What Was The First Release On Rhino?

"Go To Rhino Records" by Larry "Wild Man" Fischer

Larry Fischer, dubbed "Wild Man" by R&B giant Solomon Burke, was discovered by Frank Zappa in the '60s singing for dimes on the Sunset Strip. When the Zappa-produced An Evening With Wild Man Fischer failed to catapult him into rock stardom, Larry entered a deep, two-year funk.

Trying to recapture his earlier glory, Larry took to wandering in and out of record stores hoping to be recognized. But only at Rhino's Westwood Boulevard retail store-most of whose employees owned his album-did he receive his due. It was in appreciation of not being flung unceremoniously into the path of oncoming sedans (as at other establishments) that he composed "Go To Rhino Records."

When Wild Man made a typically unscheduled visit to Rhino bellowing his new composition, store manager Harold Bronson called staffer Jeff Gold at home, telling him to rush down to Rhino. Gold arrived with his $29 Panasonic cassette recorder and recorded Wild Man in the back room. Richard Foos and Bronson elected to press the anthem into Rhino's first record, to give away to regular customers as a "gift." Soon there was enough of a demand that Rhino found itself in a position where it was actually selling subsequent pressings.

After the semi-legendary John Peel played the record on his BBC program, it quickly became a British favorite. It placed #48 in Peel's 1976 year-end listeners' popularity poll, only 40-odd rungs below "Brown Sugar," "Stairway to Heaven," and other future staples of AOR radio.