Happy Rhodes may be a great singer and musician but I looked at her Wikipedia page and, let’s face it, she’s not conventionally beautiful or sexy. This is a big hindrance for any performer, but especially for a woman.
Emitt Rhodes, on the other hand, was one of the best looking men I’ve ever seen, which makes it all the more baffling why he is so obscure.
I think he’s getting his due just a little more these days, but I’d have said that Willie Dixon would have been another obvious one for the under-appreciated list. His impact on the Chicago Blues sound through his songwriting in particular appears to have been immense and for a very long time little recognized outside the cognoscenti.
I wouldn’t call Janis Joplin “conventionally beautiful”. And she gots a whole passel o’ cred.
But Joan Armatrading ain’t gorgeous, but she definitely deserves more musical credit… and cash, of course, for being an accomplished songwriter, an acoustic and blues guitarist, and having the smokiest West-Indies-and-Whiskey-tinged voice I’ve ever heard.
Mmmm…
She has a song with the lyrics “If I have to be pretty to be liked, then I think I’m dead in the water…I’ve been influenced by society to paint my face and hate my body. I don’t think I’m any better for it, doesn’t mean I’m more legitimate. After all, isn’t it what’s inside that counts, no matter what the gender be?” Yeah ok, it’s one of her lesser songs, a rare throwaway and one of the few that I’m not crazy about, but the point is that she knew what the score was.
The funny thing is, I think she’s really cute in action (back in her prime). I’m certainly biased, and when you love someone it makes you see them through rose-colored glasses, but to me, still pictures just don’t tell the story. In all these different concerts, in this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, and this song, I think she’s adorable. She had an unconventional look perhaps, but that can be a plus sometimes. She wasn’t cookie cutter in name, face or voice.
Sorry, I gotta say… “conventionally beautiful” is boring. This picture of Happy Rhodes reminds me of the woman I married. (Of course, she turned out to be kind of neurotic and we ended up divorced. But she was captivating.)
Aha, I see that Equipoise is the name of a Happy Rhodes album. 
I don’t know why “lack of ambition” should be frustrating. She’s well-enough known to be a working artist, right? That’s all that really matters, that the people you like get to do their thing.
I’m not sure what kind of actual credit he gets, but the television writer, Kurt Sutter blows my mind. He was one of the driving forces of The Shield, and now his baby, Sons of Anarchy, is amazing. I think Sons has been largely ignored, awards-wise, but the writing and acting on that show is top notch, IMO.
She’s retired now, so she’s not a working artist. She may record something else at some point in the future, maybe not. She does have a world-wide cult following that’s only grown over the years*. If she did come out of retirement she’d do well enough to make back her costs without having to leave her house or lift a finger.
I said frustrating but not so much. There are things she could have done to heighten her profile but didn’t. Most are understandable. She absolutely refused to go by a different name (would she have been taken more seriously if she went by Kimberly Rhodes or Tyler Rhodes? We’ll never know). When she was a working artist she never toured, which seems to be a big way people get to be known. She only ever played one-off shows here and there, and a couple of multi-date mini-tours. She turned down at least one high-profile gig, of touring with/opening for Andreas Vollenweider, to make an album (Equipoise, in fact). I understand, she’s a homebody. Most of all I very much respect that she refused to sign with large record labels (and she did have offers) because she didn’t want to give up control of/rights to her music. All in all she did things her own way, didn’t sell her soul and got a following anyway. I still wish more people knew about her.
Still thinking about being conventionally pretty or not, I absolutely love this picture of her. I do think she’s pretty in it. For cute, this one is adorable. Both were taken less than 10 years ago, in 2003.
Here’s the most recent picture of her, from a few years ago, at her last show before retiring to live on a farm in upstate New York.
Speaking of song writers, how about Jim Steinman? He has written dozens of hits, in addition to writing the best selling album that was written by one person–Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell.
Yet I’ve talked to dozens of people who thinks Meat Loaf writes all his own songs.
Yeah - he’s kinda like the Phil Spector of 70’s rock - huge, over-the-top song structures and production. Very well known to geeks, but yeah, most folks just see him as the guy who wore black leather gloves while playing piano in some Meatloaf concerts. Very talented guy; I’ve always preferred his work with Sisters of Mercy, e.g., producing This Corrosion with the choral intro.
