Walking in the rain is a funny business - sometimes literal, sometimes metaphoric, sometimes imbued with pathetic fallacy, and definitely, apparently, a thing to write songs about.
The one I think of first is ‘Just Walkin in the Rain’ the one made famous by Johnny Ray, written by Johnny Bragg and Robert Riley while they were in Tennessee State Prison. Bragg supposedly said, "Here we are just walking in the rain, and wondering what the girls are doing." Riley thought there was a song in it, and he was right.
Just walking in the rain
Getting soaking wet
Torturing my heart by trying to forget.
Then the Ronettes, ‘Walking in the Rain,’ later covered by Jay and the Americans and indeed the Walker Brothers.
Though sometimes we'll fight, I won't really care
And I'll know it's gonna be alright 'cause we've got so much we share
Like walking in the rain (like walking in the rain)
The song is attributed to Barry Mann, Cynthia Weli and Phil Spector. I don’t imagine Phil ever did very muchwalking in the rain, what with the wig and all, but like Briggs and Riley, as he currently sits or walks in jail, there must surely be moments when he wonders what the girls are doing, though I’m not sure which girls.
And of course, ‘The Sky is Crying’ – many, many versions - but originally by Elmore James
The sky is crying,
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
Well, yes, sometimes you can, and t’other day I did. For no very good reason, except my ongoing fascination with suburbia, I went off for a walk in Highams Park, in north east London, and to be honest a large part of the attraction was that I knew I’d have the pleasure of walking down Hollywood Way.
As you see, it was sunny when I started out – and of course there was plenty in the area to look at.
gnomes (well, one gnome)
topiary and yuccas
fine bungalows
an equally fine concrete shed
streamlined bay windows, which are always a favorite of mine
But as you also see in that last picture, I hadn’t done much drifting before the rain came down (see ‘The Day The Rains Came’ made famous by the somewhat less famous Jane Morgan ‘The day that the rains came down/ Mother Earth smiled again.’ Well yes and no.
From time to time it would pelt down and I’d run under a tree – no pennies from heaven there - then it would stop for a bit and I’d walk on and it’d pelt down again. If I’d had a specific destination in place I’d have continued but since I was just wandering it wasn’t long before I’d had enough. My point of return was De La Warr Court.
Now obviously when you see the name De La Warr you think of the De La Warr Pavlion in very vaguely resembles.
The pavilion was named after Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr, and the first hereditary peer to join the Labour Party. If he has any connection with Highams Park, I’ve not been able to discover it.
Incidentally, Hollywood Way has one small point of interest, it was the childhood home of jazz man John Dankworth. There’s a plaque to that effect.
In the course of a long career he recorded plenty of songs about rain, including, many of them with Cleo Lane from ‘Come Rain or Come Shine,’ to ‘Singing in the Rain.’ Rather fewer songs about walking. And I do hope this was his car, not just a prop for the album cover:
