Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

Saturday 9: Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head (1969)

On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this week's song, BJ Thomas sings that he knows it won't be long until he finds happiness. What are you looking forward to today? What's going to make you smile?

Babies, puppies, kittens...

2) BJ Thomas met his wife Gloria at a bar. She was there with his drummer, but BJ let his friend know he felt a connection to Gloria and was going to drive her home. BJ and Gloria were married for 50 years, until his death. Have you and a friend ever found yourselves attracted to the same person? If yes, how did you handle it?

Nope.

3) This song is from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, which has been called "the most entertaining Western ever made." Do you enjoy Westerns?

Yes and no. All westerns are not made the same. Some are really bloody and gory and some are not. There is a difference between old time westerns and the new blood and guts western. In the old days a bad guy in western who got shot clutched his stomach and died, not there is blood and guts splattered over the walls, and they show a body with its head blown off.

4) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of the most popular movies Paul Newman made, but he liked to say his "favorite role is philanthropist." He raised an amazing $500 million for children's charities through his Newman's Own brand. The most popular Newman's Own product is salad dressing. What flavor of salad dressing would we find in your kitchen right now?

Well if you open my refrigerators door you will see a whole row of salad dressing… some going back over a year.

I have driven by Newman's Hole in the Wall children’s camp and I usually only buy Newman's Own brand of juice, spaghetti sauce and salad dressing. The old camp burned down and the new camp is just reopening.

5) Burt Bacharach won the first of his three Oscars for this song. Yet 20th Century Fox originally wanted to cut the song from the movie, maintaining that that song and the famous "bicycle sequence" between Paul Newman and Katharine Ross were anachronistic and made the movie too long. Burt and the movie's director George Roy Hill fought for it, insisting that it helped define the optimistic character of Butch. Tell us about a time you were glad you stood your ground.

When I decided to get my MSW there was some opposition to it.

6) Edith Head also won an Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. She said that Robert Redford, who played Sundance, presented a wardrobe problem. His jawline is too strong so she had to create special wider-brimmed hats to balance it. If you could magically change one of your physical features, which would you choose? And which feature would you never change?

My face.

One thing I wish would disappear is my belly. 

7) In 1969, when this song was a hit, The Beatles played their last concert on the roof of Abbey Road Studios. When did you last climb onto the roof?

Not for a very long time ago, but I will tell you a story of when I was around 16,

We were using a snow coaster as a frisbee and it landed up on our roof. So I climbed up on the roof of the our ranch style home on the sunny side of the roof. I took one step from the sunny side to the shady side and zip… it was all ice and I slid all the down and off the roof on to the drivway.

Just then my mother came out looking for me. I zipped over her head and on to the driveway, rolled and got up. Being a teenager I tried to act nonchalant after having fallen off the roof and said “You wanted me?” Needless to say my mother was freaking out.

8) Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries sold at a brisk pace at Christmastime 1969. They're still popular today. Were you a fan?

No I was in my 20s and those books were too young for me.

9) Random question: Do you consider yourself old fashioned?

No, but the younger generation does.

***

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid brings back many a memory for me, I went on a first date, I had graduated from high school two years earlier  and I just got a date with a high school senior that i had a crush on and we went to watch the movie.

Afterward I went out and bought the album, and somewhere I still have the ticket stub from the movie.