The Satisified Minds, 1966 clockwise from left: Darrell Fetty, Danny Ward, Yancey Burns and Hale Talbot
The Satisified Minds formed at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia and recorded the first and liveliest garage 45 released on the Plato label. Fuzz guitar drives this one throughout, and the distortion gets especially wild during the solo. “I Can’t Take It” was written by Darrell Fetty and Yancey Burns. Darrell Fetty also wrote the softer b-side, “Think About Me”.
I just heard from Yancey Burns, bassist and vocalist (and later guitarist) with the group. Following is his history of the group and his answers to some questions I had about the band.
My name is Yancey Burns, and I’m the Burns in “Fetty/Burns” on the Plato record “I Can’t Take It” by the “Satisfied Minds.” When I found out about your website, I was shocked that anyone remembered what we were up to in 1967.
from left: Yancy “Ed” Burns, Hale Talbot, Mike Fincham, & Darrell Fetty. Thank you to Lola Fincham for the photo scan
Our record did very well here in the West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio area, but never charted. At the time, Darrell and I were going to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. The band had personnel changes all through our time at Marshall, but the constant in the band was Darrell and I. The first photo is the original line-up on the record: Darrell on B-3 organ and vocals, Danny Ward on guitar, Hale Talbot on drums, and me on bass and vocals.
I switched to guitar later when we went to a three-piece, with Darrell handling the bass by adding a Fender Bass Keyboard (like Ray Manzarek used in the Doors) to his customized B-3 set-up. We had gigs all throughout the south, performed as the opening act for a few local concerts, but mostly played tri-state area rock clubs, college parties, and high school dances.
Local music store owner and county fine arts educator Pat Wiseman began Plato Records in 1967 with a pharmacist and music lover named Bob Ullom. They booked their sessions at King Studios in Cincinnati, Ohio.
We were playing a lot of live gigs at that time, and on the night before our recording date, our hustling manager Hal Scott of Hal Scott Enterprises in Ashland, KY (besides booking rock bands. he ran a mortuary business) had us booked for a high school prom from 9pm to 1am, THEN an after-prom party at a DIFFERENT high school from 4am to 6am! So, with no sleep for 36 hours, our voices raw from singing for six hours, our bodies aching from packing and unpacking our equipment, and driving the hundred plus miles from West Virginia, we arrived for our session at around 11am. Because our voices were so ragged, we weren’t able to do the harmonies that we did live, but everybody seemed to like the rawness of the record.
The Satisfied Minds, 1968
After college graduation, I did two years in the Army, then started teaching, while Darrell took off for Hollywood to pursue acting. But we kept in touch, and I kept playing. In 1977 Darrell called me out to L.A. to play music and be in a film he was co-starring in called “Big Wednesday”, a surf epic written and directed by John Milius that’s become somewhat of a classic. Shortly after that, Darrell starred in a CBS comedy series pilot written by Lorenzo Music called “Friends” about a couple of rock stars, loosely based on Flo and Eddie from The Turtles. Darrell got me on that show as the guitar player in his band. In the opening credits for the show, there’s a scene of Darrell & his co-star playing a gig at the legendary Troubadour club. Along with the show’s fictional band, the marquee proclaims “Now Playing ……..The Satisfied Minds!”
The pilot wasn’t picked up, but Darrell and I continued to play in groups in L.A. -. Among them, a group called “Pacific Ocean,” which featured singer Edward James Olmos before he became a famous actor. We also played a number of gigs with David Carradine and his younger brother Robert Carradine. In 1979, we did a concert with the entire family: David, Robert, their brother Keith, and father John Carradine at the Wilshire Ebell theatre, called “An Evening With The Carradines.” Filmed live, the concert became part of a documentary that’s now on DVD.
After that we started a California version of the Minds with our good friend Sam Melville a co-star with Darrell on Big Wednesday who had been one of the three leads on the ABC hit show “The Rookies”. We called this band “Raw Dog”, but it was still the Minds. A couple of years later, I moved back to the family farm in Lincoln County, West Virginia to be with my aging parents. I started teaching again but kept right on playing. Darrell segued into writing and producing TV and films.
