“From a Jack to a King”
Ricky Van Shelton
Written by Ned Miller
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
February 24, 1989
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
March 18, 1989
This is the first Ricky Van Shelton cover to sound like a cover.
Ned Miller wrote and recorded “From a Jack to a King,” and on his original hit version, he has an aw shucks quality that reinforces the song’s message about marrying up. He’s still a jack, but he’s living like a king, and he can’t believe his dumb luck.
Ricky Van Shelton’s version is technically stronger. The stellar musicianship backs up a flawlessly smooth vocal performance, meeting the high standard that listeners had already come to expect from this generational talent.
There’s only one problem. RVS was never a jack. He arrived a king. He placed himself immediately in the pantheon of great country male vocalists who could never sound weak or insignificant, no matter how down they were on themselves or how much they’d been hurt. Ray Price was one from back in the day. Toby Keith is another who came along after RVS.
So this is a lovely recording, probably better than the Miller original in most ways other than believability. It sounds like a confident young artist covering a song he loved from his childhood. Nothing wrong with that, but it keeps it from being in the top-tier batch of Ricky Van Shelton chart-toppers.
“From a Jack to a King” gets a B.
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This was always one of my favorites of Van Shelton. I knew it was a remake but never heard the original or had any idea who sang it. I don’t think I buy the notion that because Ricky Van Shelton was an “ace” in country music that it makes him any less believable of a narrator to fancy himself a “jack” when it comes to love. If that logic holds, it disqualifies a lot of country legends who took on self-deprecating lyrics simply because the real-life version of them excelled at singing. Anyway, it’s a fun and clever song that Van Shelton hits out of the park, and an overdue uptempo (or at least semi-uptempo) cut from him to boot.
Grade: A-
Ned Miller was never really fond of recording or performing. He viewed himself as a songwriter and he was a very good one. There are only two CDs available by him, both on foreign labels (Bear Family and Jasmine). Perhaps his best composition was “Dark Moon”, massive pop and country hit in 1956 for Gale Storm and Bonnie Guitar, both of whom recorded for Dot Records. Ned Miller played guitar on Bonnie Guitar’s recording.
That “aw shucks” quality you mentioned on Miller’s recording is pretty much how he sounded on everything – he wasn’t a great or confident vocalist. I like Ned’s version, but Shelton aced it.
And it should also be mentioned that Elvis recorded “From A Jack To A King” during his sessions with Chips Moman in 1969 (it’s on the “From Vegas To Memphis” portion of his late 1969 release From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis.
While vocally it sounds great I never did care for this song much. Ricky was excellent at ballads but he also was a pretty good up tempo singer although some of the up tempo songs selected as singles were weak “Hole in My Pocket”
One benefit of falling behind in my comment posting is the opportunity to stay with certain themes and threads as I try to catch up.
How important and cool is it to now have the opportunity to celebrate a Ned Miller cover after just celebrating a Ray Price cover by Ronnie Milsap. You would think this kind of education in country music history would come with a price-tag, but this exposure to country music’s past was free for the taking on AM and FM radio waves in 1989, a huge part of what made this year so important.
Honestly, what didn’t Van Shelton ace during this run? In a field of new male vocalists that included Randy Travis and Keith Whitley, Van Shelton still may stand as the greatest pure country singer of the bunch.
I agree with MarkMinnesota that the suggestion that Van Shelton, as the current king of country singers, doesn’t relate to the jacks of the world works as a device to enter writing about this song, but it falls apart when I listen to Van Shelton absolutely own this performance.
I will be hard pressed to criticize any thing he puts that rich voice to.
There was a time when it looked like Ricky Van Shelton just might become the king of country music.