Jimmy Ray

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Jimmy Ray
Birth name	James Ray
Also known as	Jimmy Ray
Born	October 3, 1970
Origin	London, United Kingdom
Genre(s)	pop-rock
Instrument(s)	Guitar
Years active	Late 90's
Label(s)	Sony S2, Epic

Jimmy Ray (born October 3, 1970) is a pop-rock artist who was born and raised in London, England. In press interviews and promotional materials he cited his influence by the music of Elvis Presley and other Rock 'n' Roll stars such as Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Tommy Steele. His Manager was Simon Fuller, who also managed The Spice Girls, and produced the hit show American Idol.

Jimmy Ray scored a pop hit in both the United Kingdom and the United States with his song "Are You Jimmy Ray?", in 1997. "Are You Jimmy Ray?" reached No.13 in the Billboard 'Hot 100 Singles' and has sold over 500,000 copies in the USA alone. Jimmy Ray released his self titled album in the US on March 10th, 1998 (the album was never issued in the U.K.)

"Are You Jimmy Ray?" was also successful in his native Britain reaching No.13 in the UK charts. One of the reasons for this single's success in Britain was because of his well received debut T.V. performance on The National Lottery.

He followed up this single in 1998 in the UK with "Goin' to Vegas", but this single failed to get much air play and the only televised performance was on a show called Live and Kicking Friday. It failed to enter the U.K. top 40. A video for this single has been made, but it never aired in the US, although it's most likely that it was aired in Europe.

In the summer of 1998, Jimmy Ray went on a US tour with the highly popular boy band The Backstreet Boys. A third promotional 'single' and video clip - "I Got Rolled" received minimal air play in the U.S. in the fall of 1998.

According to one of his myspace fan pages, in spring and summer 2006, Jimmy Ray returned to perform some of his songs live at some small concerts in the Southwestern US.