Ringo Starr

By Randal Hill
Guest Columnist

Ringo Starr

Since you are reading this in a senior publication, there’s a good chance you not only remember Ringo Starr’s “You’re Sixteen” from 50 years ago, but the original 1960 version by Johnny Burnette, as well.

Burnette was born in 1935 and lived with his parents and brother Dorsey in a Memphis housing project that included equally poor neighbors Vernon, Gladys and Elvis Presley.

After school days ended, music lovers Johnny, Dorsey and a mutual friend formed the hard-driving Johnny Burnette Trio. They toured constantly and recorded some high-octane 45s that went nowhere. (Rockabilly collectors now lust after those obscure plastic discs.)

Later, Johnny and Dorsey moved to Los Angeles to become songwriters for Ricky Nelson (“Believe What You Say,” “It’s Late”). As a solo artist, Johnny signed with Los Angeles’s Liberty Records and proceeded to cut some minor hit singles.

Burnette’s only Top Ten career tune was the bouncy, violin-saturated “You’re Sixteen,” which ended up on the best-selling soundtrack of George Lucas’s 1973 nostalgia movie “American Graffiti.” In 1964, Johnny died in a California boating accident.

The Oldest Beatle

Ringo, the oldest Beatle, was born Richard Starkey in 1940 in the Dingle, Liverpool’s most depressed inner-city district. Housing there usually meant cramped quarters, poor ventilation and a rear door that opened onto an outhouse.

Young Starkey was often in and out of hospitals with various illnesses. At age 13, he began a two-year stay in a sanitorium after he contracted tuberculosis. As with many other long-term patients, he was encouraged to join the institution’s musical group. (He was often heard beating upon the cabinets next to his bed with a mallet that he fashioned from a cotton bobbin.) “I was in the hospital band,” he has explained. “That’s where I really started playing. I never wanted anything else from then on.”

At 15, barely literate and uninterested in school, he took menial Liverpool jobs until he found employment as a rock ‘n’ roll drummer and soon became well-known as a member of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, one of the premier rock groups in the city.

As he wore two rings on each hand, he adopted the stage name Rings (later Ringo) Starr. In 1962, he was hired by the Beatles to replace their dour original drummer Pete Best, who hadn’t meshed well with fun-loving John, Paul and George.

Ringo’s version of “You’re Sixteen” featured a “chugging” lope and a lot of help from his friends (get it?) on his million-selling Apple Records single. Among the many musicians who offered background support that day in the recording studio were — no surprise here — John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney.

During the bridge of Ringo’s “You’re Sixteen,” Paul McCartney made a sound like a kazoo with his mouth, although his quirky contribution was credited as a “vocal sax solo” on Starr’s “Ringo” album. Go figure.

Sometimes thought of as the neglected Beatle who dwelt in the Lennon-McCartney-Harrison shadow, Sir Richard Starkey is said to have a net worth of $350 million today.