Music of the Sixties (Part two)

Dave Clark Five was an English pop rock group.

Their single “Glad All Over” knocked the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” off the top of the UK Singles Chart in January 1964; it peaked at number 6 in the United States in April 1964. “Over And Over” was a number 1 single in the United States for the group in December 1965.

They were the second group of the British Invasion on The Ed Sullivan Show, appearing in March for two weeks after the Beatles appeared three straight weeks in February 1964. For some time the Dave Clark Five was more popular in the US than in their native UK, but had a renaissance in the UK between 1967 and 1970. The group disbanded in late 1970. On 10 March 2008, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The band started out as the Dave Clark Quintet in 1957, with Clark on drums, Dave Sanford on lead guitar, Chris Walls on bass, Don Vale on piano (and arranger). In 1958, Sanford was replaced by Rick Huxley and people were confused by the meaning of the word quintet, so the band renamed themselves the Dave Clark Five, with Stan Saxon on lead vocals, Huxley on rhythm guitar, Roger Smedley on piano, and Johnny Johnson on lead guitar. Mick Ryan replaced Johnson in 1958 and Jim Spencer joined on saxophone, while Smedley left. Walls left in 1959 and Huxley became the bass player. Mike Smith joined on piano in 1960, and Lenny Davidson replaced Ryan in 1961. In 1962, the band changed its name to the Dave Clark Five when Saxon left. The group was Clark on drums, Huxley on bass, Smith on organ and lead vocals, and Davidson on lead guitar, adding Denny Payton on tenor and baritone saxophone, harmonica and guitar.

Originating in North London, the band was promoted as the vanguard of the “Tottenham Sound”, a response to the Mersey Beat stable managed by Brian Epstein. Dave Clark, who formed the group, occasionally placed his drum kit at the front of the stage, with the guitarists and organ to his rear and sides, and struck business deals that allowed him to produce the band’s recordings and gave him control of the master recordings. Songwriting credits went to Clark, Clark and Smith, Clark and Davidson, and Clark and Payton.
The Dave Clark Five had 17 records in the Top 40 of the US Billboard chart and 12 Top 40 hits in their native UK between 1964 and 1967. Their song “Over And Over” went to number one in the US on the Billboard Hot 100 on Christmas Day 1965, despite less impressive sales in the UK (it peaked at number 45 on the UK Singles Chart), and they played to sell-out crowds on their tours of the U.S. The Dave Clark Five was the first British band of the British Invasion to tour the US, and they made 18 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show – the most of any British Invasion group.

After the success of the Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night in 1964, the band released their own film, Catch Us If You Can (directed by John Boorman) in 1965. It also starred Barbara Ferris, and was released in the United States as Having a Wild Weekend. The short film Hits in Action highlighted a series of Dave Clark Five hits.

After their initial success, which included the movie and a television special, the major hits dried up in the US after 1967’s “You Got What It Takes”, although the band had several substantial hits in the UK in the 1967–1970 period. Other than the songs “Inside and Out”, “Maze of Love” and “Live in the Sky” (the latter actually quotes directly from the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love”), the band did not follow the trend of psychedelic music. The DC5 disbanded in 1970, having placed three singles on the UK chart that year, two of which reached the Top Ten. In 1970, Davidson, Huxley and Payton left and Alan Parker and Eric Ford joined on lead guitar and bass. This line-up, renamed “Dave Clark & Friends”, lasted until 1973.

Between 1978 and 1993, none of their music was available to be purchased in any commercial format, as rights-holder Clark declined to license the band’s recordings. In 1993, a single CD “Glad All Over Again” was produced by Dave himself and released by EMI in Britain. After a 1989 deal with the Disney Channel to rebroadcast the 1960s ITV show Ready Steady Go! (which Clark owned), he made a deal with Disney-owned Hollywood Records to issue in 1993 a double CD “History of the Dave Clark Five”. No DC5 material was then legally available until 2008, when the “Hits” compilation was released by Universal Music in the UK. In 2009 selections from the band’s catalogue were released on iTunes.

Herman’s Hermit are an English beat (or pop) band, formed in Manchester in 1964.

