His signature recording was once “Raindrops Preserve Fallin’ on My Head,” a No. 1 pop hit and an Oscar winner for simplest normal tune as segment of the soundtrack to one in all the ideal motion photos of 1969, the irreverent Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child. Thomas wasn’t the most foremost solution to make the whimsical ballad serene by Burt Bacharach and Hal David; Ray Stevens turned into the songwriters down. But his warm, soulful tenor fit the tune’s easygoing mood, immortalized on movie for the period of the scene when Butch (Paul Newman) shows off his contemporary bicycle to Etta Direct (Katharine Ross), the female friend of the Sundance Child (Robert Redford).
“Raindrops” has since been heard in every single attach from The Simpsons to Forrest Gump and was once voted into the Grammy Hall of Reputation in 2013. But, before the total lot, now not all people was once pleased. Thomas was once recuperating from laryngitis whereas recording the soundtrack model and his vocals are raspier than for the observe launched on its have. Redford, meanwhile, doubted the tune even belonged in Butch Cassidy.
“When the movie was once launched, I was once extremely serious — how did the tune fit with the movie? There was once no rain,” Redford told USA Lately in 2019. “At the time, it gave the impression devour a wearisome design. How depraved I was once.”
Thomas would later snort the phenomenon of “Raindrops” exacerbated an addiction to pills and alcohol which dated motivate to his teenagers, when a file producer in Houston if truth be told helpful he purchase amphetamines to retain his vitality up. He was once touring and recording repeatedly and taking dozens of pills a day. By 1976, whereas “(Hiya Gained’t You Play) One other Any individual Accomplished Any individual Hideous Tune” was once hitting No. 1, he felt devour he was once “quantity 1,000.”
“I was once at the bottom with my addictions and my problems,” he acknowledged in 2020 on The Debby Campbell Goodtime Point to. He cited a “non secular awakening,” shared alongside with his important other, Gloria Richardson, with helping him to get clear.
Thomas had few pop hits after the mid-1970s, nonetheless he persisted to get on the country charts with such No. 1 songs as “Whatever Came about to Aged-Fashioned Address” and “Contemporary Looks from an Aged Lover.” Within the gradual 1970s and early ’80s, he was once also a high gospel and inspirational singer, winning two Dove awards and 5 Grammys, including a Grammy in 1979 for simplest gospel efficiency for “The Lord’s Prayer.”
Fans of the 1980s sitcom Growing Disaster heard him because the singer of the list’s theme tune. He also acted in a handful of motion photos, including Jory and Jake’s Corner, and toured in overall. Most up-to-the-minute recordings incorporated The Living Room Classes that contains cameos from Lyle Lovett, Vince Gill and Richard Marx. He had planned to file in 2020 in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, nonetheless the classes were delayed attributable to the pandemic.
Thomas married Richardson in 1968, and had three daughters: Paige, Nora and Erin. He and his important other worked on the 1982 memoir In Tune: Finding How Authorized Lifestyles Can Be. His e book Dwelling The attach I Belong came out in 1978 and was once co-authored by Jerry B. Jenkins, later worthy for the million-selling Left Within the motivate of non secular novels written with Tim LaHaye.
Besides song, Thomas beloved baseball as unbiased a runt of one and started calling himself B.J. on legend of so many Small League teammates also were named Billy Joe. By his teenagers, he was once singing in church and had joined a local rock band, the Triumphs, whom he would preserve with into his 20s. He loved Ernest Tubbs, Hank Williams and a option of country performers his other people most standard, nonetheless on his have he was once impressed by the soul and rhythm and blues singers he heard on the radio or saw on stage, particularly Jackie Wilson, whose hit ballad “To Be Cherished” Thomas later lined and adopted as a form of knowledge to his existence.
“I was once raised in a pretty dysfunctional field and I went thru years of intense alcoholism and drug addiction so the tune was once repeatedly a touchstone for me. Whereas you commence yourself as much as medicine and alcohol at one of these young age it turns into something it’s most sensible to handle the leisure of your existence,” he told the Huffington Post in 2014.
“What a street block and heartbreak and cases of failure these addictions have brought on me. But I had that runt half of lightning from that tune. That’s the essence of the entire aspect. To love and be beloved. And that takes a lifetime to safe. It’s repeatedly been a primarily critical segment of my emotions.”
