Friday, February 17, 2023

My Brand of Blues, Marvin Rainwater, & me...

Marvin Rainwater was an American country & rockabilly singer/songwriter who was born in Wichita, Kansas. He had several hits during the late 1950s, including "Gonna Find Me a Bluebird" & "Whole Lotta Woman," which hit #1 on the UK Singles Chart. He was known for wearing Native American-themed outfits on stage & claimed to have quarter-blood Cherokee ancestry.
My Brand Of Blues” was one of several gold records he scored in 1959. The other two being "My Love Is Real" & "Half Breed”, a cover version of a John D. Loudermilk song. That same year, he recorded the original version of another Loudermilk song, "The Pale Faced Indian”, which later became a huge hit for Paul Revere & The Raiders under the title "Indian Reservation”.
My Brand of Blues” has an eerie, tortured love theme & an early Johnny Cash-type feel. I first heard it on a ‘MGM Rockabilliy Collection’ album released in Europe in 1977 that I bought as an import a couple of years later. It was among the first several batch of tunes I suggested to guitarist Joe Dickens when we started putting together the earliest version of the Out On Parole band in 1984. Not an easy song to play because of the almost arbitrary number of times playing the riff before the vocals come in each time, “My Brand of Blues” languished at the bottom of the song list & was performed infrequently. When Out On Parole reformed in the 21st century, the song was revitalized & made the cut for the 2011 sessions that birthed the new DEVIL GET AWAY FROM ME album.



"My Brand of Blues" by T. Tex Edwards & Out On Parole

Listen & Download at: https://ttexedwards.bandcamp.com/track/my-brand-of-blues 



No comments:

Post a Comment