John

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John Rainbow's first performance in New York came in 1947 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem where he won first prize in a talent show. "That was almost 60 years ago," he said, smiling into the distance. "I sang the 'September Song.'" Rainbow performed sporadically over the next decade in various African-American nightclubs and then in 1962, on the Hugh Downs NBC television quiz show,"Concentration," he won a free, two-week trip to Europe, where he became a star. In Copenhagen, Rainbow met Harry Arnold, a prominent European musician at the time with an 18-piece band, who invited Rainbow to sing at one of his shows. "It was great,"Rainbow recalled. "They had me in the papers. And that was the kickoff for me in Europe." Rainbow saved newspaper clippings from his performances and, by tireless self-promotion, sang throughout Sweden, Denmark and France. He telegraphed NBC, which granted him permission to remain in Europe for a year, although he had to pay his own way; and in Stockholm he performed in a music festival after which his picture in the newspaper bore the caption: "Johnny Rainbow, black American, star of the show." Rainbow returned to New York in 1963. He believed he was on his way to the top. He performed in the Iridium Jazz Club, the Cotton Club, Small's Paradise, Danny's Skylight Room and the Lenox Lounge. He acquired a manager named Tommy who brought Rainbow's demo to different promoters. But with the changing music scene, and the civil rights movement barely underway, Rainbow got his first taste of disappointment. "In those days, if you were a man of color--unless you were Billy Eckstein and had your own band--you couldn't sing ballads," Rainbow said. "I couldn't sing in many of the places I wanted to, and that affected me." After a while his manager, Tommy, came back to Rainbow--"with tears in his eyes"--handed back his demo,and said producers weren't interested. That same year Rainbow received a Dear John from his Swedish fiancée,who was supposed to meet him in New York in '64, saying that she'd met and married another man. "That broke my heart," Rainbow said. "I'm still getting over it." (Rainbow has been engaged four times but remains a bachelor. He and his former Swedish fiancée remain friends; she calls him twice a year--on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and on Rainbow's birthday; and he calls her every year on her birthday to sing over the phone). But Rainbow did not give up. And finally out of the rubble of disappointment, an opportunity arose when, after performing at the Club Ambassador in 1963, Rainbow was invited to meet a producer at the famous Brill Building on Broadway.
©John Rainbow
E-Mail: RAINBOWVALUE@AOL.com Telephone: 1(212) 982-8496
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