The imagery was of a lonely freighter out there somewhere in the dark, with Winchell's disembodied voice floating out of the blackness, like a rumor, a message in a bottle.

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Painter is six feet three and forty-two, with dark hair, rimless eyeglasses, and a deep voice.

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"I fell down, down, down into this dark and lonely hole, " he sings at the beginning of the song, his voice beautiful, mellow -- kind of reminiscent of Jack Johnson's.

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In-car navigation, voice recognition, and MP3 support were still the stuff of science fiction in those dark days (particularly at the four-digit asking price), and the whole thing was doomed to a geeky, spendy niche.

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