Rocker's kids keep songs alive

April 26, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Remembering Ricky Nelson

When it comes to The Nelsons, there’s no other family like it in show business.

It’s mind-boggling to fully understand the popularity and achievements of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson (classic television show “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”), early rocker Ricky Nelson and early ’90s pop-rock act Nelson (featuring Matthew and Gunnar). To put it in perspective, it would be if Elvis Presley’s daughter was Madonna and his grandson was Justin Bieber.

“There are some similarities, but the thing that’s different, those artists had the benefit of having an established set of rules or a paradigm that they can pull from,” said Gunnar Nelson, calling from Nashville. “At that time, there were three channels to watch on television, and ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ was a show that people grew up with for 14 years and 435 episodes. It was a real family playing a real family, and when our dad started playing music, it was considered the devil’s music.”

Naturally, that devil’s music was rock ’n’ roll. Ricky Nelson is viewed today as one of the most important rock artists of the ’50s and ’60s with more than 100 million record sales and three No. 1 hits. Speaking of topping the charts, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson did just that with a 1934 hit “Over Somebody Else’s Shoulder,” while Nelson the band accomplished the feat in 1990 with the single “[Can’t Live Without Your] Love and Affection.” At that point the entire Nelson clan landed in the Guinness World Records as the only family to reach No. 1 record status in three successive generations.

Keeping their family’s name alive, and specifically the achievements of their father from washing away in the sands of time, is what Gunnar and his brother, Matthew, are doing these days with their brand-new retrospective Ricky Nelson Remembered, which comes to the area Friday at Westminster College’s Orr Auditorium.

“The show we’re bringing to town is just our dad’s material and the Nelson family story,” Gunnar said. “We’re really an American story. The family has been accepted into the Smithsonian Institution officially this year for our cultural impact. We play ‘Travelin’ Man,’ ‘Hello Mary Lou,’ ‘Poor Little Fool,’ ‘Garden Party’ and more. It was hard paring this down to fit in two hours of music because he sold 230 million singles. But it was a happy problem, and we cover all the bases pretty well.”

Ricky Nelson Remembered was basically conceived over the past half decade, but it wasn’t until last year the production upped its ante with an improved stage show and multimedia presentation. So far, audiences have been showing a positive response, which is something special for Nelson.

More so, the idea of spending an evening with his dad’s music truly has provided him with a connection that he hadn’t felt since before his father died in a tragic 1985 plane crash.

“It feels like he’s not gone to me, which I suppose is selfish in a sense, but I’ll take it,” Nelson said. “He was really a great guy, and he was our best friend. So we approached this with the highest degree of integrity. I think we’re doing a show he would be really proud of.”