A song about doomed love, written by a man who never lived to see it top the charts.

"Running Bear" is a cheerful record about two people who drown. That tension between the bouncy production and the tragic storyline is part of what makes it so fascinating, and part of why it shot to number one in March 1960 and stayed there for two weeks.

But the real story here isn't Johnny Preston. It's the man who wrote the song. Jiles Perry Richardson Junior, better known as the Big Bopper, died on February 3rd 1959 in the same plane crash that took Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. He was twenty-eight years old. "Running Bear" reached the top of the British chart sixteen months after he died. He never knew it existed as a single.

Preston was a young singer from Port Arthur, Texas, who gave the song exactly what it needed. Wide-eyed, slightly breathless, completely committed to the tragedy of Running Bear and Little White Dove, two young lovers from rival tribes who swim toward each other across a river and meet in the middle. Romantically. Fatally. The backing vocals, a cheerful chorus of whoops and uga-ugas courtesy of George Jones among others, somehow made the whole thing work rather than collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.

It's a brilliant piece of early 1960s pop storytelling, and it's the kind of record that Seven Inches of History was made for. These are Rainbow Valley's shorter bite-size episodes, each one picking up a single number one and telling the story behind it. Some of those stories are joyful. Some are heartbreaking. This one, somehow, manages to be both at once.

Find this episode and the full Rainbow Valley catalogue at

https://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/rainbowvalley and follow us on Twitter at @rv_podcast.

#JohnnyPreston #RunningBear #TheBigBopper #SevenInchesOfHistory #RainbowValleyPodcast #UKNumberOne #1960s #PopHistory