Originally called Herman & The Hermits, they were discovered by Harvey Lisberg, who signed them up to management. Lisberg sent a return plane ticket to Mickie Most so that he could come up from London to see the band play in Bolton. Most became the group’s record producer, controlling the band’s output. He emphasised a simple, non-threatening, clean-cut image, although the band originally played R&B numbers. This helped Herman’s Hermits become hugely successful in the mid-1960s but dampened the band’s songwriting; Noone, Hopwood, Leckenby and Green’s songs were relegated to B-sides and album cuts.

Their first hit was a cover of Earl-Jean’s “I’m into Something Good” (written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King), which reached No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 13 in the US in late 1964. They never topped the British charts again, but had two US Billboard Hot 100 No.1s with “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” (originally sung by Tom Courtenay in a 1963 British TV play) and “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” (a British music hall song by Harry Champion dating from 1911, which Peter Noone’s Irish grandfather had been in the habit of singing when Noone was young). These songs were aimed at a US fan base, with Peter Noone exaggerating his Mancunian accent.

In the US, their records were released on the MGM label, a company which often featured musical performers they had signed to record deals in films. The Hermits appeared in several MGM movies, including When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965) and Hold On! (1966). They also starred in the film Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter (1968) and appeared in the 1965 anthology film Pop Gear.

Herman’s Hermits had four Top 3 hits in the US in 1965, with the aforementioned No. 1 hits and “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” (US No. 2). They recorded The Rays’ “Silhouettes” (US No. 5), Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” (US No. 4), “Just a Little Bit Better” (US No. 7), and “A Must to Avoid” (US No. 8) in 1965; “Listen People” (US No. 3), George Formby’s “Leaning on a Lamp Post” from Me and My Girl (US No. 9), and the Ray Davies song “Dandy” (US No. 5) in 1966; and “There’s a Kind of Hush” (US No. 4) in 1967. On WLS “Mrs. Brown” and “Silhouettes” were 1–2 on 14 May 1965 and exchanged positions the next week, a distinction matched only by The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” during 14 February – 6 March 1964.

They appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show and The Jackie Gleason Show. Continued success in the US proved elusive beyond 1967, although they had as many Top Ten hits in Britain (five) in the period 1967 through 1970 as they had had there in the years of the mid-‘sixties when the band were wowing American audiences and British audiences seemed more diffident. By the time the group recorded their final album of the 1960s, Rock ‘n’ Roll Party, the band’s success in the US was history and the album was not released by MGM there. Peter Noone and Keith Hopwood left the band in 1971.

Herman’s Hermits reunited in 1973 to headline a successful British invasion tour of the US culminating with a standing-room-only performance at Madison Square Garden and an appearance on The Midnight Special (without Hopwood). Later, a version of the band featuring Leckenby and Whitwam opened for The Monkees on reunion tours of the US. Noone declined an offer from tour organizers to appear, but later appeared with Davy Jones on a successful teen-idols tour. Karl Green began performing again in 2014, playing the hits of Herman’s Hermits for the first time since 1980

The Lefte Banke is an American baroque pop band, formed in New York City in 1965.

They are best remembered for their two US hit singles, “Walk Away Renée” and “Pretty Ballerina”. The band often used what the music press referred to as “baroque” string arrangements, which led to their music being variously termed as “Bach-rock” or “baroque rock”.

The band’s vocal harmonies borrowed from contemporaries such as the Beatles, the Zombies, and other British Invasion groups.

In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed “Walk Away Renée” at #220 in its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Jimi Hendrix Experience was an American-English rock band that formed in Westminster, London, in September 1966

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding, and drummer Mitch Mitchell comprised the group, which was active until June 1969. During this time, they released three studio albums and became one of the most popular acts in rock. In April 1970, Hendrix, Mitchell, and bassist Billy Cox performed and recorded until Hendrix’s death on September 18, 1970. This later trio was sometimes billed as the “Jimi Hendrix Experience”, but the title was never formalized.

Highly influential in the popularization of hard rock and psychedelic rock, the Experience was best known for the skill, style, and charisma of their frontman, Jimi Hendrix.

All three of the band’s studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967) and Electric Ladyland (1968), were featured in the top 100 of the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at positions 15, 82 and 54 respectively.

