Tom Rapp

{{Short description|American singer-songwriter (1947–2018)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=October 2020}} {{Infobox musical artist  | name = Tom Rapp | image = Tom Rapp 1998 concert.jpg | caption = Rapp in a 1998 concert | image_size =  | background = solo_singer | birth_name = Thomas Dale Rapp | alias = | birth_date = {{birth date|1947|3|8|mf=y}} | birth_place = Bottineau, North Dakota, United States | death_date = {{death date and age|2018|2|11|1947|3|8|mf=y}} | death_place = Melbourne, Florida, U.S. | origin = | instrument = Vocals, guitar, etc. | genre = | occupation = Singer, songwriter, attorney | years_active = 1965–1976<br>occasionally 1997–2006 | label = ESP-Disk, Reprise, Blue Thumb, Woronzow, Drag City | associated_acts = Pearls Before Swine | website = | current_members = | past_members = }}

'''Thomas Dale Rapp''' (March 8, 1947 – February 11, 2018) was an American singer and songwriter who led Pearls Before Swine, an influential<ref name=rs/> psychedelic folk rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Described as having "a slight lisp, gentle voice and apocalyptic vision",<ref name=wp>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/tom-rapp-frontman-of-60s-psychedelic-band-pearls-before-swine-dies-at-70/2018/02/13/d188017e-10d1-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html Harrison Smith, "Tom Rapp, frontman of ’60s psychedelic band Pearls Before Swine, dies at 70", ''Washington Post'', February 13, 2018]. Retrieved February 14, 2018</ref> he also released four albums under his own name. He later practiced as a lawyer after graduating from University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1984.

==Early life== Tom Rapp was born in Bottineau, North Dakota. His parents, Dale and Eileen Rapp,<ref name="F">{{cite web|url=http://www.furious.com/perfect/tomrapp.html|title=Tom Rapp by Mark Brend (May 2001)|website=Furious.com}}</ref> were both school teachers, and his father became a heavy drinker often absent from their home.<ref name=wp/> He had two sisters.<ref name="F"/>

When Rapp was a young child the family moved to Minnesota, where at the age of six he was given a guitar.<ref name="F"/> A neighbour who was a country and western musician<ref name="F"/> taught Rapp some chords, and he also learned to play the ukulele. He began writing songs,<ref name=allmusic>{{AllMusic|class=artist|id=tom-rapp-mn0000934290|title=Biography of Tom Rapp|first=Jason|last=Ankeny|accessdate=February 14, 2018}}</ref> and (according to a local newspaper cutting kept by his mother) once came third in a talent contest in Rochester when he was aged eight,<ref name="Bi">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/tom-rapp-pearls-before-swine-folk-singer-dies-70-8099718/|title=Pearls Before Swine Folk Singer Tom Rapp Dies at 70|author=Kaufman, Gill|magazine=Billboard|date=February 14, 2018}}</ref> where Bobby Zimmerman, probably the boy who was later known as Bob Dylan, came in fifth.<ref name=rs/><ref name=weingarten/><ref name="rapp onu">Tom Rapp, "Notes on the Album", ''One Nation Underground'', 50th anniversary reissue CD, DC-659CD, 2017</ref> The Rapp family moved from Minnesota to Pennsylvania before settling in Eau Gallie, Florida, in 1963.<ref name=shindig>Kris Needs, "War & Space", ''Shindig!'' magazine, no.73, November 2017, pp. 48–54</ref> Tom Rapp graduated from Eau Gallie High School in 1965.<ref name="obit nyt"/>

