Born to entertainment power couple Ozzie and Harriet, Ricky Nelson made his performance debut at age 8. He first found success playing himself on his parents’ sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In the late 1950s, he transitioned to music mostly to impress a girlfriend. Between 1957 and 1962, Nelson sent 30 songs to the Top 40—outperformed by only Elvis Presley and Pat Boone. On this day (May 29) in 1961, Sam Cooke’s loss was Ricky Nelson’s gain as the teen idol launched a two-week run atop the U.S. singles chart with “Travelin’ Man”.
The Unexpected Country Connection to This Ricky Nelson Hit
Written by singer-songwriter Jerry Fuller, our narrator of “Travelin’ Man” is precisely what its title suggests, with an eye for gorgeous women everywhere he goes: “a pretty senorita” in Mexico; a “sweet fraulein” in Germany; and a “pretty Polynesian baby over the sea.”
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Country Music Hall of Famer Glen Campbell, a highly sought-after session musician at the time, played guitar on Fuller’s demo of the track.
A Hit Rescued From Oblivion
Fuller, who died in 2024, recalled writing “Travelin’ Man” in the 2008 documentary The Wrecking Crew: The Untold Story of Rock & Roll Heroes.
“I was sitting in a park in Hollywood…and I didn’t play an instrument, I just beat on my dashboard, and hummed the melody,” he said. “And it’s a fairly simple song, but I took a world atlas, and I looked up what they called a girl in Germany, and Mexico…and I made a song out of it. ‘A girl in every port’ was the idea.”
However, if Fuller had had his way, the song would never have reached Ricky Nelson at all.
A massive Sam Cooke fan, Fuller brought “Travelin’ Man” to the soul singer-songwriter’s manager, J.W. Alexander.
Cooke was unimpressed, but Nelson’s bass player, Joe Osborn, was reportedly intrigued by what he heard through the studio wall.
[RELATED: Songwriter Jerry Fuller, Who Wrote Hits for Ricky Nelson and Gary Puckett, Dead at Age 85]
“He went next door and said ‘J.W., do you have that ‘traveling’ song you were just playing?’” Fuller recalled.” And he said ‘Oh yeah, Joe, you can have it.’”
According to Fuller, Alexander “reached in the trash and pulled out the demo.”
“He gave it to Joe and he…put it in Rick’s pile, and Rick liked it, so they recorded it,” the songwriter said. “And it sold like six million records right off the bat.”
Featured image by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
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