Larry Finnegan born 10 October 1938

John Lawrence Finneran, better known by his stage name Larry Finnegan  (October 10, 1938 – July 22, 1973) was an American pop singer.

Finneran was born in Jamaica, a suburb of New York. He had six brothers and one sister. The family moved to Queens, N.Y., where his father was a policeman. When just a young boy, Larry started singing in a church choir and in time he learned to play guitar, 

drums and piano. His big interests were journalism and music. He attended Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana as a Communication Arts student.

When it came to music, Larry counted Johnny Cash and Don Gibson as his two favourite artists. While at the university he and his older brother Vincent, then a senior at Boston College, wrote Dear One. They started knocking on the doors of record companies all over New York, but had no takers until they met Hy Weiss, the owner of the small but successful Old Town Records. 

Weiss had already produced such hits as So Fine by the Fiestas from 1959, and Let The Little Girl Dance by Billy Bland the following year, as well as Life Is But A Dream by the Harptones. Hy Weiss recognized Larry's talent and saw the potential in Dear One. He also changed Larry's last name from Finneran to Finnegan, figuring that dee-jays stood a better chance of remembering a common name like Finnegan.

                              

Dear One/Candy Lips was released as Old Town 1113 at the end of 1961. It climbed to #11 on 'Billboard's' Hot 100 in April 1962. The record is a mid paced rocker, certainly not frantic but with a haunting quality and a catchy and in place female voice chanting the title plus repeating parts of the lyrics. It certainly contains good

piano/guitar work and was like a breath of fresh air when it was issued throughout Europe in 1962 on the HMV label. It did not achieve great chart heights in Great Britain but elsewhere it was a smash.

Dear One wasn't Larry's first recording, though. In 1959, he recorded I'll Be Back, Jack for Decca Records. It wasn't released at the time, but with the success of Dear One, Decca issued it on their Coral label. They were of course hoping to ride on the success of Dear One but the record went nowhere.  Coral Records in the USA issued 'I'll Be Back Jack' in 1962 but the official follow up was 'Pretty Suzy Sunshine' the same year on Old Town. 

Another tasty little rocker complete with a sax in the backing, it was not a great commercial success. Strangely, this does not appear to have been issued as a single in Sweden but did get a release in the UK on London American. 1962 also saw the release of Larry's cover of Don Gibson's 'Oh Lonesome Me' on Old Town whilst 'A Kiss And A Dozen Roses/Pick Up The Pieces' came out the next year.

In 1963, he was invited by Sonet to visit Sweden for an extensive tour. He immediately accepted and arrived for his first foreign concerts in August that year. Sonet signed him both as a singer and songwriter. One song he wrote, Johnny Loves Me, became a big hit by Dutch female singer Maria Pereboom, better known as 'Suzie'.

Meanwhile back in the States, Finnegan had signed with Ric Records in 1964 and had two singles on the label. The first was 'Dear One Part Two' c/w 'Baton Rouge' and was followed by '(A Tribute To Ringo Starr) The Other Ringo'. If one casts one's mind back, Lorne Greene had a smash record with 'Ringo' around this time but this was nothing to do with the Beatles. As such, it was a clever and ambitious attempt by Finnegan to latch onto the world popularity of the quartet from England - it failed.

With his on-going popularity in Sweden, Finnegan set up his own Svensk American Records in the country and between 1965 and 1969, he issued a further nine singles, two EPs and three albums. He also signed with Vogue Records of Germany and issued three German language singles between 1965 and 1967. Some reports have that Larry moved on to Switzerland before returning to America around 1969. 

He had invested most of his money in the Stock Market but lost most of his savings around 1970 time. He lived a quiet life in South Bend, Indiana for three years before succumbing to a brain tumor on 22 July 1973, dying at the young age of 34.

(Edited from BlackCat Rockabilly & Bear Family.com)