Illinois

"Like Tuff" is an incredible rocker, with the guitar line so strong it's hard to believe this isn't from twenty or thirty years after its original release date of 1964. "I Don't Know" is a good pop vocal ballad enlivened with surf-type reverb on the guitars.

The Enchanters 4 - Like Tuff

Songwriting credits list Shedosky, Polvalish, Hoinacki (Hojnacki?) and Baranowski for "Like Tuff" and just Shedosky for "I Don't Know". Production by Ellis Stukey.

Bill Shedosky was the lead guitarist of the group. His father Ed "Smitty" Shedosky played trumpet with Vaughn Monroe's Orchestra in the 1940's. Bill Shedosky passed away in 2003.

The band had a second release, this time as the Enchanters IV, featuring a very different sound on "Lost You", another original by B. Shedosky. Again, I haven't heard the flip, a version of "Route 66".

The Enchanters IV - Lost You

I've read that the band was from Oak Park, but Mop Top Mike tells me "they were from Lockport and Lemont, Illinois, not Chicago."

I can't find much info on the Denric label. Ken writes "The label shows the company as Den Ric but the sleeve shows it as Denric. 215 E Chestnut St, Chicago, Phone WH4-4542". I thought there was a release by the Cobblestones on Denric, but was mistaken - that was on Den-Lay. Davie Gordon in a comment below writes that the other release he knows of on Denric is #7734 by Ellis Stukey from 1961.

Source: Info on Ed Shedosky and Bill's passing from the Vaughn Monroe Society.

Thank you to Ken Price for the Den Ric scans and alerting me to this great band, and to Mop Top Mike for the Mal scan and info. Also to Davie Gordon for the discographical help.

I've read Bill Bishop was a member, but don't know if that's accurate. It turns out this group was from Oak Park, Illinois, not Wisconsin as I originally thought, though there was another Medallions from Wisconsin.

Ralph Mullin is apparently the same person who appeared in two of Herschell Gordon Lewis' late '60s films. In Blast-Off Girls, from '67, he's part of a band called the Big Blast. The band was a real group whose name was acutally the Faded Blue, a much cooler moniker if you ask me. The Faded Blue's members were Tom Tyrell, Ron Liace, Dennis Hickey, Ralph Mullin and Chris Wolski.

Blast-Off Girls actually features two interesting bands, first 'Charlie' who are shown in the opening credits and scenes doing a song that might be titled "A Bad Day". 'Charlie' consisted of Steve White, Tom Eppolito, Bob Compton, Ray Barry and Tony Sorci.

In the film's plot, sleazy promoter Boojie Baker rips them off, so the band quits. Boojie finds the Big Blast to replace them at a club called the Mother Blues, and they're featured through the rest of the film. Stylistically the Big Blast / Faded Blue are a little more sophisticated than Charlie, showing some folk and psychedelic influences while Charlie are a straight rock n' roll garage band. The Big Blast release a record in the movie, but so far no one's found a 45 by the Faded Blue.

In another Lewis movie, 1968's Just for the Hell of It Ralph Mullin has the role of Lummox, one of the gang who tears up the club in one scene.

Jim is right, this is a band with two of the finest harmony songs of the mid-60's: "No Use in Trying" and "I'll Walk Alone". What I didn't know at the time is that the group had a third 45 as the Five Bucks, and then three more releases as the Byzantine Empire. A little digging around the internet led me to Bruce Kerr, the bassist and one of the principal songwriters, who kindly answered my questions about the group and provided photos:

We formed the band days after we all converged on University of Michigan/Ann Arbor in August of '65. Chris Rose and I met in our dorm piano lounge and started harmonizing. He brought in his roommate from Glencoe, IL, Steve Hearn; we grabbed our guitars and had a trio. We then added Jerry Daller across the hall from me who had to call his parents and have his drums shipped up from Detroit. I called my parents to have my amp shipped over from Waukesha, Wisconsin. These are calls parents do not want to receive three days into a frosh year, as you can imagine.

