RealAudio 2.0 14.4

Time to re-enter the Vinyl Age, paw back through those 45s. Remember the "Tennessee Hound Dog Yodel"? "Albino Pink-eyed Stallion"? Remember Marvin Rainwater? In the 1950s, Rainwater was a frequent guest on Arthur Godfrey's TV show. Maybe you saw him, wearing his Indian headband. Rainwater had a string of country and rockabilly hits, but pretty much fell off the radar in the 1970s. Turns out he's been living the quiet life in Aitkin County, playing guitar and tending his dahlias. Here is his story.

Marvin Rainwater: Yeah, Momma took in washin' so I could have a piano and take classical lessons when I was 6 years old. I was studyin' Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and Paderewski and all those, when I was 6 years old. I lived for it, I couldn't think of anything else. I'd sit on that piano bench eight hours at a time. My Daddy'd come home say "Stop that noise. Go. Get outta here," and I'd have to go out and play.

Rainwater: I was workin' in a garage to help pay for my music lessons, and I got it caught in a machine, and it cut the end of it off. It's okay now, it's shrunk back down, I can play piano again, but for six or seven years this was the size of a apple. 'Bout the size of a lemon I guess, hanging down there, I couldn't hit less than three notes at a time with that. Wrecked all that fancy playin'... hm hm, so that's a situation I don't like to recall. But when I went in the Navy, I was so lonesome for my music, and I couldn't have it, see, because of my thumb...then we was out on the ships and everything, and these guys would start singin' "Way back in the hills, da da da" - well that got to my soul, way down deep, and I didn't like it, but it still got to me. And the more I hurt, the more it got to me, cause it was real, and eventually I figured there's something more than quality there, the nasal voice and all, there's something behind it that's great. Then I started writin' songs and naturally it fell back to my roots as a boy in Oklahoma, and they turned out to be hillbilly songs.

Rainwater singing: I gotta go get my baby, wherever she may beeeeee...

Rainwater: Hey you wanna hear another strange story? My life is nothin' but one strange story. Ray said to tell those people up there - hope they ain't listenin' - tell those people Marvin's been workin' in the Shamrock Club off and on the last year or two. So he did, he told 'em that, and they said, "Really? He been working there?" "Yeah." "Well, how come we ain't heard of him? " "Well I don't know, he been there ever few months." Now in Georgetown, there was a little club called the Shamrock would hold forty people. And that's the club I'd worked off and on for nothin', for free - he he - and one they was thinkin' about was the Shamrock in Houston, it would seat 2,500 people - well, see, they neglected to tell 'em the difference -ha ha ha - see, they talked 'em into it then left it up to me to go out and do it.

Rainwater: Yeah, Roy Clark was my lead man for a year, we had a band called the Rockin' Tommyhawks, went up and down the East Coast, Roy picked the fire outta those songs...

singing: There he goes....

Singing: Gonna find me a bluebird....

But success was slippery. After he began hitting the charts, a small studio where Rainwater had recorded early demo tapes sold the tapes to a number of disreputable record labels; the companies dubbed new tracks over the demos and released them.

Rainwater: They sold a million of my albums at $.88 apiece, and it destroyed my career, my credibility was shot on account of those cheap records, they were demo tapes, not even actual recordings, and they dubbed music in on top of it, got out of meter, didn't know the melody or anything. It was horrible, and the sound was real cheap you know; on account of me having "The Bluebird", this was after I did "Bluebird", then they put all this stuff in the market, see, flooded the market with these cheap albums - and my credibility was shot.