Birth name Alton Rinker Role Singer Occupation(s) Vocalist, Composer Genres Jazz | Instruments piano, vocals Siblings Mildred Bailey Name Al Rinker | |
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Associated acts Bing Crosby, The Rhythm Boys, Paul Whiteman, Harry Barris Died June 11, 1982, Burbank, California, United States Movies King of Jazz, Two Plus Fours Similar People Mildred Bailey, Richard M Sherman, Robert B Sherman, John Murray Anderson, Paul Fejos | ||
RARE "Mississippi Mud" on radio Rhythm Boys Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, Harry Barris
Al Rinker (December 20, 1907 – June 11, 1982) was an American musician who began his career as a teen performing with Bing Crosby in the early 1920s in Spokane, Washington in various musical groups. In 1925 the pair moved on to Los Angeles, eventually forming the Rhythm Boys trio with singer/songwriter/pianist Harry Barris.
Barris wrote the songs Mississippi Mud, I Surrender, Dear, and Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams among others. The singing group worked with Paul Whiteman's Big Band for three years. They went out on their own for a year until Crosby effectively dissolved the group to go solo.
The Rhythm Boys were filmed for the Paul Whiteman movie The King of Jazz (1930) singing Mississippi Mud, So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together, A Bench in the Park, and Happy Feet. According to a filmed interview of Rinker, Crosby performed the first two weeks on his first film while on daytime work release from jail after crashing his car into a telephone pole while driving drunk. After the Rhythm Boys broke up, they reunited only once, to appear together on the "Paul Whiteman Presents" radio broadcast on July 4, 1943.
In 1952, a song for which Rinker wrote the music with lyrics by Floyd Huddleston, You Can't Do Wrong Doin' Right, appeared in the films Push-Button Kitty and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. He also wrote the song Everybody Wants to Be a Cat also with Floyd Huddleston for the Disney animated children's movie The Aristocats (1970).
Rinker was born in Tekoa, Washington; his mother, Josephine, was an enrolled member of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and a devout Roman Catholic. He and his siblings grew up on the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation near DeSmet, Idaho.
It was a musical family: their father, Charles, played fiddle and called square dances, and their mother played piano every evening after supper. His younger brother Charles Rinker became a lyricist who worked frequently with composer Gene de Paul. Rinker married Elizabeth Neuberger on October 25, 1938.
Their older sister Mildred, under her married name of Mildred Bailey, had embarked on a musical career in Los Angeles before Rinker and Crosby became known. She became a well-known jazz singer after the Rhythm Boys arranged for Paul Whiteman to "discover" her singing at a party; he hired her to sing with his band. For a time she was known as "Mrs. Swing."