie Strickland

Original release ROULETTE-4119 (US) 11/1958 // This release, re-issue on RM rma 1015 [1977]