Cometh the shower

By Richard Williams

FRANK SINATRA Here's That Rainy Day
Like so many beautifully crafted songs that we now see as standards, this one—music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Johnny Burke—was rescued from a flop musical. Sinatra sings it with the sombre wistfulness of a man gazing through a rain-streaked window.

RONETTES Walking in the Rain
A crash of thunder, the splash of rain on the pavement, and Veronica Bennett, just 21, begins to sing her song of yearning for a boy who would hold her close in a storm. Four years later Ronnie married her producer, Phil Spector; it did not end well.