The pictures enclosed are the band in 1966 (check those tuxedos), in 1968 (times were a-changin’ and the guy sitting on the stone was our drummer, Jim Frazier–Hale had gone off to the Berklee School of Music in Boston). The third one is 1980 of “Raw Dog,” and the guys with Darrell and me are Sam Melville on bass and Jeff Marx on drums.
Darrell and I still stay in touch and try to play music together whenever he’s in town. Lately, we’ve been talking about writing a stage musical based on some songs I’ve written about the “Chemical Valley” (the heavily industrial Charleston, St. Albans, Nitro area) where I grew up. Don’t worry….we’re not through yet!!!
Q. How did you start in music? Was the Satisfied Minds your first band?
Yancey Burns: I had played in high school groups, but I didn’t know Darrell or any of the other guys then. When I came to Marshall, I formed an R & B group called “The Seagram Seven.” We featured a big black guy who looked and sounded just like Junior Walker on saxophone and a crazy New York Italian guy who sang soul songs. Since we were a mixed group (black guys & white guys) we played a lot of black clubs and frat gigs.
One night, during a snow storm at about 3 a.m., we were driving from a gig in the customized hearse we used to haul our equipment. No one else was on the road at that hour but the occasional truck driver. Suddenly, we saw this silhouetted figure crawling out of a snow drift in the Interstate median – It was Darrell Fetty struggling across the highway to flag us down. He had been driving from a gig in the opposite direction when his car broke down. He had been out there alone (remember this was before cell phones) for a couple of hours and was about to freeze to death. That’s how we met.
Darrell was still in high school at the time, but had been playing in various rock groups for several years. He started playing piano when he was eight for church choirs and gospel quartets. We happened to be looking for a new keyboard player at the time, so Darrell gave me his number. I called him a couple weeks later, and he was thrilled to join the “Seagram Seven” to play college bookings and get away from the Elks Club and Moose Lodge gigs he’d been playing with an older group.
When Darrell came to college the following year, his Dad bought a boarding house where a bunch of us guys lived and practiced music in the basement.
Q. How’d the band get it’s name?
Yancey Burns: After the “Seven” broke up, we were looking to play a new kind of music that was happening then. It was 1967, so we still had to play a lot of R & B for the local gigs, but we started stretching things out with guitar solos and so forth and played sort of “psychedelic soul” style. We got a light show, and I started burning guitars and setting off smoke bombs onstage. We wanted a name that reflected sounded kind of mind expansive, so Darrell came up with the “Satisfied Minds” which was actually pulled from the lyrics of an old country song about “a man with a satisfied mind.”
Q. Did you know other bands on the Plato label, or were friends with other local acts?
Yancey Burns: We knew all the acts! They weren’t exactly friends, because, then, we saw them as our our competition. Although secretly we were all kinda fans of each other. Most of the acts on Plato were managed and booked around the area by Hal Scott Enterprises.
This was a great time for music in this area. We’d see professional acts like Paul Revere and the Raiders, then later Led Zeppelin, the Who, etc. but none of them seemed as exciting as some of our local groups! Among some of the other groups in the Tri-State area at that time were “The Explosive Dynamiks” who featured three lead singers, a white guy and two black guys (one sounded like James Brown and the other like Brooke Benton). The Dynamiks had a local hit, but it was a record they produced and distributed themselves (not on Plato). [for more info on the Dynamiks, check out this entry at Capitol Soul Club]
There was also “The Fugitives” who went to New York for awhile and actually opened for “The Young Rascals” for a couple of concerts. Darrell and I were also big fans of “Little Archie & The Parliaments” an all-black group who also recorded their own records (not on Plato). Little Archie was about seven feet tall who could sing, dance, and gave as great of a show as Otis Redding!
Q. I’ve heard that Plato was started as a label for black music. This doesn’t really fit in with the fact that the Satisfied Minds was the first record released on Plato. What would you say were Wiseman and Ullom’s ambitions for the label?
