I was curious to see what Rasa Davies looked like. Lucked out as someone had posted a wedding portrait of her and Ray onto Pinterest. Quite charming, very 1964.
Her maiden name was Didzpetris and she was an Eastern European immigrant to the UK. Despite my using the past tense I believe she was still around.
Part of the reason I was thinking of her is that she sang backup and harmony on a lot of early Kinks records. Does add a certain something.
2 comments:
While it's true the early Kinks albums were our favorites I had no idea his first wife was part of the group - at least when it came to recording if not the stage performances. Ray's wikipedia page says almost nothing about her other than the fact they had two children together. Out of curiosity about when they split up I looked up the two of them and found this interesting article from a few years ago.
Too Much on my Mind is a lovely song. Thanks for posting it and the story about Rasa.
It's true that there's not that much info publicly available about her, which may be by choice. If she worked with the Kinks in the studio but not onstage she might be publicity-shy. Andrew Hickey is a good writer about music--he also has an illuminating series on Harry Nilsson--and he raises some interesting points. Authorship of songs can be a hard thing to nail down.
It seemed like a good example to me of a song that is at the very least enhanced by her presence on it. So it was good to have her recording for a few years at least.
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