Editing Ricky Nelson (section)

==Name change and 1960s career==
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On May 8, 1961 (his 21st birthday), he officially modified his recording name from "Ricky Nelson" to "Rick Nelson". His childhood nickname proved hard to shake, especially among the generation who had watched him grow up on "Ozzie and Harriet". Even in the 1980s, when Nelson realized his dream of meeting [[Carl Perkins]], Perkins noted that he and "Ricky" were the last of the "rockabilly breed".

In 1963, Nelson signed a 20-year contract with [[Decca Records]]. After some early successes with the label, most notably 1964's "For You" (#6), Nelson's chart career came to a dramatic halt in the wake of [[Beatlemania]], [[The British Invasion]], and later the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|Counterculture era]]. However, instead of dropping him, Decca kept him on board.

In the mid-1960s, Nelson began to move toward [[country music]], becoming a pioneer in the country-rock genre. He was one of the early influences of the so-called "[[California Sound]]" (which would include singers like [[Jackson Browne]] and [[Linda Ronstadt]] and bands such as [[Eagles (band)|Eagles]]). Yet Nelson himself did not reach the [[Top 40]] again until 1970, when he recorded [[Bob Dylan]]'s "She Belongs to Me" with the Stone Canyon Band, featuring [[Randy Meisner]], who in 1971 became a founding member of the [[Eagles (band)|Eagles]], and former [[The Buckaroos|Buckaroo]] steel guitarist [[Tom Brumley]].