Yancey Burns: Maybe because of the number of black groups on the label and in the area. Actually, Wiseman and Ullom just wanted to tap into that locally-happening music scene and just get a hit! Our record was the first release, but remember we were segueing from a soul band (you saw the tuxedos) to a psychedelic/rock band at the time.
Q. Are there any unreleased or live recordings of the band?
Yancey Burns: Not that I know of.
Thank you to Yancey Burns for his history and photos of the group.
Update, October 2010:
I’m very sorry to hear that Yancey passed away on June 6, 2010.
Darrell Fetty wrote to me about some of the music he and Yancey did after the Satisfied Minds:
“Reds and Blues” is from a live performance we did in L.A. (I think it was the old Palomino Club) as “Leon Keyboard & the Bilnor Spashers” – it was the “Raw Dog” core musicians: Yancey on guitar, me singing and on keyboards, etc., but for a few gigs we brought in a number of friends of ours who were celebrities at the time. It was a fun, ever-evolving gang of people modeled after the “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” group. On this performance, in addition to Sam Melville and Mark Singer, and our wives Annie Melville, Hau Nani Singer, Carolyne McCoy Fetty, we had Carradine brother Bobby on guitar.
Yancey wrote “Red and Blues” one night after watching a documentary on Custer’s Last Stand. It’s a funky rock/folk song with a raw reggae feel that tells the story (with real names of some of the soldiers involved) from the Indians point of view. This is also a rare recording of Yancey himself singing the lead vocal.
Kit and the Outlaws, 1967 l-r: Kit Massengill, Joe Jessmer on drums, Jerry Colwell at the mic and Alan Ravkind
Kit and the Outlaws evolved from the Outlaws, the Dallas group led by Kit Massengill. As the Outlaws, they had a great early Texas garage 45 on the In label, produced by Tommy Allsup. Both sides, “Worlds Apart” / “Fun, Fame & Fortune” were written by Kit.
With a change of members, the group hit the big time with their second 45, a fuzzed-up version of “Midnight Hour”. It was picked up by Philips for national distribution in late 1966, mainly on the strength of the a-side. That’s a fine cover version, but it’s the b-side, Kit’s original “Don’t Tread on Me”, that gets the attention nowadays.
The first BlacKnight pressings list the band as “The Outlaws”, later pressings read “Kit and the Outlaws”. Philips licensed the single through its subsidiary Mercury Records, from San-Lin Corporation on November 23, 1966.
Members included:
Kit Massengill – lead vocals and rhythm guitar Dennis Lowe – lead guitar Jerry Colwell – keyboards Alan Ravkind – bass Joe Jessmer – drums
There is also one further 45 as Kit and the Outlaws, “Now Doubt About It” / “Mama’s Gone” on the Empire label, another of Bob Sanders’ labels. Both sides written by Kit Massengill and published by Tall Pine Music, Black Knight Production. I don’t know the date of this one, or where it fits in to the chronology of their releases, but it seems to be a rare 45.
I recently heard from keyboardist and occasional vocalist Jerry Colwell, and asked him about Kit and recording “Don’t Tread on Me”:
I met Kit in late ’65, he was working with the owner of the Cotton Club, a topless bar on Lemmon Ave. He had a bass player named Alan Rafkin [actually Alan Ravkind], and drummer named Joe Jesmer [Joe Jessmer seems to be correct spelling], but needed a keyboard player and lead guitar. I was on my way out of a band called the Gobyzurks, we were a college and night club band in North Texas.
Dennis Lowe was the lead guitar and I was the organ player. Dennis and I went to high school together and were fairly good friends. Kit told us we had 2 weeks to learn about 50 songs and play nightly at this club.
