Jim Valley

Garage rock enthusiasts chiefly recall Jim "Harpo" Valley from his time as guitarist in Paul Revere & the Raiders, yet he later built a thriving body of work aimed at young listeners. Valley came into the world on March 13, 1943, in Tacoma, Washington, and spent his childhood in the Seattle region. He first took up the trumpet at age ten, but rock & roll soon drew him to guitar; while still in high school he entered the popular local outfit the Viceroys, whose 1963 regional success "Granny's Pad" followed. Early in 1965 he joined Portland's beat group Don & the Goodtimes, splitting lead vocals with frontman Don Gallucci and penning their hit "Little Sally Tease." The next year he replaced lead guitarist Drake Levin in the Raiders. His resemblance to the famed Marx Brother earned him the nickname "Harpo," after which he moved to Los Angeles, where Revere & the Raiders performed daily on Dick Clark's television program Where the Action Is. There he grew close to the band's producer Terry Melcher and to members of Melcher's folk-rock ensemble the Gentle Soul, who urged him to compose his own material. When the Raiders never recorded those songs, Valley exited the lineup in 1967; he subsequently wrote and sang with the folk group the Lamp of Childhood while launching a solo path. Working with producer Curt Boettcher, he cut the Dunhill single "Try, Try, Try," which attracted scant commercial attention, and in fall 1968 he finished the solo album Walking Through the Quiet. Dunhill's decision not to issue the record sent Valley back to Washington, where he took a railroad job and released the Christian-themed Family on the Light label in 1971. In 1974, alongside the Seattle-based Shoestring Orchestra and Choir, he put out the Jerden single "Rabbits in the Park." The following year he and his family settled in San Diego, where he created a musical drawn from the Children's Crusade of twelfth-century France. By 1978 Valley had returned to Seattle and issued the solo disc Dance Inside Your Heart. He then joined the Tacoma school district to teach music to gifted students and, in 1983, released his first dedicated children's album, Planet Rainbow. That project received a Parent's Choice award and opened the door to further releases such as Friendship Train, McFiddle DeeDee, and Dinosaur Ride. In 2002 he also issued the adult contemporary collection Rolling Sea.