Bottineau, North Dakota is not necessarily a place people associate with psychedelic rock music. However, on this date in 1947, in Bottineau, North Dakota, Tom Rapp was born -- the singer and songwriter of Pearls Before Swine.
His parents were both schoolteachers. Early on, his family moved to Minnesota where he received his first guitar at six. They happened to be neighbors with a country and western musician who taught Rapp his first chords and how to play the ukulele. According to a newspaper clipping, he got third place at a talent show in Rochester when he was 8, two places ahead of another competitor, Bobby Zimmerman, who, as Bob Dylan, would become one of Rapp’s biggest inspirations. After moving from Minnesota to Pennsylvania, his family finally settled in Eau Gallie, Florida in 1963 where Rapp went to high school.
Rapp started his music career upon graduation, forming Pearls Before Swine with Wayne Harley, Roger Crissinger, and Lane Lederer. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the group released several albums. Rapp eventually went solo until retiring from music in 1976, leaving a reputation for his cynical and dark political lyrics.
He spent the next few years as a theater receptionist and projectionist in Cambridge, Massachusetts until he enrolled in Brandeis University. He graduated in 1981 with a degree in economics and went on to study at the University of Pennsylvania Law School where he graduated in 1984 and became a civil rights lawyer, which he viewed as an extension of his music. Throughout his law career he became known for challenging corporate actions.
However, Rapp never entirely left music, performing three times at the Terrastock music festival and recording the album, A Journal of the Plague Year, which he released in 1999. An interesting life for the boy from Bottineau, who was claimed by cancer on February 11, 2018 at age 70.
Dakota Datebook written by Lucid Thomas
Sources:
https://www.last.fm/music/Tom+Rapp
