"He (Rocky Nelson) had a stance that was right out of a lithograph from the archives of baseball—right foot at right angles to the left foot, knees bent. It was so archaic that a magazine once devoted a whole, fascinated story to it on the notion it was obscene not to have a handlebar moustache to go with it. Rocky was a marathon talker who chain-smoked evil-smelling Cuban rope cigars. He even smoked them in bed, and roomie Gino Cimoli once told me he got tired of answering excited calls from hotel switchboards who thought the room was on fire. Rocky was a chatty character who considered himself an expert on everything. He would interrupt a conversation between two atomic physicists to give them the benefit of his thinking on the subject, which he would punctuate with sprays of tobacco juice. Color him fun." - Columnist Jim Murray in the Los Angeles Times (July 25, 1963)