Recording Midnight Hour at Sellers Recording Studio, Dallas
After about a year of playing night clubs in Dallas we recorded the record Midnight Hour/ Don’t Tread on Me. The Sellers Studio was close to downtown [2102 Jackson Street]. I sang on the song Don’t Tread on Me, as background.We had it pressed on the Black Knight Label. Frank Jolly at KBOX really liked us and would play the song every night, Finally all the DJ’s at KBOX started playing the song and it went up the charts. [It reached #1 on KBOX on December 2, 1966.] We were shocked that it was doing so good. KLIF wouldn’t play it cause we wern’t with a major record label.
Thanks to Bob Sanders, the recording engineer for the Sellers studio and our manager, we got signed to a 5 year contract with Philips. And changed our name to Kit and the Outlaws.
We played at a daily televised venue called “Something Else” [Sump’N Else] hosted by Ron Chapman, as well as opening for Sonny & Cher, The Hollies, Herman Hermitts, Noel Harrison, and The Byrds. We toured and had some great stories, like me and Kit putting a huge dead fish in the Galvez hotel swimming pool one night at three in the morning. Had pictures of Graham Nash and the Hollies drinking about 14 cases of beer before they went on at Will Rodgers in Fort Worth.By 1968 was almost 20 and still hadn’t completed high school, somehow lost interest due to work and touring. Can you imagine going to high school and having a #1 record. Needless to say I dated just about anyone, and I did!
Early days:
Started playing bass guitar and got with some older guys called the Centurys in Mesquite. Later [1964] formed my first band “The Malibus” with Don Doss, Gary Stultz, & Glen Milsap. Started playing in old bars down on Grand and Haskel Ave. These places had dirt floors, we used to put a hat down and play Jimmy Reed stuff. Thats how I learned blues harp.
Johnny Green of the GreenmenJohnny Green of the GreenmenThe Drifters ?
The Kavemen backing Chuck Berry at Surfers a Go goThe Kavemen backing Chuck Berry at Surfers a Go go
Later joined the #1 Dallas band The Cavemen and played battle of the bands against Jimmy Vaughan and his band, and the Royals and others. In 1965 the Cavemen was the home band for a Night club “Surfers A Go Go” in Dallas, where we played with Chuck Berry, Roy Head, The original Drifters, Jimmy Velvet and Johnny Green and the Greenmen. We played at clubs all over Texas, my favorites were the “Bamboo Hut” in Galveston, and “Panther Hall” in Fort Worth, a televised event every week. We were also played at Louanns many times.
The Kavemen, Dallas 1965 from left to right: Roland Allen, Jimmy Allen, Rodney Vinyard, Tommy Fonseca, Bill Walden & Jerry Colwell
In 1965 my favorite club was the Purple Orchard in downtown were my buddy Little Anthony was the host. I could go in just about any night club in Dallas and get a drink for free when I was just 16. Had a great time one night with Fats Domino.
The Gobezerks at the Sugar Shack in Mesquite
In 1966 played with “The Gobezurks” a college and night club band, I dressed in drag for some of the songs and would fall off the stage as if I was drunk.The Outlaws broke up in spring of 1968 and I went on to form the Jerry Layne Orchestra with 10 various horns and a stand up bass with Teresa Morrision on vocals.
I still play a B-3 and have recorded and produced 3 live CD’s in Austin.
Special thanks to Jerry Colwell for his history of the band and photos.
Update, February 2021:
March 1966 demo tape of Kit & the Outlaws from Sellers Recording
George Gimarc sent this image of an early demo tape of Kit & the Outlaws from March, 1966. “Fame, Fun and Fortune” is a different version than the In single. The other three songs are “Wanted”, “You Are My Sunshine” and “Lonely Avenue”. None have been released. The tape was found in the storage of the Sellers Company Recording Studio.
Update, September 2021:
Ron Lansing wrote to me about early days with the Outlaws:
I started playing with Kit when he joined my band Revelee’ in early 1965. We had met when my band was playing Louanns. Kit played with my band at a Mardis Gras party in February of 1966.
He and I both played with other bands from time to time. Band members came and went just like many of my high school buds who I played with at the time. Ultimately I ended up playing lead guitar with Kit when he and I along with Joe Jesmer and Tommy Johnson (I think that is correct last name) formed The Outlaws.
