Today’s classic rain-themed song of the day is “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” from the Serendipity Singers. The song released in February of 1964, reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart.
“Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” is a traditional tune based on the English nursery rhyme, “There Was a Crooked Man.” It was first recorded (as “Crooked Little House”) by Jimmie Rodgers in 1960, where rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey and country songwriter Ed E. Miller were credited as composers. The Serendipities got their hands on it in late 1963 and recorded it with a pseudo-calypso beat for their self-titled debut album.
The Serendipity Singers were a New Christy Minstrel-like folk group with nine, count ’em, nine members. (Yes, that made them a nonet.) They started out at the University of Colorado as a seven-member group called the Newport Singers, then moved to New York City, changed their name, and added two more members to get to the exact right size. They sang the kind of white bread folk that our parents liked to listen to, a mix of traditional tunes and originals.
The Serendipity Singers did not have a long lifespan. They released one more single that charted in the Hot 100 (“Beans in My Ears, #30 in 1964) and about a dozen albums, many of them recorded live. All the founding members left the group by 1970, although a group using their name continued touring with all replacement singers for several decades.
As to “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down,” my grandkids liked it when they were little. They’d ask me to play “that song about the hole in the roof” and we’d all sing along. They especially liked the “ah ha, oh no” part.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, the original Serendipity Singers singing “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” on one of those T.J. Lubinsky-produced PBS fund raising specials (John Sebastian Presents: Folk Rewind, from 2010). Try to ignore Lublinsky’s patented artificial applause from the audience.