In 1992, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Buckinghams formed in 1965 in the Chicago area, consisting of Carl Giammarese, Nick Fortuna, Jon Jon Poulos, Dennis Tufano and Dennis Miccoli.

Their break came when they won a “Battle of the Bands” contest sponsored by a Chicago TV show, “All Time Hits”, and were awarded a 14-week gig on the show. This being the height of the “British invasion”, the show wanted the band to have a more British-sounding name, and settled on The Buckinghams.

In 1966 the group signed a contract with USA Records, a Chicago label, Their first records were covers of hit songs: James Brown’s “I’ll Go Crazy”, The Beatles’ “I Call Your Name”, The Hollies’ “I’ve Been Wrong Before”. They sold fairly well in the Chicago area, but the band needed a national hit to cement their reputation. They found it in “Kind of a Drag”, which sold more than a million copies and went to #1 on the national pop charts.

The group soon left USA Records for the much larger Columbia Records, and had another hit with “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, which was previously a hit for Lloyd Price. Their next song was an even bigger hit, “Don’t You Care”, reaching #6 on the national charts. The band soon became a hot property on TV teen and variety shows, appearing on such programs as The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) and New American Bandstand 1965 (1952). It was during this period that they came out with yet another hit, a remake of Cannonball Adderley’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”, which got to #5 on the charts. In 1967 their string of hits continued with “Susan” and “Hey Baby, They’re Playing Our Song”, which reached #11 and #12, respectively.

Unfortunately, things began to decline in 1968. Their album, “In One Ear and Gone Tomorrow”, didn’t produce one hit single. They went through a string of personnel changes, which didn’t help matters, and the next year they decided to disband. In 1980 the band–minus Jon Poulos, who had died of a drug overdose earlier that year–reunited for a reunion show sponsored by Chicago radio station WLS.

The Mamas and The Papas was an American folk rock vocal group that recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968, reuniting briefly in 1971.

They released five studio albums and seventeen singles, six of which made the top ten, and sold close to 40 million records worldwide.

The group was composed of John Phillips (1935–2001), Denny Doherty (1940–2007), Cass Elliot (1941–1974), and Michelle Phillips née Gilliam (b. 1944).

Their sound was based on vocal harmonies arranged by John Phillips, the songwriter, musician, and leader of the group who adapted folk to the new beat style of the early sixties.

Gary Puckett & the Union Gap was an American pop rock group active in the late 1960s.

Their biggest hits were “Woman, Woman”; “Over You”; “Young Girl”; and “Lady Willpower.”

It was formed by Gary Puckett, Gary ‘Mutha’ Withem, Dwight Bement, Kerry Chater, and Paul Wheatbread, who eventually named it The Union Gap.

It featured costumes that were based on the Union Army uniforms worn during the American Civil War. They were noticed by Jerry Fuller, who gave them a recording contract with Columbia Records.

The group eventually grew unhappy with doing material written and produced by other people, leading them to stop working with Fuller. The band eventually disbanded and Puckett went on to do both solo work and collaborations.riggs (lead vocals).

The Rascals were an American rock band, formed in Garfield, New Jersey in 1965.

Between 1966 and 1968 the New Jersey act reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 with nine singles, including the #1s “Good Lovin'” (1966), “Groovin'” (1967), and “People Got to Be Free” (1968), as well as big radio hits such as the much-covered “How Can I Be Sure?” (#4 1967) and “A Beautiful Morning” (#3 1968), plus another critical favorite “A Girl Like You” (#10 1967). The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Supremes were an American female singing group and the premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s.

Founded as the Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, the Supremes were the most commercially successful of Motown’s acts and are, to date, America’s most successful vocal group with 12 number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.

Most of these hits were written and produced by Motown’s main songwriting and production team, Holland–Dozier–Holland.

At their peak in the mid-1960s, the Supremes rivaled the Beatles in worldwide popularity, and it is said that their success made it possible for future African American R&B and soul musicians to find mainstream success.

Founding members Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, Diana Ross, and Betty McGlown, all from the Brewster-Douglass public housing project in Detroit, formed the Primettes as the sister act to the Primes (with Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks, who went on to form the Temptations). Barbara Martin replaced McGlown in 1960, and the group signed with Motown the following year as the Supremes. Martin left the act in early 1962, and Ross, Ballard, and Wilson carried on as a trio.

