Rare Earth (band)
American rock band
Rare Earth is an American band from Detroit, Michigan. According to Louder, "Rare Earth's music straddles genres and defies categorisation, slipping seamlessly between the two seemingly disparate worlds of classic rock and R&B." The band was signed to Motown's subsidiary label Rare Earth. Although not the first white band signed to Motown, Rare Earth was the first successful act signed by Motown that consisted only of white members.
The original band lasted from 1968 to December 2021, during which only saxophonist Gil Bridges remained throughout; when Bridges died in December 2021, keyboardist Mike Bruner (who joined in 1998) had Bridges' wife's blessing to form a new Rare Earth band with a new lineup, including previous member Wayne Baraks.
History
1960s
The group formed in 1960 as the Sunliners and changed its name to Rare Earth in 1968. The band felt the name "Rare Earth" was more in keeping with the names other bands were adopting, such as Iron Butterfly, more "with it".
After recording an unsuccessful debut album, Dream/Answers, on the Verve label in 1968, the group was signed to Motown in 1969. The band was one of the first acts signed to a new Motown imprint that would be dedicated to white rock acts; many of the subsidiary's newly signed acts played blues-oriented and progressive rock styles, including Rare Earth themselves. The record company did not have a name for the new label yet and the band jokingly suggested Motown call the label Rare Earth. To the band's surprise, Motown did just that.
“Rare Earth (band)” enters the record as american rock band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rare, Earth and band can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rare Earth (band)” 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.