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| 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.”