==Music career, 1965–1976== {{details|Pearls Before Swine (band)}} In Florida, Rapp became a fan of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie and Bessie Smith,<ref name="rapp onu"/> and formed Pearls Before Swine in 1965 with high school friends Wayne Harley, Roger Crissinger, and Lane Lederer. On the basis of thinking "if they'll record The Fugs, they'll record us",<ref name=shindig/> the following year they sent demo recordings to ESP-Disk Records in New York. The label agreed to record the band's first album, ''One Nation Underground'', predominantly consisting of Rapp's own songs and produced in New York by Richard Alderson. Rapp sang and played lead guitar. He said: "We were just kids from Florida and everything was so hip, we thought we might faint."<ref name="rapp onu"/> The record sold an estimated 200,000 copies,<ref name=weingarten/> but Rapp said that "We never got any money from ESP. Never, not even like a hundred dollars or something. My real sense is that he (Bernard Stollman) was abducted by aliens, and when he was probed it erased his memory of where all the money was".<ref>{{cite book|last=Weiss|first=Jason|title=Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk', the Most Outrageous Record Label in America|year=2012|publisher=Wesleyan|isbn=9780819571595|url=http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/dignity-conviction-and-mrs-stollmans-checkbook/|url-status=live|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131202234950/http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/dignity-conviction-and-mrs-stollmans-checkbook/|archivedate=December 2, 2013}}</ref> After their second album, the experimental<ref name=linen/> and anti-war themed ''Balaklava'', often regarded as the group's finest,<ref name=allmusic/><ref name=shindig/> the group split up.

By the time of the third Pearls Before Swine album, ''These Things Too'' for Reprise in 1969, the other original members of the group had left, but Rapp retained the group name for recordings. At this time, Pearls Before Swine did not exist as a performing band. The next three Pearls Before Swine albums, ''The Use of Ashes'' (1970), ''City of Gold'' (1971), and ''Beautiful Lies You Could Live In'' (1971), contain some of Rapp's best songs, and were recorded with his Dutch wife Elisabeth and top session musicians in Nashville and New York City.<ref name=shindig/> He toured with Buddy Guy, Gordon Lightfoot, Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, but turned down the opportunity to appear at the Woodstock festival.<ref name=wp/>

Rapp's lyrics "told hard truths about the human condition"; they were sometimes confrontational and cynical,<ref name="Bi"/> but often embraced a "whimsical brand of mystical humanism".<ref>[http://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/reviews/TomRapp/ Review of Tom Rapp & Pearls Before Swine, 'City Of Gold/… Beautiful Lies You Could Live In', ''Fatea Records'']. Retrieved February 14, 2018</ref> His songs included "Rocket Man", which inspired Bernie Taupin and Elton John's song of the same name.<ref name=wp/>

The album ''Familiar Songs'' (1972) was his first credited solo album, but was in fact a collection of demo recordings released by the record company without his knowledge. After moving from Reprise to Blue Thumb Records, he released two further albums under his own name, ''Stardancer'' (1972) and ''Sunforest'' (1973). Although these were issued as solo albums, they included recordings by a new version of Pearls Before Swine which from 1970 did tour and perform widely, once opening for Pink Floyd,<ref name=weingarten/> as well as containing Rapp's solo recordings with session musicians.<ref name=shindig/> Between 1974 and 1976, Rapp performed as a solo singer-songwriter but did not record.<ref name=linen/>

Rapp later considered that the contracts he signed with his manager, Peter H. Edmiston, were a mistake as they allowed Edmiston to control Rapp's relationships with record companies and accrue all the financial benefits. Rapp said: "Any of the money he made... was gone. He had taken all that. It would have been a different life if I'd gotten all the money I was supposed to have gotten."<ref name=shindig/> Rapp estimated that his total net income from music during his active career had been about $200.<ref name=weingarten/> After a final show as a supporting act to Patti Smith, he retired from music in 1976.<ref name=weingarten/>

==Later life and career== Rapp then worked as a theater receptionist and projectionist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York, before entering higher education. He graduated in economics from Brandeis University in 1981,<ref name=linen/> and then studied at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, graduating in 1984 and becoming a civil rights lawyer.<ref name=allmusic/><ref name=rs/> He described his legal work as an extension of his politically-attuned music,<ref name=wp/> his areas of expertise including judicial estoppel and finding constitutional grounds upon which to challenge corporate actions.<ref name=weingarten>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/05/17/the-lawyers-song/d2c018c7-13cd-4498-aaac-0aab51d69e1b/ Gene Weingarten, "The Lawyer's Song", ''Washington Post'', May 17, 1998] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180214134423/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/05/17/the-lawyers-song/d2c018c7-13cd-4498-aaac-0aab51d69e1b/?utm_term=.1a518cabc3c4 |date=February 14, 2018 }}. Retrieved February 14, 2018</ref> He later lived and worked in Philadelphia and Florida. In 2008, it was reported that Rapp and another attorney sued in federal court to reverse their termination as county government lawyers.<ref name=ralston>[http://ralstoncreekreview.com/song-week-rocket-man/ "Song of the Week: Rocket Man", ''Ralston Creek Review'', July 20, 2016] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170809120323/http://ralstoncreekreview.com/song-week-rocket-man/ |date=August 9, 2017 }}</ref>

