Rugged rockabilly star of the late 1950s, Marvin Rainwater topped the UK Charts with his single Whole Lotta Woman and earned a respected reputation as a melancholy country songwriter whose ballads were both gruff and gentle. Raised in Oklahoma, he started learning classical piano at age six, but badly injured his thumb while working in a garage and was forced to take up the guitar. During time serving in the US Navy he took to writing songs about his homesickness and loneliness and when he started playing in bars in Virginia and Washington his early demo track I Gotta Go Get My Baby ended up being covered by Teresa Brewer, the Carter Family and Maddox Brothers And Rose. He got his break appearing on the television variety show Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and when he participated in a tribute record for Hank Williams, the head of MGM Records signed him up. His crooning, baritone voice and the shuffling twanging backbeat provided by the Hemsy House Band produced the US top 20 hit Gonna Find Me A Bluebird but, capturing the innocence and excitement of early rock & roll it was Whole Lotta Woman which reached number one in Britain in 1958 and brought him his most fame. Claiming to be one-fourth Cherokee, he wore a traditional headband and feather as an onstage gimmick and had another small hit in the UK with I Dig You Baby and went on to tour with his younger sister Patty, before throat cancer brought an end to his career in the 1970s. Other artists including Mike Ness, Harry Nillsson, Petula Clark and Don Fardon covered his songs and he was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame before his death from heart failure in 2003 aged 88.
