Johnny Sea

Singer/songwriter Johnny Sea, who also took occasional acting roles, scored several country chart entries in 1959 and added more during the middle of the following decade. Born John Allan Seay, Jr. in Gulfport, Mississippi, he grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. At seventeen he captured first place in a statewide talent contest, which brought two immediate offers: one label signed him to a recording deal after hearing him perform in the finals, while a second booked him on Louisiana Hayride. He spent two years with that radio program before making his debut at the Grand Ole Opry.

Sea first registered on the country charts in 1959 when NRC released his Top 15 single “Frankie’s Man Johnny.” The 1960 follow-up “Nobody’s Darling but Mine” matched that placement. As momentum faded, he moved west and worked as a cowboy, spending time between Los Angeles and Pawhuska, Oklahoma. By 1964 he was back in the studio; “My Baby Walks All Over Me” climbed to the Top 30. The next year brought another success with “My Old Faded Love,” prompting Warner Brothers to offer a contract. His biggest record, the 1966 single “Day for Decision,” answered Barry McGuire’s protest anthem “Eve of Destruction” and reached the country Top 15 while also entering the pop Top 40.

In 1967 Sea joined Columbia and resumed using his birth name, Johnny Seay. Under that name he placed the minor 1968 hit “Goin’ to Tulsa,” then made his last chart appearance with “Three Six Packs, Two Arms and a Juke Box.” Later the same year he composed “Willie’s Drunk and Nellie’s Dyin’” about his struggling neighbors the Yorks; the song prompted a Life magazine profile of the family. Sea eventually relocated to Justiceburg, Texas, to work again as a cowboy. In 2003 Collectables reissued his 1966 album Day for Decision, marking Sea’s first appearance on compact disc.