Rock music and biomedical science are strange bedfellows, but it is the bed that PeacockSunrise recording artist, John Blangero, has made for himself. One listen to his soulful album, “Delta Tales” by alter-ego Sun King Rising will make the oddness of that pairing seem almost normal. Neither his music nor his work as a renowned genetic scientist are strange at all, it turns out. Call it “The Genetics of Soul.” Blangero quickly displayed prodigious musical gifts when he started taking piano lessons at age five in his hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania. Five years later, he had absorbed not only the fundamentals of classical music, but also gospel and rock music. He joined his first rock band at 14 and was soon composing and singing his own music. Apprenticeships in a series of area bands culminated in the formation of his own original band, called Harlequin, with which he attained regional popularity throughout the fertile Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Virginia market At the height of the band’s popularity, though, he put music on the back burner to obtain his Ph.D. and become an active biomedical research scientist. During his twenty-year musical hiatus, he ascended to rock star stature in the international scientific community. But the music lying dormant within Blangero’s spirit would not remain silent. Playing casually with blues bands in San Antonio toward the end of the 21st century rekindled Blangero’s creative spark and prompted him to begin writing new songs. On October 2, 2020, PeacockSunrise Record released his first solo album—Delta Tales. Its songs are expressions of the soul and gospel influences that shaped him. Call it “The Rebirth of Classic Southern Rock & Soul.”