During the mid-1960s, the Supremes achieved mainstream success with Ross as lead singer. In 1967, Motown president Berry Gordy renamed the group Diana Ross & the Supremes, and replaced Ballard with Cindy Birdsong.

Ross left to pursue a solo career in 1970 and was replaced by Jean Terrell, at which point the group’s name reverted to the Supremes. After 1972, the lineup changed more frequently; Lynda Laurence, Scherrie Payne, and Susaye Greene all became members of the group during the mid-1970s. The Supremes disbanded in 1977 after 18 years.

Buffalo Springfield was an American-Canadian rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966.

Their original lineup included Stephen Stills (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Dewey Martin (drums, vocals), Bruce Palmer (electric bass), Richie Furay (guitar, vocals), and Neil Young (guitar, harmonica, piano, vocals). Pioneering the folk rock genre, Buffalo Springfield, along with the Byrds, combined elements of folk and country music with British invasion influences into their early works. Their second studio album, Buffalo Springfield Again, marked their progression to psychedelia and hard rock.

With a name taken from a steamroller, the group signed to Atlantic Records in 1966 and released their debut single “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” – a regional hit in Los Angeles. The following January, the group released the protest song they were most prominently known for, “For What It’s Worth”. After various drug-related arrests and line-up changes, the group decided to break up in 1968. Stephen Stills went on to form the folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash with David Crosby of the Byrds and Graham Nash of the Hollies. Neil Young had launched his successful solo career and reunited with Stills in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1969. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

The Hollies are an English pop/rock group known for their pioneering and distinctive three part vocal harmony style.

The Hollies became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s (231 weeks on the UK singles charts during the 1960s; the 9th highest of any artist of the decade) and into the mid 1970s. It was formed by Allan Clarke and Graham Nash in late 1962 as a Merseybeat type music group in Manchester, although some of the band members came from towns north of there. Graham Nash left the group in 1968 to form the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash.

They enjoyed considerable popularity in many countries (at least 60 singles or EPs and 26 albums charting somewhere in the world spanning over five decades), although they did not achieve major US chart success until 1966 with “Bus Stop”.

The Hollies had over 30 charting singles on the UK Singles Chart, and 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, with major hits on both sides of the Atlantic that included “Just One Look”, “Look Through Any Window”, “Bus Stop”, “I Can’t Let Go”, “On a Carousel”, “Stop Stop Stop”, “Carrie Anne”, “Jennifer Eccles”, and later “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and “The Air That I Breathe”.

They are one of the few British pop groups of the early 1960s, along with The Rolling Stones, that have never disbanded and continue to record and perform. In recognition of their achievements, The Hollies were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964.

The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn (known as Jim McGuinn until mid-1967) remaining the sole consistent member, until the group disbanded in 1973.

Although they only managed to attain the huge commercial success of contemporaries like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones for a short period (1965–66), the Byrds are today considered by critics to be one of the most influential bands of the 1960s.

Initially, they pioneered the musical genre of folk rock, melding the influence of the Beatles and other British Invasion bands with contemporary and traditional folk music. As the 1960s progressed, the band was also influential in originating psychedelic rock, raga rock, and country rock.

The band’s signature blend of clear harmony singing and McGuinn’s jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar has continued to be influential on popular music up to the present day. Among the band’s most enduring songs are their cover versions of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)”, along with the self-penned originals, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”, “Eight Miles High”, “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, “Ballad of Easy Rider” and “Chestnut Mare”.

The original five-piece line-up of the Byrds consisted of Jim McGuinn (lead guitar, vocals), Gene Clark (tambourine, vocals), David Crosby (rhythm guitar, vocals), Chris Hillman (bass guitar, vocals), and Michael Clarke (drums). However, this version of the band was relatively short-lived and by early 1966, Clark had left due to problems associated with anxiety and his increasing isolation within the group. The Byrds continued as a quartet until late 1967, when Crosby and Clarke also departed the band. McGuinn and Hillman decided to recruit new members, including country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, but by late 1968, Hillman and Parsons had also exited the band. McGuinn, who by this time had changed his name to Roger after a flirtation with the Subud religion, elected to rebuild the band’s membership and between 1968 and 1973, he helmed a new incarnation of the Byrds, featuring guitarist Clarence White among others. McGuinn disbanded the then current line-up in early 1973, to make way for a reunion of the original quintet. The Byrds’ final album was released in March 1973, with the reunited group disbanding soon afterwards.