I am not positive, but I think our trip to Odessa with our ‘Outlaw’ band was in April 1966 to record the two songs Kit and Joe Jesmer came up with.
The Church Keys (Bassmen) playing live in Birmingham 1963
The Bassmen have the very first 45 released on the Vaughn-Ltd label, the excellent original song “I Need You”.
The Bassmen originally formed as the Church Keys in 1962 while in the ninth grade in Birmingham. Original members were Rob Hackney guitar, Chuck Butterworth keyboards, Mike Easter on bass and Tom Allison on drums. Over the next year they added Charlie Feldman as lead singer and Vaughn Rives on rhythm guitar, and Steve Gilmer replaced Butterworth on keyboards.
By 1965 they had changed their name to the Bassmen, and they went into Ed Boutwell’s studio in English Village to record their 45, “I Need You” / “Leigh Anne”. Both are credited to B. Van Santte, perhaps a fictitious name as it doesn’t match any of the band members.
The single garnered the Bassmen appearances at shows produced by local DJs Papa Don Schroeder and Duke Rumore, and the band toured colleges in the area as well.
At the start of college in 1966, singer Charlie Feldman, bassist Mike Easter and drummer Tom Allison found new members Jamie Grant and Tommy Johnson. They renamed the band the Candystore Prophets and released one very fine Beatles-esque 45 on Andy Anderson’s Cougar label of Jackson, Mississippi, “The Time of Day” b/w “You’re a Teaser” (both written by Jamie Grant).
Note, this is not the same Candy Store Prophets led by Boyce and Hart who wrote and recorded the backing tracks for all the early songs of the Monkees.
Source: Info for this story and the photo at top are taken from the Bassmen’s site. Check it to see more photos and updates on the band.
There’s an interesting story behind this record by the Statesiders. The band, better known as first the Redcoats and then the Sidekicks, almost hit the big time until managerial difficulties crashed their plans.
John Sprit was the creative force behind the group. He had been in the Randells, charting with “The Martian Hop” in 1963, a record produced by John’s cousin Steven Rappaport. John Sprit decided to form a band in imitation of the Beatles, based around his songwriting. With Steven as manager and producer, John on drums and his friend Mike Burke on lead guitar, they spotted Zach and Randy Bocelle of Absecon, NJ at an audition, and brought them in to fill the ‘roles’ of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, respectively, on rhythm guitar, bass and lead vocals.
After intensive rehearsals in John Sprit’s family home in Wildwood, NJ, the Redcoats signed with Laurie for a 45 in the style of Herman’s Hermits, “The Dum Dum Song” / “Love Unreturned”, which did fairly well on a local level. It was released in October, 1965.
Prior to “The Dum Dum Song”, the Laurie subsidiary, Providence released a single by the Statesiders “She Belonged to Another” / “Patterned the Same” in the first half of 1965. The Statesiders name is an oblique reference to their being the US counterpart of the Beatles / Redcoats. The single was produced by Steve Rappaport and both songs were written by Carnaby & Shakespeare: pseudonyms for John Spirt and Michael Burke according to the BMI database. The songs have enough originality to overcome the Beatles influence, and are more than competently performed by the group.
Zach Bocelle doesn’t mention the Statesiders or either song title in his long history of the group. It’s possible the songs were recorded prior to Zach and Randy joining the band. The songs are also not included on the collection of the Redcoats’ recordings for Laurie Meet The Redcoats…Finally released by Dionysus in 2001. But I think it likely that most of the band played on this record, making it a forgotten part of pre-Redcoats history.
Things were looking up for the band when Steve Rappaport left for Europe during the summer of ’66. Looking to record more original songs on their own terms, they found a manager and investor in a wealthy woman from Philadelphia who financed their next demos.
An original of John’s, “Suspicions” caught the ear of RCA, who renamed the band the Sidekicks and re-recorded the song with a full orchestra. Released in the spring of 1966, “Suspicions” was a fair-sized national hit, and the band soon followed up with an LP of mostly very pop-oriented material.
