Familiar Songs
album by Tom Rapp
Familiar Songs is an album released on Reprise Records in 1972 by American singer-songwriter Tom Rapp, the leader of folk-rock group Pearls Before Swine. It was presented as his first solo album, although several previous albums credited to Pearls Before Swine had actually been recorded by Rapp with session musicians, rather than by a working group. The album is also sometimes known simply as Tom Rapp, because its title does not appear on the front sleeve.
The album was released by Reprise without Rapp's approval or knowledge. According to Rapp, Reprise wanted to issue an album of the best songs from his Pearls Before Swine recordings, and he went into Brooks Arthur's 914 Studios in New York City, with musicians Robbie Merkin (piano), David Wolfert (guitar) and Morrie Brown (bass), to work up ideas for re-recording some of the songs in a new way. Although some of the ideas succeeded, he felt that others needed more work, and the album was put on hold. However, his manager, who (rather than Rapp himself) held the contract with Reprise, passed the tapes to the record company, and later disappeared. Rapp only discovered that the record had been issued when he came upon it in a record store. Not surprisingly, he subsequently disowned the album but was actively involved when it was reissued on CD in 2004.
The album eschews the atmospheric, sometimes psychedelic, arrangements of the Pearls Before Swine records for a more orthodox rock sound.
The public source identifies “Familiar Songs” as album by Tom Rapp. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Familiar, Songs and album.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5432958. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Familiar Songs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.