Several former members of the band went on to successful careers of their own, either as solo artists or as members of such groups as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Desert Rose Band. In the late 1980s, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke both began touring as the Byrds, prompting a legal challenge from McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman over the rights to the band’s name. As a result of this, McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman performed a series of reunion concerts as the Byrds in 1989 and 1990, and also recorded four new Byrds’ songs.

In January 1991, the Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an occasion that saw the five original members performing together for the last time. McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman still remain active but Gene Clark died of a heart attack in May 1991, and Michael Clarke died of liver failure in December 1993.

The Miracles were an American rhythm and blues vocal group that was the first successful recording act for Berry Gordy’s Motown Records, and one of the most important and influential groups in pop, rock and roll, and R&B music history.

Formed in 1955 by Smokey Robinson, Warren “Pete” Moore, and Ronnie White, the group started off as the Five Chimes, changing their name to the Matadors two years later. The group then settled on the Miracles after the inclusion of Claudette Robinson in 1958. The most notable Miracles line-up included the Robinsons, Moore, White, Bobby Rogers and Marv Tarplin.

After a failed audition with Brunswick Records, the group began working with songwriter Berry Gordy, who helped to produce their first records for the End and Chess labels before establishing Tamla Records in 1959 and signing the Miracles as its first act.

The group eventually scored the label’s first million-selling hit record with the 1960 Grammy Hall of Fame smash, “Shop Around”, and further established themselves as one of Motown’s top acts with the hit singles “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”, “What’s So Good About Goodbye”, “Way Over There”, “I’ll Try Something New”, “Mickey’s Monkey”, “Going to a Go-Go”, “(Come ‘Round Here) I’m the One You Need”, “Just A Mirage”, “If You Can Want”, “More Love”, “I Don’t Blame You at All”, “Ooo Baby Baby”, the multi-award-winning “The Tracks of My Tears”, “Special Occasion”, “I Second That Emotion”, “Baby Baby Don’t Cry”, the number-one Pop smashes “The Tears of a Clown” and “Love Machine”, “Do It Baby”, and “My Girl Has Gone”,among numerous other hits.

Referred to as Motown’s “soul supergroup”, the Miracles recorded 26 Top 40 Pop hits, sixteen of which reached the Billboard Top 20, seven top 10 singles, and a number one single (“The Tears of a Clown”) while the Robinsons and Tarplin were members. Following the departure of Tarplin and the Robinsons, the rest of the group continued with singer Billy Griffin and scored two final top 20 singles, “Do It Baby” and “Love Machine”, a second # 1 hit, which topped the charts before the group departed for Columbia Records in 1977, recording as a quintet with Billy’s brother Donald Griffin replacing Marv Tarplin, where after a few releases, they disbanded in 1978. In all, the group had over fifty charted hits by the time they disbanded.

On the R&B charts, the Miracles scored 26 Top 10 Billboard R&B hits, with 4 R&B # 1’s, and 11 U.S. R&B Top 10 Albums, including 2-#1’s. Bobby Rogers and Ronald White revived the group as a touring ensemble sporadically during the 1980s and again in the 1990s with lead singer Sydney Justin. Following White’s death in 1995, Rogers continued to tour with different members until he was forced into retirement due to health issues in 2011, dying less than two years later.

The Miracles have been awarded many top music industry honors over the years. In 1997, the group received the Pioneer Award at the Rhythm and Blues Foundation for their musical achievements. Four years later, in 2001, they were inducted to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. In 2004, they were ranked thirty-two on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, retaining that same position seven years later, in 2011. Four of their hit songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2009, the group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Throughout their careers, the Miracles were also enshrined with honors for their songwriting by both BMI and ASCAP. In 2008, Billboard listed them at #61 on their 100 most successful Billboard artists ever list. After much controversy, the Miracles were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.