The decade of the Seventies starts out with a really nice guy. B.J. Thomas, whose name, as you might guess, is Billy Joe was born in 1942 in Oklahoma, but his family moved to the Houston, Texas area when he little. Like so many others, he sang in a church choir when he was a teenager and joined a singing group called the Triumphs before he even left high school. When he was a senior, he met Roy Head who would later have a number two hit with “Treat Her Right” in 1965.. Head had a group called The Traits. The Triumphs and the Traits had several “Battle of Bands” experiences during the early Sixties.

B.J. Started his recording career in 1966 after he had left the Triumphs and recorded his first album I’m So Lonely I Could Cry. That was also the name of his first single, a song originally done by Hank Williams back in 1949, but wasn’t a hit for Williams then. B.J. hit number eight with the song and sold one million copies of the song and that was the start of his recording career. B.J. continued to record during the late Sixties, putting one more song in the Top 10, “Hooked on a Feeling” which reached number five.

In 1969, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” for the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford. They were putting together the soundtrack and needed someone to sing the song. Dionne Warwick, who had recorded with Bacharach/David many times, suggested B.J. Thomas. They brought him into to the studio to see what he could do.

On the day of the recording B.J. was just recovering from a bout of laryngitis and his throat was raw. They did five takes of the song before they got a copy that Bacharach/David liked. B.J. says it was a good thing because he didn’t think he could do a sixth. Someone from 20th Century Fox who distributed the movie, told B.J. that he sounded just like Paul Newman and they were very pleased with the recording. The song was added to the soundtrack of the movie. Later, the song was re-recorded for the single and B.J. sounds a little different on this version, since by then his throat had healed.

There are rumors that they offered the song to Bob Dylan first, but Burt Bacharach says that’s not true. They did offer it to Ray Stevens, but Stevens turned it down. Lucky for B.J. Thomas.

“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” won the Academy Award that year for Best Original Song.

“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” was released in October 1969 and entered the pop charts on November 11, 1969. It took almost two months to reach number making it the first number one of 1970 where it stayed for four weeks, the entire month of January. It was also at the top of the Adult Contemporary Chart for seven weeks. Billboard ranked it as the number four song of the entire year, 1970.