Danny Ray Rillion died last week. He was eighty-nine. Old rockabilly guy; I’m Danny Ray Rillion, I’m one in a million. A wild man, in his day. Smashin’ up cars. Smashin’ up bars. Boilermakers for breakfast.
There’s one story you may not have heard, of a kinder, gentler Danny Ray. I only know of it by chance, myself.
My Aunt Cecilia is in a nursing home. The last time I went to visit, a woman named Ruby was in her room. Ruby also lives in the nursing home. She plays gin rummy with Aunt Cecilia, and Ruby used to work for Danny Ray Rillion.
Rillion’s first big hit, “Like a House on Fire”, was released in 1961 on Trident Records. It was number one on the charts for seven weeks. Later that same year, “Dog Track Days” and “You Shine in My Eyes” were released to equal success.
He bought a Cadillac El Dorado, and a yellow ranch-style house. Danny Ray was doing well, but with shows and tours, he was gone for long stretches of time. He needed someone “to tend to things”, as we say down here in the South, and he hired Ruby, Aunt Cecilia’s friend, as a live-in maid.
Ruby moved to the Rillion home in ’62, along with her daughter, Estelle. A pretty little girl with big brown eyes and coffee-colored skin. Estelle was five at the time. She had her own room and a big brass bed and lots of toys and stuffed animals.
Danny Ray was crazy about her. She was “cute as a june bug”, he said. Estelle should’ve been quite a happy little girl.
But Estelle was very ill; acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It was the winter of ’62. She was black, and it was the South of a certain time.
These days, St. Thaddeus Mercy Center is known around the world for its success in treating children like Estelle. Located in Hernando, Mississippi, the hospital is only a few miles down the road from Hernando’s Hideaway, a legendary local dive that was Danny Ray Rillion’s home away from home.
St. Thaddeus had only been open a short while, in the winter of ’62. Its residents were all children. All white.
Today St. Thaddeus has a ninety per cent success rate for treating children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In ’62, the success rate was roughly four per cent. Still, it was Mississippi, and in the language of the time, Estelle was “a colored girl”. No one wanted a child to die. No one wanted to rock any boats, either.
Enter Danny Ray Rillion, boat-rocker par excellence. One morning, after a night-long binge at Hernando’s, Danny Ray Rillion marched into a walnut-paneled room on St. Thaddeus’ ground floor. Holding a pistol steady in his hand, he announced to a somewhat startled Board of Directors, “Gentlemen, we gonna have us a little chat.”
Estelle was one the lucky four per cent, thanks to Danny Ray Rillion. He paid for her care; after seven months at St. Thaddeus, she was well enough to return to the ranch-style house, where she continued her convalescence.
Down the road from St. Thaddeus, in the infamous Hernando’s Hideaway, there is a barstool no one uses; by tacit agreement, it has always been reserved for Danny Ray Rillion.
“I’m Danny Ray Rillion, I’m one in a million”. Smashin’ and crashin’. That’s what the world will remember.
Estelle remembers the tea set he gave her. The stuffed animals all sitting straight in their chairs. She remembers the teacups were covered in roses, and how tiny they seemed in his hands.