Ouch! I like Billy Joel just fine and can appreciate most of his early stuff and see the talent in it. Glass Houses and The Stranger were excellent. But I sure wouldn’t hold up We Didn’t Start the Fire as an example of his genius. That was a novelty song to the nth degree and could have been written 5x better by Dennis Miller with his hands tied behind his back.
Uncredited, unknown, unheralded musical geniuses:
The Funk Brothers.
This is a group of studio musicians who provided the instrumental music on virtually every Motown hit back in the day. Their music is known and loved by millions; their names? not so much.
James Jamerson, Johnny Griffith, Jack Ashford, Uriel Jones, Bob Babbitt, Joe Hunter, Joe Messina, Eddie Willis, “Pistol” Allen, “Papa Zita” Benjamin, “Bongo” Brown, Earl Van Dyke, and Robert White.
mmm
See also: R.E.M.'s It’s the End of the World as We Know It.
They did it first and better.
She isn’t any less pretty than Alanis Morrissette or Avril Lavigne. There’s no particular reason you couldn’t have Hollywood types glam her up.
While Rhodes first album is superb, his others are less than ordinary. Not his fault exactly – he was rushed into the studio by the record company – but they just aren’t all that good. Still, his first album should have been a smash pop hit.
I’m sure your line about McCartney is a joke.
It’s no joke. Paul McCartney was great as a songwriter, vocalist and bassist of the Beatles. His post-Beatles solo career is mostly trash.
In Desperate Need, Bad Man, Textile Factory, Birthday Lady, My Love Is Strong, Tame The Lion, Mirror, Bubble Gum The Blues, and Really Wanted You totally kill any of the shit that McCartney put out with Wings.
And Emitt Rhodes never made any songs as shitty as Silly Love Songs and Someone’s Knocking On The Door.
Some Wings songs had good melodies: Jet, Band on the Run. But the lyrics are silly shit. “And Jet, you know I thought you was a lady sufferagette…Jet! Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo.” “The jailer man and sailor Sam were searching everyone.” Ridiculous horrible lyrics.
This again. Having the events in chronological order is a ready made structure that’s really no virtue. It ain’t Gilbert and Sullivan, and I’d say I’ve seen things just as skillful by Weird Al. The verses aren’t stunning and the central conceit of the song is bogus because anyone of average smarts already knows that “We” didn’t start “the fire.”
But, hey, Joel is an excellent songwriter, just not an under rated one.
It’s been done. She made massive fun of it on the cover of her album Equipoise. At first glance that would be meaningless and weird to most people, but there are several layers of meaning at work. The “glammed up” outside is what people think she should be, the monster (which she painted, his name is Tirk) is more akin to her inner feelings. She’s not just not smiling, she looks downright unhappy. The word “Equipoise” has a lot of meanings, but the meaning that she’s using is “state of balance” and the picture fits with that: trying to balance her inner life and her outer life (both real and what’s “expected” of her to make it big, be beautiful, tour the world, sell your soul, play the game, have those hits, cause a splash, baby, which she ultimately decided she wasn’t cut out for). There’s much more, but it’s all very fannish stuff.
Sorry to be non-specific, but there are/were so many people who didn’t get the credit they deserved that it absolutely dwarfs the number that did, and I’m not talking about just commercial success, either. People that created unbelievably original and powerful art/music/literature in near total obscurity, and not wannabes or dilletantes - truly special talents absolutely litter the ditches of history. It’s the most likely outcome for creatives, yet the ones who really are special, knowing full well they’re just Icaruses, still put this incredible stuff out there, to absolutely no avail other than offloading it from their brains.
Yep. Great post.
There’s someone who doesn’t get the credit he is due! A huge percentage of the population thinks that he only puts new lyrics to existing songs, when in fact more than half of his songs are originals. We Didn’t Start The Fire is nowhere near as clever as Al’s song Bob, a “style parody” of Bob Dylan composed entirely of palindromes, and rhymes. And it makes about as much sense as most real Dylan lyrics.
