1. Thomas Dale Rapp was an American singer and songwriter who led Pearls Before Swine, an influential psychedelic folk rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
20 Facts About Tom Rapp
1. 2.
Tom Rapp later practiced as a lawyer after graduating from University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1984.
3.
When Tom Rapp was a young child the family moved to Minnesota, where at the age of six he was given a guitar.
4.
Tom Rapp began writing songs, and once came third in a talent contest in Rochester when he was aged eight, where Bobby Zimmerman, probably the boy who was later known as Bob Dylan, came in fifth.
5.
The Tom Rapp family moved from Minnesota to Pennsylvania before settling in Eau Gallie, Florida, in 1963.
6.
Tom Rapp graduated from Eau Gallie High School in 1965.
7.
In Florida, Tom Rapp became a fan of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie and Bessie Smith, and formed Pearls Before Swine in 1965 with high school friends Wayne Harley, Roger Crissinger, and Lane Lederer.
8.
Tom Rapp toured with Buddy Guy, Gordon Lightfoot, Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, but turned down the opportunity to appear at the Woodstock festival.
9.
Tom Rapp's lyrics "told hard truths about the human condition"; they were sometimes confrontational and cynical, but often embraced a "whimsical brand of mystical humanism".
10.
Tom Rapp's songs included "Rocket Man", which inspired Bernie Taupin and Elton John's song of the same name.
11.
Between 1974 and 1976, Tom Rapp performed as a solo singer-songwriter but did not record.
12.
Tom Rapp then worked as a theater receptionist and projectionist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York, before entering higher education.
13.
Tom Rapp graduated in economics from Brandeis University in 1981, and then studied at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, graduating in 1984 and becoming a civil rights lawyer.
14.
Tom Rapp described his legal work as an extension of his politically-attuned music, his areas of expertise including judicial estoppel and finding constitutional grounds upon which to challenge corporate actions.
15.
Tom Rapp later lived and worked in Philadelphia and Florida.
16.
Tom Rapp recorded the album A Journal of the Plague Year, released in 1999.
17.
Tom Rapp performed at Terrastock 5 in October 2002 and Terrastock 6 in April 2006.
18.
Tom Rapp was married three times: firstly to Elisabeth Joosten from 1968 to 1976; secondly, to Susan Hein; and, from 1995, Lynn Madison.
19.
Tom Rapp had a son, David, from his first marriage.
20.
Tom Rapp died at home in Melbourne, Florida, in 2018, after suffering from cancer.