Eddie Rabbitt

If you like reminiscing, I heartily recommend Sirius Radio. I'm a reminiscing kind of girl, so this marvel is a punch in the gut -- in a good way. It's said that humans only remember twenty per cent of what they hear. My theory is, we think we only remember twenty per cent. My other theory is, if we hear familiar things from long ago, we suddenly remember all sorts of memories that were deemed lost.

Example:  Here's a memory I retrieved from listening to an Eddie Rabbitt song tonight:

I love a rainy night
It's such a beautiful sock
I love to feel the rain on my face
Taste the rain on my lips

See, my four-year-old thought Eddie was singing, "It's such a beautiful sock". Four-year-olds don't stop to think, "That doesn't make sense", so that's what they sing. Why was he singing along to an Eddie Rabbitt song? Well, that's a whole other story. What kind of music does a mom expose her child to? Led Zeppelin? There's really nothing on the radio that's wholly appropriate.

Which leads me to Eddie Rabbitt. Eddie had an unusual background for a country singer. He was raised in New Jersey, not exactly a hotbed of country music. He began his career as a songwriter, penning hits such as:

(Note:  Elvis kind of creeps me out. I'm thinking one had to have been a teenager in the late fifties to fully appreciate Elvis. Alas, I, like my son, was only four years old in the late fifties, so my rock 'n roll bar was set by "Summertime Blues", a song that Elvis's manager would never have allowed him to sing.)

Eddie also wrote:

which is much better.

Then Eddie decided, what the heck, I can be a singer! And what a singer he was.

One might think that "I Love A Rainy Night" was the only earworm that Eddie created. That's not true. Herewith:

Clint Eastwood made some strange movies in the late seventies. This was not the "Gran Torino" Clint. This was the "what the heck" Clint; movies in which his costar was an orangutan.  Nevertheless, Eddie wrote this song for the movie:

 Eddie died young -- only 56. It was 1998. But just because someone's been gone for 20 or so years doesn't mean they didn't leave a memory. 

It's such a beautiful sock: