Die Rainer

b. Rainer Ptacek, 7 June 1951, East Berlin, Germany, d. 12 November 1997, Tucson, Arizona, USA. A taste for seclusion and a penchant for unstructured, imaginative slide guitar playing made Rainer something of a cult figure before his records became generally available. His parents fled to West Berlin three years after his birth and in 1956 the family emigrated to America and settled in Chicago. While studying at the Saint Rita High School, Rainer heard blues players such as Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite at the Aragon Ballroom and the Electric Circus. H...