Within a year, though, their new manager’s shameless exploitation alienated both the group and RCA, and the bitterness of the experience led John Sprit to quit the business altogether.
Thanks to Euphonic for his comment below with the approximate release date and Laurie ownership of Providence – I’ve revised this post to reflect that new info. Thanks also to Mike Markesich for the release date of the Laurie 45.
Lilis Surjani (aka Suryani) was very popular in Indonesia and neighbouring countries from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. President Soekarno of Indonesia made life difficult for musicians and singers in the early to mid 1960s because he wanted to rid Indonesia of Western influences and wanted rock ’n’ roll to be outlawed. Lilis found herself in trouble in mid 1965 because of her stage attire, presentation and choice of songs.
In a newspaper article in August 1965 Lilis promised that she would no longer sing ‘Beatles-like’ songs and apologised for her previous ‘mistakes’. Lilis made her amends and produced a number of songs with an Indonesian nationalist theme that were more likely to be approved by the ruling regime. One of those songs is Pergi Perjuang (Depart Warrior), where Lilis is backed by guitarist Zaenal Arifin and his Zaenal Combo. This song is as about as close as you can get to rock ’n’ roll and not call it that. The song’s theme though is one that would have appealed to Soekarno with Lilis singing that she hopes the young warriors going to battle perform their duties as ‘defenders of the nation’ and return victorious.
This song reflects the fact that Indonesia and Malaysia were involved in an undeclared war from 1963 to 1966 as Soekarno viewed the newly created state of Malaysia as a British colonial plot and vowed to ‘crush’ it. Soekarno was particularly peeved that the former British colonies in northern Borneo had become part of Malaysia as the rest of the island was Indonesian territory. Indonesian troops carried out covert operations in north Borneo throughout the period, but were repulsed by Malaysian, British and Australian forces. Although Soekarno was sidelined politically in late 1965 the Crush Malaysia policy took a bit longer to wind back, but friendly relations between Indonesia and Malaysia had been fully restored by the late 1960s. What may seem surprising is that Pergi Perjuang was also released in Malaysia and seems to have been quite popular. It is the Malaysian release I feature here.
I also include Lilis’s post-Soekarno era song Perahu Bertolak (Ship Departs), probably from late 1966 or 1967, which has some good guitar work. This Malaysian release has no liner notes, but I have read that Lilis’s backing band here was Band Arulan led by Jarzuk Arifin.
Lilis Surjani went on to record numerous other songs in rock, pop and regional styles. She still performs regularly although she has been battling cancer for the last few years.
Lilis Surjani’s Pergi Perjuang is only one of many songs from Indonesia that relate to the conflict with Malaysia. There must have been songs made in Malaysia with the same theme, but I haven’t come across many.
One that I do have, however, is a good one. The song Bekalan Satria (Warrior Skills) by S. Mona Rita and the Kingstons from late 1965 or 1966 has the singer worrying that her soldier boyfriend (or husband) returns safely from the battlefield, but that he does his duty as ‘defender of the nation’. The nationalist theme is continued cryptically in the song Buat Tatapan (Observation) as the singer complains about a cheating lover and laments that she had ever forgotten her responsibilities to the homeland. What does it mean? I don’t know.
The Kingstons were Ungku Safian – Lead Guitar, Mokhtar – Rhythm Guitar, Rahman – Bass, Ungku Fadzil – Organ, and Kamar Dean – Drums.S. Mona Rita is a good singer and the vocal is mixed very high in the mix. The Kingstons are more than competent and add many flourishes to the sound. Buat Tatapan has an unusual drum and organ interlude towards the end that at first hearing doesn’t seem to belong there, but presumably it is meant to reflect S. Mona Rita’s thoughts that ‘love is false’. The other two songs on the EP are good too, but are slower and much more subdued.
