You kids have some rap albums, I have TOM RAPP albums

Tom Rapp died the other day at 70.

I didn't notice a lot of tributes to him online, or mentions of how cool his indie-cult group was: Pearls Before Swine." Several friends gave me a blank look. "Who? Never heard of him."

I pulled out an old Tom Rapp album. You see it above, left. There he was, looking like something Tolkien might've invented. Maybe if you wondered what Woody Allen would be like if he tried to be a hipster musician...it would've been Tom Rapp. And if Woody tried to sing, he'd come out with the same tremulous, nasal tones as Tom. Tom, it's alleged, once entered a contest with a fellow named Bobby Zimmerman. Chances are, the audience wondered, "something's happening, and we don't know what it is. THIS is SINGING?"

Actually, some critics still had that opinion of Tom Rapp. When I bought the Pearls Before Swine album "City Of Gold" (dually billed as a Pearls Before Swine AND a "Thos Rapp" album) I thought there were some good tracks. Surely, he and his group (three hirsute fellows at this point, no females) would get a free good reviews. Well, he had the temerity to cover the Brel-McKuen song "Seasons in the Sun."

A review in a November 1971 magazine, probably High Fidelity or Stereo Review, went like this: PERFORMANCE: Disgusting
RECORDING; Fair

And from there, it got a bit negative: "At first I thought this junk must be somebody's idea of a sick joke, something like Jo Stafford and Paul Weston's funny Jonathan and Darlene Edwards records. Unfortunately, the mournful wailing contained on this disc is really the way Tom Rapp sounds...he has the gall to include a soiled arrangement of Jacques Brel's "Seasons in the Sun" with his sick mongrel screeching. Instead of "Adieu Emile, my trusted friend," we hear "Eh-dooo Eeemeal, ma trsuted free-and...." Rapp swallows most of his words like lumps...Rapp is a horrendously vulgar no-talent whose very presence on records gives me pause about the rock-bottom tastes and motives of the talent scouts at Reprise Records. Hang your heads, gentlemen."

The review was credit to "R.R."

I know, it's a bit odd to quote all that in an obituary, but this isn't an obit, it' a memoir. A meditation. Something like that. Because the death of Rapp (on top of the rise of rap music, which is worse) had me recalling the days when "mongrel" vocalists were threatening to take over the airwaves. At least the FM airwaves. Negative reviews, perhaps even as mean as the one quoted above, greeted the vocals of Dylan, Ochs, Neil Young, Ron Nagle and others that I happened to play on college radio.

Yeah, I played Pearls Before Swine tracks, and know what, quite a few still hold up beautifully, even if Rapp's sobbing, lispy voice does take a moment to get used to.

Sometimes Pearls Before Swine is categorized as "acid folk" or "psych folk," which only goes to show what that hipsters can be as annoying and clueless as reviewers for Stereo Review or High Fidelity. Deliberately putting on albums and taking some drugs and nodding about how this is some good "acid folk," is in its own way, another form of insensitivity and ignorance.

Like The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine first turned up on albums on the E.S.P. label. How nice that the hipster record company discovered such acts. Did the artists get paid? Well, Tom recalled that he never made a penny. Somehow, the owner of the label had lots of excuses for this.

Fortunately, Reprise, a major but strange label at the time, was signing all kinds of unusual acts. They had Fanny, Ron Nagle, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, and to add to their list of artists without hit singles, The Fugs and Pearls Before Swine. Rapp's group was duly promoted via the Warner "loss leader" dollar compilation discs, and people got a chance to hear some of his best songs: "The Jeweler" and "Rocket Man" from "The Use of Ashes" album.

I hate using the word "zeitgeist," but Pearls Before Swine were very much part of the arty, somewhat pretentious and mystical world of hippie seriousness in the late 60's and early 70's. George Harrison wasn't the only guy to sing "All Things Must Pass." On the album "These Things Too," Tom entoned, "There was a Persian king who wanted to know what he could say on every occasion that always would be so..."

You know what's coming: "These things too must pass." But before Tom gets to it, he offers a melancholy dip into hipness:

"Illusions. Circles in changes. Illusions. Always changes. Like the wind and the rain. Like the wind and the rain."

This incarnation of Pearls Before Swine included the enigmatic "Elizabeth" (no last name) who was listed as a co-author on some tracks. Another track had W.H. Auden as a co-author.

Well, this kind of thing fit in perfectly on my midnight radio show. Oh, I might start the evening with eccentric rock (Ron Nagle's "61 Clay," Judy Henske's "Farewell Aldebaran" or Fanny's "Seven Roads." I might veer into Frank Zappa, Procol Harum and even Yoko Ono territory. The later it got, the more introspective, for anyone lonely and listening. Tom Rapp's pensive "The Jeweler" was about the sensitive old coin dealer who polished old coins late at night, and, heavy, "worships God with ashes."

Unlike some of my eccentric favorites, like Ron Nagle (one album) and Henske (one album with Yester, one with her group Rosebud), Tom Rapp actually put out several albums for Warner/Reprise. He even got signed to Blue Thumb as a solo artist.

By 1973, he was back in college, studying to be a lawyer. Apparently he used his skills in civil rights cases and represented the needy more than the greedy. It was hard to tell, because the elusive Mr. Rapp was even more invisible after his retirement from music. He resisted interviews, and I recall that when somebody posted some information on where he was living, and how one might write him an email, he quickly shut down any communication.

Perhaps befitting his new work as a "radical" lawyer, or simply having the creative urge to perform, Rapp turned up in some small clubs now and then. Displaying a dash of Phil Ochs humor, circa 1998 he sang a song imagining Abraham Lincoln visiting Washington again. Punchline, he opens the door to Newt Gingrich's office and throws up.

In 1999, seemingly out of nowhere, he put out a solo album that was very much a return to the arty areas of mystical folk, including an a capella opening number that would try the patience of even Peggy Seeger-type folk fans. It was called "A Journal of the Plague Year," and included an awareness of the current scene (one song called "The Swimmer (For Kurt Cobain)."). Other cuts on this obscurity from Woronzow Records (and available streaming, with or without permission, on YouTube) include "Hopelessly Romantic" and "Just Let the Grass Grow."

Today, there may be very few who would know that "Pearls Before Swine" was the somewhat cheeky (are they making fun of us in the audience) folk-rock group. But Rapp was one of the poetic singer-songwriters who helped change what IS or ISN'T considered "Rapp "horrendously vulgar" and "rock-bottom" in the world of music.

It turns out, there's room for the voices of imperfect singer-poets, from Leonard Cohen (once the subject of nasty reviews over his monotone) and Tom Rapp. Oh. In case you didn't get the reviewer's reference to Jonathan and Darlene Edwards...back around 1958 or so, big band guy Paul Weston and vocalist Jo Stafford put out a series of deliberately off-key novelty albums. The big joke was to sneak one of their records on the turntable, and watch heads turn in discomfort, as the Mantovani-type arrangements were turned askew by the vocalist who was sometimes just a tad sharp or flat. Nothing too obvious (like Spike Jones or Mrs. Miller) but just enough to have people say, "Who put that on the record player? Haven't you got Patti Page? Rosemary Clooney?"

So it is, that almost nobody now knows Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, or Paul Weston, or even Jo Stafford. And not Tom Rapp either. Bless and preserve the vinyl on all of them, that somebody might still find it, and be amused by it or touched by it. And thanks, Reprise...the guys still alive who signed and promoted Pearls Before Swine. No reason to "hang your heads" gentlemen, except to bow them for a moment, to acknowledge the passing of a worthy singer-songwriter, Tom Rapp.