MARVIN RAINWATER – "Whole Lotta Woman"

given his ‘25% Cherokee’ heritage it seems appropriate that the drumming at the end sounds like a stereotypical ‘hiawatha’ style rhythm

Marvin Rainwater toured the UK around 1958 and appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wsyjqg-J8Y where he is introduced by Tommy Trinder with a joke about smoke signals. I think Marvin performs quite well live in the style of Hank Williams.

I think lower-end teenagers liked the stomping sound of this song which could be banged on the school desks of those days, which had sloping liftable lids. The other song around that time ideal for desk-banging was Jerry Lee Lewis’ High School Confidential. This was a risky business done under the threat of casual corporal punishment in schools.

This is a bit lame but an interesting one-off listen nevertheless, in the same way that it’d be interesting to see a line drawing for Monet’s waterlillies – you can see the form taken shape, and all this lovely space to pour ideas into, but our Marvin only adds a couple of tricks of his own.

The thing is, though, that this is 1958 and popular music was already way past the point where that was state-of-the-art. Not that the public have ever been shy of elevating a snooze to no.1 – and to be fair this is a pleasant enough ditty, but its time is not coming around again ever.

Fine enough from Marvin. 5/10 from me here.