The “Golden Hits Of The 50s” 

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MARVIN RAINWATER

“GONNA FIND ME A BLUEBIRD”

(Marvin Rainwater)

MGM 12412

No. 18    June 70, 1957

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“Some people have it easy,” said Marvin Rainwater to author Colin Escott.  “They just walk up and

everything just opens up.  I don’t know how hard they worked to do it, but no matter how hard I worked,

it turned around the other way.”

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Part Cherokee, with Rainwater as his mother’s maiden name, Marvin Karlton Perry born July 25, 1925,

Wichita) took classical piano lessons as a child, until an accident left him minus a right thumb.  Perry

kept writing songs, though.  He majored in mathematics later taking pre-veterinary courses at Washington

State University in Walla Walla, then worked with his father in an Oregon lumber camp.  With the outbreak

of World War II, he studied for two years as a pharmacist’s mate.

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On his return to civilian life, Marv worked as a tree surgeon and nearly got himself killed.  “I was trying

to write a song while cutting out the top of a tree,” Rain­water told Goldmine’ s Bill Millar.  “I’d cut it off

before I woke up and realized what I was doing.”  While hanging by his safety belt, some 75 feet above a

slab of solid con­crete, Rainwater re-evaluated his career goals.   “That’s when I quit tree surgery.”

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Perry picked up his guitar and with brothers Don and Ray, plus picker extraordinaire ROY CLARK,

toured about “itty bitty clubs” in the Washington, D.C. area.   A local studio owner named Ben Adelman

heard some­ thing special in Marvin’s rockabilly sound and record­ed 50 of his songs; most of which

have been issued­–without Rainwater’s approval–on budget labels like Spin-0-Rama, Crown, and Premier.

Red Foley heard one of Marv’s reworked Hank Williams numbers, liked it, and offered him a spot on

his “Ozark Jubilee” radio program.   When Teresa Brew­er and Justin Tubb covered Marv’s self-penned

“I Gotta Go Get My Baby” and outsold his own version, MGM president Frank Walker offered Rainwater

a contract.  “Albino Pink Eyed Stallion,” “Tea Bag Romeo,” “Hot and Cold,” and then the hit happened.

“Gonna Find Me a Bluebird”–proved a monster hit–though it did lit­tle to generate much moolah.

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Marvin struggled through two years of trying to find his niche.  Despite a number one disk in the U.K.

with “Whole Lotta Woman” (#60, C&W: #15, 1958), the following year, Marv was having a hard time

consolidating his career.  “I didn’ t realize it at the time, it’s not your first hit that’s important, it’s the

second and third hits,” said Rainwater to Escott, author Tattooed on Their Tongues.  “The first hit just

buys you a lot of hard work; it’s the ??