After being interviewed in 1993 by the magazine ''Dirty Linen'',<ref name=linen>Lahri Bond, "Tom Rapp & Pearls Before Swine", ''Dirty Linen'' no.50, February 1994</ref> and later contacted by Phil McMullen of the magazine ''Ptolemaic Terrascope'', he reappeared in 1997 at Terrastock, a music festival in Providence, Rhode Island, with his son's band, Shy Camp. He recorded the album ''A Journal of the Plague Year'', released in 1999.<ref name=allmusic/> He also performed at Terrastock 5 in October 2002<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.terrascope.co.uk/terrastockpages/T5Boston.html |title=Terrastock 5 |website=Terrascope.co.uk |accessdate=May 30, 2017 |url-status=live |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170530183130/http://www.terrascope.co.uk/terrastockpages/T5Boston.html |archivedate=May 30, 2017 }}</ref> and Terrastock 6 in April 2006.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.terrascope.co.uk/TerrastockPages/terrastock.html |title=Terrastock! |website=Terrascope.co.uk |accessdate=May 30, 2017 |url-status=live |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20050408092746/http://terrascope.co.uk/TerrastockPages/terrastock.html |archivedate=April 8, 2005 }}</ref>

==Personal life== Rapp was married three times: firstly to Elisabeth Joosten (who sang on some of his recordings) from 1968 to 1976;<ref name="obit nyt"/> secondly, to Susan Hein; and, from 1995, Lynn Madison. He had a son, David, from his first marriage.<ref name=wp/>

==Death== Tom Rapp died at home in Melbourne, Florida, in 2018,<ref name=rs>[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearls-before-swine-band-mastermind-tom-rapp-dead-at-70-w516656 Jon Blistein, "Pearls Before Swine Band Mastermind Tom Rapp Dead at 70", ''Rolling Stone'', February 13, 2018] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180213202008/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearls-before-swine-band-mastermind-tom-rapp-dead-at-70-w516656 |date=February 13, 2018 }}</ref> after suffering from cancer.<ref name=shindig/><ref name="obit nyt">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/obituaries/tom-rapp-the-voice-of-pearls-before-swine-is-dead-at-70.html|title=Tom Rapp, the Voice of Pearls Before Swine, Is Dead at 70|newspaper=The New York Times|author=Genzlinger, Neil|date=February 14, 2018}}</ref>

==Discography== {{See also|Pearls Before Swine (band)#Discography}}

===Solo albums=== * ''Familiar Songs'' (1972, Reprise) * ''Stardancer'' (1972, Blue Thumb) * ''Sunforest'' (1973, Blue Thumb) * ''A Journal of the Plague Year'' (1999, Woronzow)

† Tom Rapp appeared on the 1999 Neil Young 2CD tribute ''This Note's for You Too'', on Inbetweens Records, with the song "After the Gold Rush".<br> † Tom Rapp contributed vocals to the song "Shadows" for the band Old Fire on their album, 'Songs From the Haunted South',<ref>[http://www.kscopemusic.com/artists/old-fire/ Songs From the Haunted South] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170726094858/http://www.kscopemusic.com/artists/old-fire/ |date=July 26, 2017 }}</ref> released in 2016 by Kscope Records.

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

==External links== *[https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/10/31/561018947/pearls-before-swines-underground-classic-reissued-50-years-later 2017 radio interview] *[http://www.southernfm.com.au/general/the-purple-haze-archive-presents-cult-legend-tom-rapp-of-pearls-before-swine-podcast/ 2013 radio interview] *[http://psychedelicbaby.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pearls-before-swine-interview-with-tom.html 2012 interview with Rapp] *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYMXenQy1qk Official musical tribute to Tom Rapp, March 10, 2018, First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rapp, Tom}} Category:1947 births Category:2018 deaths Category:University of Pennsylvania Law School alumni Category:Brandeis University alumni Category:People from Melbourne, Florida Category:People from Bottineau County, North Dakota Category:Musicians from North Dakota Category:Psychedelic folk musicians Category:American civil rights lawyers Category:Blue Thumb Records artists