We put up an ad for a keyboard player and Bauchman Tom from Akron, OH, also a frosh at U/M answered it. [He played] a Farfisa organ, that characteristic 60's sound, but he could make it cook. He turned out to be very good, played rock, classical, and jazz, and was Chinese-American which gave the band's look some uniqueness and, right in the middle of the Civil Rights era, some political correctness before that phrase was in use.

We decided to name the band, "The Five Bucks." I recall it was Chris's idea. Our band card was a fake $5 bill with our names and dorm phone numbers in the corners (plus 1).

Chris, Steve, and I were all rhythm guitar players so we decided I'd learn bass, Steve would sing lead and play rhythm, and Chris would play lead. The three of us started collaborating immediately and "No Use In Trying" was our first effort, "Now You're Gone" was our second (misprinted as "Now You're Mine. The band was plagued by label misprints, the "5 Bucs" [on the Omnibus single] was a misprint, we were never anything but the Five Bucks, then the Byzantine Empire).

And after playing frat parties, doing Beatles song with perfect replication of the harmonies, and getting a great reception, the thing in those days was to get out a single (as your website shows). An album was a distant dream but local bands who sustained nearly always got to a single. We had a date with Detroit's Edwin Starr on a Sunday to record. We drove in and he didn't show at the studio.

In the spring of '66, as our freshman year was ending, we all decided to live in the Chicago area where Chris and Steve had their family's homes and play for the summer. When we got to Chicago, Chris's dad had arranged through a friend for us to audition for a label, which turned out to be Afton, eventually. The mistake, we felt, was the promotion ended up going for the ballad rather than "No Use In Trying." So it got played on WLS a few times, got us some good gigs, but never made it.

Chris & Steve's friend, Harlan Goodman, went to work for William Morris in Chicago and the next thing we knew that spring and summer, we were opening major concerts in Chicago and Indiana for the Animals, Turtles, Hollies and others.

Harlan Goodman booked us in '66 as Del Shannon's band, backing him up at two county fairs in Minnesota and a small college, I think it was. It was amazing to be 19 years old playing bass behind "Runaway" and other hits that six years before I was dancing to at junior high dances.

Having flunked out of U/M Engineering, I had to go back to Ann Arbor for the second part of the summer and Steve Gritton filled in on bass on keyboards.

We played a bunch of venues like the Aragon Ballroom with other bands like the Shadows of Knight, Buckinghams, the Flock, the Real McCoys and a couple more that were popular locally that I can't remember...ah, the Cryin' Shames. Went between Ann Arbor and to Chicago on half the weekends and all summers.

There was camaraderie but competition too. Everyone wanted to be the breakout band, like American Breed finally did, and Chicago (Transit Authority) who became monster-big.

We hung back stage in Hammond, Indiana with the Hollies in '66. I asked Graham Nash how long he'd be in the states and he replied, "about 6 feet." everyone laughed and I shrunk back into the ranks of the opening acts.

"I'll Walk Alone" a pick hit on WAAM's chart on April 10, 1967

The Five Bucks opened for The Doors, fall of '67 for our U/Michigan Homecoming. Morrison got booed off the stage, he was drunk and the crowd wanted to DANCE. The student in charge came begging to us, "Please go back up and quiet down this crowd." We took to the stage and opened with the Temps' "Ain't to Proud to Beg" and the place went crazy and the night was saved. Huge crowd, the old U/M gym, high stage, it was nuts.

That winter of '66-'67, we recorded on Omnibus: "I'll Walk Alone" / "So Wrong." Came out in the spring, was #1 in Ann Arbor and some other places. In the fall we recorded "Breath of Time" / "Without Love" on USA Records.

Q. Where were the Afton and Omnibus singles recorded?

Both in Chicago, I forget the studio names. The Afton record was recorded in an old 4-track studio. I think Omnibus, as well. Only with Universal in '68 were we in anything bigger, 12 track then. Still, the singles were mono, not stereo.

That fall, our agents, Bruce Shankman and Earl Glicken (the Monkees promoter in Chicago) hooked us up with Traut. We went in unplugged (another term before its time) to Traut's office and played some new originals: "Whenever I'm Lonely," "Girl In the Courtyard" and some covers and Traut was sold on us. Wanted us to be an answer to "The Association." Even had the Asian-American. Bauchman briefly took on a Hawaiian stage personna as Kelly Kulukua, something like that.

