One Hit No More, No. 7: The Cascades Played to the "Rhythm of the Rain"

Hard to find concert art for this lot...

I’m going to squeeze out this post, and I mean no disrespect to the artist(s), Claude John Gummoe, and the band he fronted, The Cascades, or to the song, “Rhythm of the Rain.” I love that song, in fact, and have since the first time I heard it (god knows when). The delicacy to the music feels poking out the raw edges of where your heartbreak (if in that mid-20th-century, middle-America way of suppressing emotions that recalls the same state of shock I experienced when I broke my leg; long story). At any rate, it’s a poignant, touching piece of pop, a brittle smile at a personal tragedy. It’s got the chops to survive the test of time…

…which begs the question of why Gummoe did this with it. (Or even something like it.) That’s a 1990 “dance remix” of the song, something that, per Wikipedia, Gummoe did record. Why? To do something between hazard a guess and create a narrative, some people make music - or art of any kind, really - to express themselves, or find some form of companionship with something they think or feel, while other people make music because they like being famous. I don’t know Gummoe at all, never mind well enough to drop him into the “fame-first” column - and I’m not. I will, on the other hand, make him a stand-in for a hypothetical. Some people can perform the same set of songs for years, even decades, and still get a charge out of that. That probably lands between loving to make people happy and loving being the center of attention. I don’t judge, either way. You can see the same thing with Frankie Ford (who I wrote up earlier in this series); the man just loved performing, so he kept going.

All the same, neither Gummoe, nor The Cascades did anything remotely as high-profile after “Rhythm of the Rain.” After a week listening to a 20-song collection of their hits, I heard the echo of ringing bell in “Dreamin’,” but that could just be me remixing in my own head. (Turns out that’s a borrowed song, something I learned  from this site, which also doubles as another history on The Cascades.) I didn’t get much out of that 20-song collection, honestly. While it’s not ear-stabbing torture or anything, The Cascades play inside a pretty narrow band-width. Musically, it steps away from the other “one-hit bands” I reviewed earlier, doo-wop and Motown acts like Don & Juan and The Contours. They borrow doo-wop vocals - see, “Dreamin’,” but also “Is There a Chance?” and “Let Me Be” - and, even if those songs sound like 50s rock ‘n’ roll, you can hear some 60s sound slipping in - e.g., in “Punch and Judy” and “Cheryl’s Goin’ Home.”

The story of The Cascades more or less stops there, but even that was the second act for some…complicated remnants of Gummoe’s first band, The Thundernotes. Near as I can tell, that grouped released a 45, with “Pay Day” (is this it? don’t know) backed with “Thunder Rhythm,” and that’s where The Thundernotes’ story ends. Gummoe started as manager with them, but later became lead vocalist(?), but that’s the least complicated piece of The Cascades legacy (for those who want more, here's a short autobiography by Gummoe in 2001). The bigger one comes with the fact that the band itself didn’t record “Rhythm of the Rain.” A bunch of highly-successful, L.A.-based session musicians, later called The Wrecking Crew had the actual honors. If Wikipedia’s right, Glen Campbell (this guy) played on the original recording of The Cascades song that would make them famous. That was just one of many too, because The Wrecking Crew dominated the 1960s-70s recording scene. The rationale for that seems, well, rational, but it also takes some of the shine off The Cascades.

As for the band itself, it lasted quite a while - till 1975. Gummoe had left by then, but a guy named Eddie Snyder carried on from start to finish; Wikipedia’s entry names another guy named “Owens” as an original member at the time they broke up, but without ever naming him prior to that moment (as in, he never joined?).

So, where did Gummoe go? While it doesn’t look like his first stop, Gummoe eventually worked in a band called Kentucky Express. Full Disclosure: I don’t want to be too hard on that band because the only set of songs I heard by them were covers - some of them bad, some of them worse medleys, aka, the kind of mash-ups you never wanted, never mind hoped, to hear. All the same, I always get a kick out of seeing people who can’t quit their art, whatever it is. Even if you’re striving after the wrong thing, even arguably, at least you’re still striving.

For what it’s worth, I did find a couple favorites in The Cascades collection - “I Dare You to Try” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover” - even if, overall, I find them forgettable. A lot of that has to do with how repeatedly and generically they sing about loving and (young, aka, not real) loss. Like today’s pop music, regardless of the specific pop genre, The Cascades are ear candy. There’s nothing I’ve read that frames them as a group groomed for fame/a sound, but there’s also nothing particularly bold, interesting or forward-looking about them. And that’s fine. Sometimes you just want to switch off the brain and just enjoy a song, and the Cascades made that pretty painless.

They did more than that with “Rhythm of the Rain,” or Gummoe did, at least. Didn’t hurt that he had a killer band backing him when he finalized the product. Still, based on everything I read, he took a moment, translated it into a moment, and wrote a song that keeps on resonating nearly 55 years later. Call him a one-hit wonder, but how many of us ever do one great thing?