Kenny Rankin, "Pussywillows, Cattails"/"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

I've just discovered an artist I've heard all my life.

Here's what I mean. I was trying to pick the next song to write about, and recalled a haunting acoustic cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that I used to listen to when I was growing up in Manila. It was one of the many tunes on the mixtapes my father would play while driving us around (I've already talked about one of those songs). I was sure, absolutely sure, that the cover was by George Benson, and so I hunted for it online—no luck. Maybe I wasn't absolutely sure anymore. Was it by Jim Croce? No luck there either. I started to grasp at straws: Bill Withers? Paul Williams? Nope and nope. At this point I was starting to wonder whether I'd imagined the song entirely.

As a last attempt I checked a website that linked to all the covers of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in chronological order, and randomly clicked on the recordings from the 70s and 80s to see if anything rang a bell. Then I heard it—the slow arpeggiated guitar chords, the clear honey-sweet tenor—and it turns out the artist I'd been looking for, all this time, was Kenny Rankin.

Who the hell was Kenny Rankin?

I looked up more of his music. And immediately came upon "Pussywillows, Cattails," another song from Dad's mixtapes that I loved even more. It's a poignant lullaby whose lyrics wrung from my city kid's heart a sharp nostalgia for a world I never knew: of woodlands and farms, cornfields hazy in the sun, wine cups by firelight, a glimpse of grownup romance, the promise of spring. We didn't even have spring in Manila, and I don't think pussywillows or cattails grew in the Philippines and couldn't have identified one to save my life. But I mentally made substitutions—stands of kalachuchi trees, beds of shy makahiya, solitary strolls along the black-sand beaches of La Union—and wrapped myself in the song's warm cocoon. Kenny Rankin's guitar picked out silver notes like stars at the edge of dawn; his voice soothed like soft light at daybreak; and I lost myself in a dream of nature and a sweet, sad yearning I couldn't quite define.

But here I stumbled on a mystery. "Pussywillows, Cattails" was originally sung by Gordon Lightfoot, and there have been several covers of it since, Rankin's included—but I couldn't find Rankin's version on Spotify or any other streaming service. Nor was there any sign of the album it's from, Silver Morning, or any of the other albums he released before 1980. It turns out that much of his early work was probably destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire, which consumed the original master recordings of more than 800 artists—an unimaginable cultural loss. Now, it seems, the only available physical CDs of Silver Morning sell on eBay for outrageous prices (though the vinyl records are still affordable if you've got the means to play them). And "Pussywillows, Cattails" lives on YouTube only by the grace of Rankin's devoted fans, who have uploaded his songs with various degrees of audio quality.

Here's one video I love, with the camera simply pointed at the record player as the LP spins—the combination of Rankin's voice and the vinyl's hiss and pop taking me back to the days of riding in the back of the car, with sun and sleep in my eyes, and the music on my father's cassettes filling my head with dreams. (Thanks, Dad.)

And because "Pussywillows, Cattails" isn't on Spotify, I'll put "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the playlist. Here's the version I fell in love with, from 1977's The Kenny Rankin Album; Spotify doesn't have that one either, but it does have this sublime performance from his 1990 concert at the Bottom Line in New York. (The brief detour into "My Funny Valentine" is a very nice touch.) Every time I listen to this, I'm further astonished by his timbre, clarity, and control, his voice almost a brass instrument; jazz legend Stan Getz apparently called him "a horn with a heartbeat," and that's abundantly clear on this track.

BONUS: I'm still listening and still discovering as I write this. The entire Silver Morning album (posted by a fan on YouTube) is worth luxuriating in, as is the full Bottom Line concert (playlist here), which includes gorgeous jazz originals like "Haven't We Met" as well as a generous handful of Beatles covers—"Blackbird" and "I've Just Seen a Face" leave me speechless. Some great live video is available: check out a stellar performance of "Haven't We Met" here; a full Jazz Channel concert; and, below, an interview with performance clips, put together to commemorate his passing. Rankin's lovely personality is on full display: just a humble and unassuming guy from Washington Heights, happy to shower praise on his collaborators and having the time of his life.

His death in 2009 quite understandably hit his listeners hard—including, apparently, a large contingent of fans in the Philippines. It seems that an entire generation of Filipinos fell in love with his music and played it constantly, until, perhaps, it became an unremarked backdrop for daily life, the comfortable old songs that children take for granted without bothering to learn the singer's name. Or maybe that's just me and my particular obliviousness. Kenny Rankin's songs moved me in my boyhood, but seemed to fade as I grew up and away from those family car rides. It's clear now that he'd been making exquisite music all along; I just wasn't paying attention. There's a metaphor in that, somewhere. -----

Listen to the Spotify playlist here.

Watch the YouTube playlist here.