Bill said, rightly, we needed a new name. I was a history major and suggested the name, a weird choice of a name in retrospect, but what wasn't that year?

In the winter of '68-69, Traut signed us and booked us on spec into Universal Studios, a 12-track studio, state-of-the-art facility, hired members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. We recorded the two originals listed just above, plus the Association's album song "Happiness Is," "You," "Snowqueen" by Carole King, and "Shadows & Reflections", two sessions, a couple months a part, as I recall.

Traut sold us to Amy records, a sub of Bell Records in NY for $25K. Problem is, he had his pal, Eddie Higgins & Bob Schiff produce us. They were competent but not the visionary Bill was. We would have done better with Bill producing but he was trying to build up his team. He was partnering with Jimmy Golden but they had a falling out just as we were hoping to blossom, which caused problems for Bill, and ultimately, for us, I think.

Q. So Bill Traut set up the Universal Studio sessions but didn't produce any of them?

Right, he gave us Eddie Higgins & Bob Shiff instead; we were let down by that.

Q. Were you all playing your instruments on the Amy recordings, or using studio musicians for the backing?

We all played except Jerry Daller on drums. Traut brought in a jazz club drummer, especially for the 3/4 beat on "Snow Queen." not many drummers in rock bands played 3/4, Jerry included. He was really a garage band drummer, but he held his own. Still, Traut was right to replace him for the two sessions, three songs at each.

Q. I can see "Happiness Is" as an obvious commercial choice, but how did you decide to record "Shadows and Reflections"?

Traut, it's a weak song, strange too, but we couldn't find anything better in the stack of writers' promo demo copies he gave us to choose from. "Shadows & Reflections" was during our second session with Bill, probably summer/fall '68.

Q. Were you aware of the original version by Eddie Hodges (ironically on Sunburst, which was distributed by Amy) or the one by the UK group the Action?

Interesting, no, I hope they were better than our version.

Q. Would you say the band tried to cultivate a more refined sound over time, or was that mainly Bill Traut's doing?

Yes, the Byzantine Empire went for harmony a la Association. We liked their sound anyway, from "Mary" to "Cherish." We could do chords (correctly) and we could do harmony, this was no band of blues three-chorders. So part of it was Traut...definitely the "You" / "Shadows & Reflections" stuff...we thought it was square, like the Vogues, and wanted something rougher but he knew we were no Troggs, that our look and sound had to be melodic and pop sounding. The USA side A, "Breath of Time" before that, was an attempt to get a rougher sound, fuzz tone, etc.

"Snow Queen" was a Gavin pick but, being 3/4 waltz time, and with no major hook other than the title being sung at the end of each verse, our soaring harmonies weren't enough. Then "Happiness Is" was released (we pretty much copied the arrangement of the Association) and it didn't make it. Finally, per the contract, "You" came out close to our graduating and did zip.

Bill Traut once told us, in retrospect, that "Whenever I'm Lonely" could have been a monster ballad hit. I'm not sure if he was hoping for a flip hit after "Happiness Is" which he thought was a sure-fired hit, if "Snowqueen" didn't hit. None of them did and we maybe should have stayed with our original sound instead of thinking we had to have a hit with an almost exact replica of "Happiness Is." But, we were hungry to make it, felt we could shape our sound after we had a commercial hit.

Even "Courtyard" and "Whenever I'm Lonely" were our soft side. We had a rockier, Beau Brummels type sound that had more grit and might have served us better by '68, with the way music turned away from pretty harmonies toward heavy guitars and, if any, soul harmony, or none at all.

We graduated, did one more gig that summer in Chicago, and went our separate ways. Chris and I have maintained our friendship for the next 40 years, he still is in contact with Steve, but Jerry's totally gone, and Chris and I only kept up with Bauchman through the mid to late 70's and he disappeared also.

