Music
Kelly Green
· singer, songwriter
Singer of Frijid Pink, the Detroit band whose fuzz-heavy 1970 version of “The House of the Rising Sun” became a million-selling top-10 hit.
- Birth name
- Tom Beaudry
- Also known as
- Tom Beaudry
- Detroit years
- 1960s–1970s
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Tom Beaudry, who took the stage name Kelly Green, joined the Detroit-area cover band the Detroit Vibrations along with guitarist Gary Ray Thompson in 1967, and the group became Frijid Pink. The band spent two years playing clubs and dances across Southeast Michigan, often on bills with the MC5, the Stooges and the Amboy Dukes, before signing with Parrot Records. Their third single, a distorted, guitar-driven “The House of the Rising Sun,” cut as filler at the end of a session, reached the Billboard top 10 in the spring of 1970, No. 4 in Britain and No. 3 in Canada, and sold more than a million copies. Beaudry and Thompson wrote nearly all of the band's first two albums, Frijid Pink (1970) and Defrosted. After later singles failed to repeat the success, the original lineup broke up and the band continued with new members.
Highlights
- Lead vocals on “The House of the Rising Sun” (top 10 U.S., No. 4 UK, 1970)
- The single sold over a million copies
- Co-wrote most of Frijid Pink (1970) and Defrosted