Rabbitt’s Still Bouncing Around : In for the Long Haul, Veteran Brings His Country Variety-Pack to the Crazy Horse

“Dat wascally wabbit!” If Elmer Fudd had been in the business of predicting music careers rather than of raising carrots, he might have found country singer Eddie Rabbitt as frustrating to pin down as his nemesis Bugs Bunny. Like Bugs, Rabbitt has a tendency to pop up in places you’d never expect.

Just last summer, for example, Cosmopolitan magazine listed veteran performer Rabbitt as one of today’s hot country hunks. All the other hunky tonkers were Young Turks like Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Travis Tritt, who define the ‘90s country scene. Even veteran country pinup George Strait didn’t make the list.

Reflecting on his career during a phone call last week, Rabbitt seemed pleased and amused by the unlikely honor.

“I was very surprised when my accountant called me up and said, ‘You’re in Cosmopolitan,’ ” Rabbitt said with a laugh. “I said, ‘Not me. There must be some mistake!’ But there I was with all the hot new buns and biscuits.”

For Rabbitt, 47, to be considered a “Stetsoned stud” alongside youngsters such as Black and Mark Chestnutt is business as usual. Throughout his career, this Rabbitt has eagerly hopped wherever it is that rabbits are not supposed to go.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in East Orange, N. J., Rabbitt couldn’t have been a more unlikely candidate for country stardom. He first gained attention as the composer of Elvis Presley’s 1970 hit “Kentucky Rain.” He first hit the top of the country charts with a record of his own in 1976 with the honky-tonk anthem “Drinkin’ My Baby Off My Mind.”

Subsequently, Rabbitt helped to lead country to a great surge of popularity during the “Urban Cowboy” boom of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s with such pop/country crossover hits as “Suspicions,” “I Love a Rainy Night” and “Drivin’ My Life Away.”

But while most of his fellow urban cowboys rode off into the sunset on their mechanical bulls, Rabbitt has remained a regular visitor to the country Top 10, up through such recent hits as “American Boy” and “On Second Thought.” And he did it even while coping with personal tragedies, including the death of his infant son in 1985.

Rabbitt attributes his longevity as a performer to his continuing passion for the music.

“I’m an Irish guy who loves his music,” he said. “It is always like sitting down to dessert when I go in to write a song. It is never as though I’ve got to write now. Writing to me is the key to it all. Writing has always been so much fun for me, and it still is. I think if you can keep it fun, then you have something. You start to lose it if it becomes work. That’s one of the reasons that we’re in this business--to get out of work.”

Unlike many of the performers who have been around a while, Rabbitt has not found himself at a disadvantage in today’s country market, which tends to emphasize new artists and sounds. Rabbitt thinks he has been able to maintain radio programmers’ respect because he writes his own songs and because he keeps them guessing.

“I’m always coming out of left field,” he explained. “I think the fact that I’ve always been left or right of mainstream cowboy hats and boots has made me hard to pin down. I’ve managed to keep a lot of respect in radio because I write my own stuff. I’ve had a lot of success as a singer/songwriter. I think if you establish yourself that way, it is harder to throw you out with the bathwater. . . .

“As somebody said, ‘Rabbitt keeps moving the bull’s-eye so nobody can nail him.’ ”

Although he never has gone beyond the limits of country music, Rabbitt has hopped from style to style within country’s more liberal boundaries.

“We’ve had pure country records like ‘Two Dollars in the Jukebox,’ ” Rabbitt said, “and then we had ‘Suspicions,’ which wasn’t country at all.

“In fact, the record company and a lot of my friends said not to even put it out because it would never get played. They said it wasn’t country. It was written in five minutes at the end of the night in the studio almost by accident.

“I felt that any song that came that fast and was that pretty couldn’t be denied. I had to kick another song off my album to put that one on. I got flak from radio stations who weren’t going to play it. The record company said we were wasting our time putting it out.

“It took a little time, but it went up the charts. It went to No. 1 and it stayed at No. 1. It went Top 10 pop and at the end of the year, at the BMI awards show, it won (a major) award.

“I have gone from one end of the spectrum to the other,” he continued, “and it is still defined as country music. I just haven’t put out a whole bunch of ‘Two Dollars in the Jukebox’-(type songs). That’s how people get tired of you.”

Rabbitt is one of a mere handful of performers who were stars during the “Urban Cowboy” country-music boom and are still popular in the surging country scene today. Rabbitt sees the “Urban Cowboy” fad and country’s current popularity as two fundamentally different phenomena.

“I think in the ‘80s it was more of a fad than it is today,” he said. “In the ‘80s it was that ‘Urban Cowboy’ movie. It was that whole timing thing that happens when you get a movie that is so popular. Everybody gets country. For a while everyone’s got cowboy boots on and is wearing cowboy hats. Then the fad passes, and they’re back to pink hair and purple shoes.

“I think this time it is different.” It’s not a small thing like the movie. People--the baby boomers especially--are just tired of the heavy-metal music and the rap music and the violence and the sexual content. Some of the records today are so abhorrent to people that I think they want to go back to hearing a melody and a nice lyric.

“I think in the last 10 years, pop music has gone from an art to a knack,” he said. “Music used to be something created by the few and appreciated by the many. Now anybody can plug in a drum machine, recite dirty high school poetry and become one of the big stars of the world. I think pop music has become so distorted that people are coming to country music because it has melodies and lyrics about love and everyday problems.”

Eddie Rabbitt will sing Monday at 7 and 10 p.m. at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. $29.50. (714) 549-1512.