Q. Are there any unreleased recordings? Any live recordings?

Somewhere there's our third song ever from '65, "Say It Now," that I think could have been a hit. It was a recording session dub, nothing ever came of it. Chris had a great song, "Inspector Hayes," another dub from a session that never became a record. No one knows where these two are. Nothing live ever, too bad.

Q. Lastly has there been interest in re-releasing the records? I know they've come up on bootleg compilations, but I don't think they've ever been legitimately released, at least not together.

Nothing I've heard about. Frankly, there may be more interest in our stuff now than from the record buying public back then (apparently)!

Q. Finally, I find it amazing that the group was able to stay together all four years of college with no changes, other than that short time "Stubs" subbed for you.

Yeah, we all got along pretty well. Steve, Chris and I were fast friends which was the core. We all liked the money (lots of gigs) and (mostly) not having to work other jobs in the summers or during the school year. Helped with meeting girls on campus since the band was popular there...

Mostly, it was the age-old (well...) bit of the dream to become like the Beatles or Stones, on the radio, songs people would love and hum, and the life of a millionaire rock star, as we envisioned it. All of this with the Vietnam War draft in the background. And there was no deferment for rock star. Some of the best moments were when we were in the studio, it seemed like we were about to make it, there with all the tools and "old guys" at the controls (they were probably in their 30's), telling us, "it could be a hit!"

When you get played on WLS, you pretty much figure it's just going to keep going up from there. It was a great time, and I'm probably happier today for our not making it and having to play state fairs now with REO Speedwagon.

When the band broke up, I went to law school and am a lawyer today (though I took 20 years off, '73-'93 to be a solo performer, "Loose Bruce Kerr," so the itch was not entirely scratched in the band years). Easier now as a lawyer than living in motel rooms and touring!

Bruce Kerr

Chris Rose adds:

It was Steve Hearn's girlfriend's father, Jerry Wexler, real estate tycoon, who got us the audition with Milt Salstone, owner of Reprise records. Milt started the Afton label as a subsidiary for rock and roll music.

I haven't heard from or about our keyboardist in many years. His name is Bauchman Tom (people used to frequently mispronounce his name as "Tom Buachman"). He was, by far, the best musician in the group. He was up there with the best of the day in keyboard talent. On one mini-tour with The Iron Butterfly, Doug Engle (the composer of "In a Gadda Da Vida" ) told Bauchman that he played the song as well, if not better than Doug did. Our road managers [were] Terry Gano and Dean Suffka - they went on to work for The Seeds, Friend and Lover, Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, The People, Kansas, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Blues Image, The Doors, and Captain Beyond, and others after our group broke up.

The Seeds, Friend and Lover, Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, The People, Kansas, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Blues Image, The Doors, and Captain Beyond.

Adding to the list of groups and artists we played with or opened for: Del Shannon (opened and played as his band, the second set), Edwin Starr (he told Barry Gordy he wanted to manage our group because we could harmonize), Bobby Head (Sunny), People, The Iron Butterfly, Paul Revere and the Raiders (Lake Geneva), The Vogues (opened and backed them up instrumentally), Eric Burdon and The Animals, The Turtles (one concert at the Hammond Civic Center - crowd: 10,000, and one TV appearance), The Hollies, The Royal Guardsmen (they hated the Snoopy songs), Friend & Lover, colleagues of Herb Alpert (from our manager's stable of talent) - he even went to Arlington Park racetrack with my Dad, all the Chicago based groups, multiple times - The Flock, The Buckinghams, The New Colony Six, The Shadows of Knight, The Mauds, The Ides of March with Jim Peteryk (they used to wear long-haired wigs when they were 17 - their parents wouldn't let them grow their hair), Baby Huey and the Babysitters, The American Breed, Brenda Lee (a TV show in Windsor, Canada), Siegel-Schwall Blues Band, Sam the Sham, The Knickerbockers, The Kingsmen, The McCoys. I am sure I have left a few out.

