“Baby the Rain Must Fall” was written for a movie (a Steve McQueen vehicle), by the same name. Interesting fact is that the song ran over the credits with McQueen lip-synching to the vocals of Bill Strange. The “McQueen moving his lips thing” is pretty damn cheesy, or maybe it was fine for its time. I couldn’t resist posting as a bonus below.
[No slight to Bill Strange, who was a a session musician with the famed Wrecking Crew, and was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007.]
Writing credits for “Baby the Rain Must Fall” go to Elmer Bernstein (music) and Ernie Sheldon (lyrics). Bernstein is known for a list of movie scores longer than you can imagine – “The Magnificent Seven”, “The Great Escape”, “The Ten Commandment” and on and on.
The better known version of “Baby the Rain Must Fall” was recorded by Glen Yarborough after he left the Limeliters to go solo. Not much doubt it was his best known song, despite a long list of work with the folk group. It charted relatively well in early 1965, reaching #2 on the adult contemporary chart and #12 on the Billboard chart.
In his 2006 obit in the New York Times, his voice is referred to as a “silvery, lyric tenor,’ and I’ve heard it called elsewhere “velvet.” It was, in any case, one of the best voices of the folk revival. It may be true that Yarborough could have sung the phone book with success but, with a Bernstein tune to work with, it’s pretty high quality stuff all the way around. A personal favourite.