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Remembering Kenny Rankin
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Dolphin friendly: Kenny Rankin offers a mesmerizing version of Fred Neil's "The Dolphins."
In an age when guitar-strumming singer-songwriters were as pervasive as the scent of patchouli oil, Kenny Rankin stood out. Maybe it was his preternaturally beautiful voice, which could swoop to vertiginous falsetto heights, or his deft, crystalline picking, or the strong jazz and Brazilian roots that undergirded so much of his work. Still, Rankin, who died of lung cancer last month at age 69, remains a somewhat overlooked figure in both the pop and jazz worlds.
Not that Rankin wasn't successful. Jazz-inflected tunes such as "In the Name of Love" and "Haven't We Met" were lite-FM radio staples when I was growing up in the 1970s and '80s. His albums consistently made the pop and jazz charts. He was a favorite of Johnny Carson, who invited him time and again to perform on the Tonight Show, and Sir Paul McCartney, who thought so highly of Rankin's Beatles covers that he asked him to induct Lennon and McCartney into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987.
But Rankin seems to have been a prickly character, which may have kept his career from soaring higher. I remember seeing him perform a solo show at the Musicians Exchange in Fort Lauderdale in the late-'80s or early '90s, and he was brilliant. But someone in the audience had the temerity to shout out a request, and Rankin unloaded both barrels at the poor schelp. He berated the man so badly — and out of proportion to a simple request from someone who was obviously a fan — that the enraged audience member stormed out. I didn't know Rankin personally, nor did I have the chance to interview him, so, for all I knew, he was just having a bad night. However, I've read similar reports online. Perhaps he was enduring a dark time in his life, as he was just coming off an 11-year recording gap spanning 1980's After the Roses and 1991's Because of You. (Ironically, I seem to remember the management stating that smoking would not be permitted at the artist's request, although it didn't seem to protect poor Kenny.)
Ultimately, Rankin's legacy will be his music. Early on, he had recorded pop sides for Decca, notable mostly for his strong tenor vocal. As a session cat, he played guitar behind Bob Dylan on Bringing It All Back Home (alongside John Hammond). His 1967 debut recording, Mind Dusters, showcased his still-nascent style on covers of Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot and Fred Neil (a sublime read of "The Dolphin"; dig the incredible live version embedded above), as well as his own "Peaceful," which would become a hit when Helen Reddy covered it in 1972.
But Rankin truly hit his stride on 1974's Silver Morning, a classic of the acoustic singer-songwriter genre. From the ethereal title track to a startingly fresh and moving read of The Beatles' "Blackbird" to the smoothly sailing scat jazz of "In the Name of Love" (and that's just on Side 1), Rankin displays great confidence in his vocal and musical gifts. Side 2 was equally strong, as Rankin started off with the sweet folk-jazz of "Haven't We Met" — a bit dated, perhaps, but still irresistible — offers another Beatles cover with an exuberant "Penny Lane" and wraps it all up by acknowledging his Brazilian influences with a cool-as-the-waters-of-March version of Baden-Powell's "Berimbau."
On Inside, Rankin's 1975 followup, he applied his gentle, bell-like voice and masterful picking to a set of tunes spanning Stevie Wonder's "Creepin'," John Sebastian's "She's a Lady" and Jimi Hendrix's jazzy "Up From the Skies." Predating the whole pop-singer-turns-crooner fad of the past decade or so, Rankin also covered the standard "A Sunday Kind of Love," a tune that was a perfect fit for his sensibilities. But most revelatory to me was his version of Randy Newman's "Marie," an aching lament sung by a guy who needs to get loaded before he can tell his woman how much he loves her.
The Kenny Rankin Album, from 1977, teamed Rankin with arranger-conductor Don Costa for some truly sublime performances. Hank Williams' "A House of Gold," George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and Rankin's own album-concluding "Through the Eye of the Eagle" provide album and career highlights. And once again, Rankin dips into the standards songbook, selecting the moody gems "Here's That Rainy Day" and "When Sunny Gets Blue."
In the mid-'90s, Rankin anticipated the market for pop updates of the Great American Songbook with his hit jazz recording Professional Dreamer. Of course, it was no great stretch for the singer, who had been interpreting standards for decades, as he agilely put his flexible tenor to durable chestnuts such as "The Very Thought of You" and "I Fall in Love Too Easily," even as he set his guitar aside in favor of an excellent piano trio. His 2002 recording A Song for You also cracked the Billboard Top Jazz Album chart, taking a similar tack but putting the guitar back in Rankin's hands.
A comeback may have been in the cards for Rankin. He had recently inked a deal with the Mack Avenue label, but was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after. Rankin died just three weeks later. Still, he left behind some exquisitely beautiful music, which is perhaps the result of his uncompromising artistic vision.
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