The Five Bucks

No Use In Trying / Now You're Gone (erroneously printed as Now You're Mine) (Afton 1701) May 1966
I'll Walk Alone / So Wrong (Omnibus 1001) November 1966 (band listed as The Five Bucs)
Breath of Time / Without You (U.S.A. 882) 1967

Byzantine Empire

Girl In The Courtyard / Snowqueen (Amy 11,018) 1968
Happiness Is / Whenever I'm Lonely (Amy 11,034) 1968
You / Shadows and Reflections (Amy 11,046) 1968

All photos courtesy of Bruce Kerr. Thanks to Jim Heddle for scans of the radio charts and Omnibus 45.

The letter lists the members: Jerry Conley, 15, leader and singer; Stan Allen, 13, lead guitarist; Chuck Burgess, 13, rhythm guitarist; and Bob Lindgren, 12, drummer. I've read the band was from Rockford, IL, about an hour's drive northwest of Chicago, though that wouldn't go with their band name (Chy referring to Chicago).

The band went to MBS Recording Studios in Chicago to record demos of their songs, and the tape led to their signing by James Manning, Jr. of the Mobie Record Company. The letter doesn't clarify if the band did a new session for their Mobie 45, or if the songs cut at the demo were used. J.H. Manning, Jr. is also listed as producer, but he didn't seem to notice the imprecise nature of the band's stops and starts during "Say Mama", not to mention their tuning.

The top side, "You'll Never Believe Me" was written by J. Weiss, and while I don't think it's an original by the band I don't know the source for it.

"Say Mama" was an oft covered song since the original cut by Gene Vincent in the '50s., with versions by Mike Waggoner, the Dicers and others, sometimes under the title "Hey Mama". It's hard to know if the Chy Guys were covering the Vincent original, or perhaps the Pattens of Wheaton, IL, who released their version as "Say Ma, Ma" also in 1966.

The promo schedules the release of their 45 on September 30, 1966, on Mobie 3423. They apparently played shows in Illinois, Ohio and even as far as Huntington, West Virginia at that young age.

Though this is a white-label DJ promo, I've also seen both blue and black label stock copies of this 45. The other releases on the Mobie label that I know of are two by Bloomington, Indiana Illinois's Cobblestones: Mobie 3424 "I'll Hide My Head in the Sand" (written by Jim Jacobs) / "It Happens Every Time" (both written by Jim Jacobs and produced by Wayne Dennis, originally released on Den-Lay) and Mobie 3425 "Flower People" (written by Pearson - Lehmann) / "Down With It" (written by Pearson - McElroy).

My brother and I started Peter and the Wolves during my freshman year of high school (summer and fall of 1965) in Palatine, Illinois. We were one of the thousands of bands inspired by the Beatles. The members of Peter and the Wolves included Doug May (now the leader of Yard Fulla Cars), LeRoy (Buddy) Rogers, my brother Glenn Rutz and me.

My father worked for the Chicago Tribune and would take the train home every day from the city to Palatine. He often walked a mile and a half from the station. I was practicing my parts on my Harmony Hollywood guitar through my Kay 5-watt amplifier with one 6-inch speaker (I still have that amp) in the garage where our band sometimes practiced. My father walked through the garage on his way into the house and told me to “turn that thing down! I could hear you all the way from the train station!” I don’t think you could hear me playing that distance today using my Fender Twin or my Marshall, but I always remembered that little experience proudly. I felt like a rock star.

I used 3x5 cards to write down every practice and every performance we had, the dates, even what songs we did. And I still have those cards all these years later. I regret to say Peter and the Wolves never recorded anything. There are some rough tapes of us writing songs, and somewhere there’s at least one recording of us performing, but so far I haven’t been able to get my hands on anything that I could copy. Those were real garage band days.

As the band fizzled a couple of years later, my father actually co-signed a loan so I could buy my first professional guitar, a 1968 Gretsch Tennessean (which I also still have). In those days, the local music store (Olsen’s Music) would let a 14-year-old kid buy a top-of-the line guitar. Olsen’s kept a little box of note cards by the cash register and one would come in every week with some kind of payment, which was written down on the card, until the loan was paid. No interest, either. Just a promise to pay. In my case, I got a job at Burger King and I took in $10 or $20 each week for nearly a year.

