page_title: Pat Boone
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Pat Boone / Life and career / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Wash D.C. August 1, 1996 ... duet for a fan
context_page_description: Patrick Charles Eugene Boone is an American singer, composer, actor, writer, television personality, motivational speaker, and spokesman. He was a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He sold more than 45 million records, had 38 Top 40 hits, and appeared in more than 12 Hollywood films.
  According to Billboard, Boone was the second-biggest charting artist of the late 1950s, behind only Elvis Presley, and was ranked at No. 9 in its listing of the Top 100 Top 40 Artists 1955–1995. Until the 2010s, Boone held the Billboard record for spending 220 consecutive weeks on the charts with one or more songs each week.
  At the age of 23, he began hosting a half-hour ABC variety television series, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, which aired for 115 episodes. Many musical performers, including Edie Adams, Andy Williams, Pearl Bailey, and Johnny Mathis, made appearances on the show. His cover versions of rhythm and blues hits had a noticeable effect on the development of the broad popularity of rock and roll. Elvis Presley was the opening act for a 1955 Pat Boone show in Cleveland, Ohio.
  As an author, Boone had a number-one bestseller in the 1950s.
context_section_description: Boone began his career by performing in Nashville's Centennial Park. He began recording in 1954 for Republic Records (not to be confused with the current label with that name), and by 1955, for Dot Records. His 1955 version of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" was a hit. This set the stage for the early part of Boone's career, which focused on covering R&B songs by black artists for a white American market. Randy Wood, the owner of Dot, had issued an R&B single by the Griffin Brothers in 1951 called "Tra La La-a"—a different song from the later LaVern Baker one—and he was keen to put out another version after the original had failed. This became the B-side of the first Boone single "Two Hearts Two Kisses", originally by the Charms – whose "Hearts Of Stone" had been covered by the label's Fontane Sisters.
  A number-one single in 1956 by Boone was a second cover and a revival of a then seven-year-old song "I Almost Lost My Mind", by Ivory Joe Hunter, which was originally covered by another black star, Nat King Cole. According to an opinion poll of high-school students in 1957, the singer was nearly the "two-to-one favorite over Elvis Presley among boys and preferred almost three-to-one by girls ..." During the late 1950s, he made regular appearances on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee, hosted by his father-in-law.
  He cultivated a safe, wholesome, advertiser-friendly image that won him a long-term product endorsement contract from General Motors during the late 1950s, lasting through the 1960s. He succeeded Dinah Shore singing the praises of the GM product: "See the USA in your Chevrolet ... drive your Chevrolet through the USA, America's the greatest land of all!" GM had also sponsored The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom. In the 1989 documentary Roger & Me, Boone stated that he first was given a Chevrolet Corvette from the GM product line, but after his wife and he started having children, at one child a year over five years, GM supplied him with a station wagon, as well.
  Many of Boone's hit singles were covers of hits from black Rock and Roll artists. These included: "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino; "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally" by Little Richard; "At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama)" by The El Dorados; and the blues ballads "I Almost Lost My Mind" by Ivory Joe Hunter, "I'll be Home" by the Flamingos and "Don't Forbid Me" by Charles Singleton. Boone also wrote the lyrics for the instrumental theme song for the movie Exodus, which he titled "This Land Is Mine". (Ernest Gold had composed the music.)
  As a conservative Christian, Boone declined certain songs and movie roles that he felt might compromise his beliefs—including a role with sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. In one of his first films, April Love, the director, Henry Levin, wanted him to give co-star Shirley Jones a kiss (which was not in the script). Since this would be his first onscreen kiss, Boone said that he wanted to talk to his wife first, to make sure it was all right with her. He had his own film production company, Cooga Mooga Productions.
  He appeared as a regular performer on Arthur Godfrey and His Friends from 1955 through 1957, and later hosted his own The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, on Thursday evenings. In 1959, Boone's likeness was licensed to DC Comics, first appearing in Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane No. 9 (May 1959) before starring in his own series from the publisher which lasted for five issues from September 1959 to May 1960.  In the early 1960s, he began writing a series of self-help books for adolescents, including Twixt Twelve and Twenty. The British Invasion ended Boone's career as a hitmaker, though he continued recording throughout the 1960s. In the 1970s, he switched to gospel and country, and he continued performing in other media, as well. In the 1960s and 1970s. the Boone family toured as gospel singers and made gospel albums, such as The Pat Boone Family and The Family Who Prays.
  In the early 1970s, Boone founded the record label Lamb & Lion Records. It featured artists such as Pat, the Pat Boone Family, Debby Boone, Dan Peek, DeGarmo and Ke
caption: Pat and Debby Boone singing for a fan, 1997
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