NAMEDROPS KEEP FALLING

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Yes, for you readers in San Francisco, you’ll recognise that play on words from the late Herb Cain’s daily column in the SF Chronicle newspaper. It just seemed appropriate for this story.

Six months ago, I wrote about meeting the (at the time) recently deceased country music legend Charley Pride when he and I were both guests on the MidDay TV talk show on Australia’s Channel 9. I mentioned what a nice man he was and how he was only out-niced by the musical guest the next time I appeared on the show, one B(illy) J(oe) Thomas. Sadly, Mr. Thomas has joined Charley in the after life, dying of lung cancer this past Saturday at the age of 78.

Just to recap, I was in Australia in February and March of 1997 doing a room in Sydney’s Double Bay area, and did the MidDay show twice to promote the gig. What B.J. Thomas did when we were guests on MidDay was something I couldn’t imagine any celebrity doing, even though his celebrity status had waned by 1997, when we worked together. His last significant pop hit had been 20 years before (his 1977 remake of The Beach Boys “Don’t Worry Baby”), and along the way he had gone bankrupt, so maybe he was more humbled than most show biz stars would be. I can only surmise that, having toured the world many times, and with his road crew recognising me from my Rick & Ruby days, maybe he felt a kindred spirit or something similar. Still, it floored me when I got a knock on my dressing room door and it was him just wanting to hang out before the show started. Contrast that with the Country singer Barbara Mandrell, who I was hired as a last minute opener for in Phoenix in 1990, and who refused to meet me at all!

I scarcely remember what B.J. and I talked about, though I imagine there was talk about what the heck we were both doing in Australia. I don’t think we talked about music at all. I think part of his friendly demeanour was due to becoming a Christian and devoting the previous decade of his career to recording Gospel music. I’m pretty sure we didn’t talk about religion either. I know that on the show he sang the two songs that made any noise on charts outside the US. “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” a US #1, only peaked at #38 in UK, while his other US #1, “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” peaked at #51. That was it for his UK chart career, despite having a total of eight US top 20 hits. One of the songs he did the original of was “Hooked On A Feeling,” which got international airplay through the strange remakes with the “Oo-Ka-Cha-Ka” chant, first in 1971 by Jonathan King in UK and by the Swedish band Blue Swede taking the same idea to #1 in the US in 1974.

As for the show itself, it was a good one for me, as it was the only time ever that I was allowed to do the part of my act that has worked so well for me over the years, taking audience requests for specific artists, and either incorporating bits I had done on whatever act the request was for, or improvising a bit via impressions or song parody. B.J. Thomas made a point of telling me how much he enjoyed that, and I can count on the fingers of one hand anytime a more established act I was working with ever said anything like that to me. There is a story elsewhere of a guitar god I opened for (and who I was unfamiliar with at the time) who went from total gentleman to total asshole in the space of about 15 minutes, and an even bigger asshole an hour later.

There’s not much else I can say about Mr. Thomas except that “Raindrops” has become well enough remembered that when I had my weekly DJ gig before lockdown, that song always worked with the crowd. A song that only reached #38 in its first go-round has survived 50 plus years later as a great feel-good song. I wouldn’t have thought so when it was out, though I liked the way the song was used in the film, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” for which it won a Best Original Song Oscar for its writers, Hal David and Burt Bacharach. A lot of other people recorded it, but it was Thomas’s version that everyone knows. Most of us will remember him for his songs, but I can also say I remember him as a lovely man.

May 31st, 2021



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