The Wednesday services got so big they had to move us to larger and larger spaces. At one point, they stopped the services because the couple hundred college kids were causing the floor of the cafeteria to bow. The services were popular and a lot of fun, and of course we wrote our own songs. Later that year the college sent us out for our Easter break to tour Midwest churches as ambassadors for the school. We had a great time, but people kept asking if we could also play for dances. That led us to start Synod, built around John Strege on keyboards, Paul Rogner as lead vocalist and me.

Synod’s first performance was at Concordia’s Spring Arts Festival on April 29, 1971. We’ve been together ever since. There were a few personnel changes, particularly in the first two years, but John, Paul and I have been in it the whole time. The first incarnation included Paul Sautter on guitar, Jack Giles on bass and Harv Mahavolic on drums. Scott King, later mayor of Gary, Indiana, became our bass player for the second performance, but less than a year later Sautter, King and Mahavolic left to start another band and we were joined by two other students, Brad Roche and Kim Kolander. We did some recording with that band, most notably a 9-song collection called “Sent to Reconcile.”

During the couple of years this 6-man version of the band was together we played constantly. We did some very long club dates in Clinton, Iowa and Branson, Missouri (before it became the Branson of today). We had great vocals, in part due to the influence of one of my favorite bands, The Association. One of our cover songs was a hit titled, “White Lies, Blue Eyes.” Along the way we auditioned for an agency called Gary Van Zeeland Talent from Little Chute, Wisconsin, not knowing they represented Bullet, the band that recorded “White Lies, Blue Eyes.” The A&R guy who auditioned us said we were the best band he’d ever seen and that we did “White Lies” much better than their flagship band, Bullet. They offered us a generous contract, and we thought we were on our way, but our drummer, Kim, announced several weeks later that he was quitting to get married. Because of that, Brad and Jack decided to call it quits. But John, Paul and I kept going.

I taught Paul to play bass, and we bought a Fender bass from our former bass player Scott King, and my brother, Glenn, joined us. We actually did some Peter and the Wolves songs, a few of which made it to recordings. Eventually, our part-time roadie, Bob Krueger, became a member of the band.

During the 1970s, Synod did a lot of writing and recording. We had a self-taught manager named Randy Schnack, who stayed with us about 15 years, and we went through a series of booking agents. We toured in 12 different states and performed at National Entertainment Conference showcases, Chicagofest, Summerfest, and dozens of universities, high schools, park districts and clubs.

We have always been primarily a dance band. That’s our preference, anyway. But on one tour of the college circuit we arrived in Houghton, Michigan to play a job and were surprised to see a stage the size of a lot of rooms we played. The university gym was set up with a thousand chairs, and we realized were about to do an unexpected concert. We’d done plenty of concerts before, but usually with some additional planning. The show went off alright, but during the intermission an organizer of the event came backstage to tell us how great we were, but couldn’t we turn up the volume and the lighting? We were on 10. When we got to the hotel that night we called our manager and said, “We’ll be home in 10 days. Buy us a truck.” When we got back, Randy had a new Chevy box truck, and we immediately filled it with gear. We eventually were traveling with two 16-channel sound boards (synched by the manufacturer, Acoustic Systems, for us) in stereo and bi-amped. We had 16 15-inch speakers and four splayed horns with an array of tweeters. We also put together a system of theater lighting using fresnels and ellipsoidal lamps, and even follow spots. At our level, nobody we ran into had the gear and show we had.

One of the agents we worked through, Ken Freeman, got us a record offer from Capitol. Around the same time we also had an offer from Mercury Records. It was a turning point for us, similar to the offer we had from Gary Van Zeeland. Both labels said they loved our original songs and our performance, both wanted to record our songs, but one said they wanted to use other singers (although it would be under our name and we’d still perform live) and another said they wanted to use studio instrumentalists on the records. That was and is a common practice, but it isn’t what we wanted, so we passed. Up until that time, we were working on the staff of Concordia University, but by 1982 I decided to take a job with the local police department.

We all took real jobs, but we kept Synod going. We travel less, and none of us are any good at booking so we play a lot less. But we practice all the time, perform whenever and wherever we can, and someday…. We’ve put together a little web site with a few sound samples at www.synodband.com

Craig Rutz, 2009