The Wee Four, from left: Bob Salerno, Jack Allocco, Terry Piliterre, and Dennis Drew
Terry Pilittere was the founder of the Rochester, NY group the Dimensions, in 1962. Members were Denny Drew lead guitar, Rob Salerno rhythm guitar, Ken Polizzi bass and vocals, and Terry on drums and vocals. In 1965 Jack Allocco joined and the band changed their name to the Wee Four, because none of the members was over 5′ 8″ tall.
The Wee Four recorded an excellent garage punker, “Weird” in 1966, written by Terry with his friend Jim Obi, b/w Terry’s song “Give Me a Try”. The Wee Four recorded other songs, including “I Could Never”, but these weren’t released.
Members of the band had conflicts with manager Al Cecere, but Terry decided to leave the group and go with Al as his manager for a solo record of two beautiful original songs, “It’s Not That Way” and “You Wouldn’t Believe Me”.
Terry passed away in December, 2000.
Photo caption updated 2022.
Sources: Mike Dugo’s interview with Ken Polizzi of the Wee Four. Photos from Fuzz Acid and Flowers.
Once in a while I come across something that doesn’t fit into the garage category but deserves some wider exposure – the Lumpen 45 is one of these records.
“Free Bobby Now” is an anthem for Bobby Seale. The Lumpen were a group of Black Panthers based in Oakland but peforming throughout the Bay Area to get the Panther’s message across through music.
A full history of the group by member Michael Torrance is on the Black Panther history site, It’s About Time. I’ll quote some of it here for background:
The original members were Bill Calhoun, Clark (Santa Rita) Bailey, James Mott and myself, Michael Torrance. We had all sung in groups in the past, Calhoun having performed professionally in Las Vegas, and it just came naturally.
Calhoun wrote “No More” in a spiritual/traditional style, and then “Bobby Must Be Set Free”, a more upbeat R&B song. We recorded these two songs and soon we were singing at community centers and rallies. Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture, named the group the Lumpen for the “brothers on the block,” the disenfranchised, angry underclass in the ghetto.
Thanks to Calhoun’s expertise, we were able to put together a high-energy hour-long “act” complete with uniforms and choreography. By the time the Lumpen were about to go on an East Coast tour, the auditorium at Merritt College was packed for the kick-off concert which was recorded live. The whole audience sang along with “Bobby Must Be Set Free.”
The first copy I found was in New Orleans shortly before Katrina hit. I was listening to a batch of records and this one caught my attention, though I realized right away it was mislabeled – it has labels from a hit on the White Whale label that must have been at the press at the same time. Which would date this to December, 1970. Recently I found another copy with the correct labels on it.
The Deepest Blue formed in Pomona, a town about halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernadino further inland. Members were:
Earl Shackelford – vocals Russell Johnson – lead guitar and vocals Ken Zabel – organ Rick Edwards – rhythm guitar Bruce Lavoie – bass Russ ‘Soupy’ Morrow – drums
The band was actually known as the Doves, they only changed their name when releasing their 45, because they thought it sounded more commercial.
They played teen clubs in the area like the Oasis and Discoteen, and a couple shows on the Hollywood strip with the Leaves and the Seeds. Their repertoire was all covers, mostly influenced by the Stones and other English groups.
Russ Johnson and Earl Shackelford wrote two songs just for the recording session, the first originals the band had ever played. They recorded at 9th Street studio in LA in August of 1966, with Richard Delvy, drummer for the Challengers engineering. Vic Gargano financed the record – he also produced the Tomorrows’ La Do Da Da / Need Only You on Condor. Without the band’s knowledge Gargano had a studio musician add guitar parts to enliven the sound. Although this upset the group, the resulting single is fantastic.
“Pretty Little Thing” features Bruce’s sliding bass line, precise drumming from Soupy, and a raging organ solo by Ken Zabel. Earl’s vocal has elements of Jagger’s inflections but his voice is stronger. “Somebody’s Girl” is more subdued but also powerful. Despite the quality of the record, it received little airplay.
The band returned to the studio to record more tracks for an album which was never finished. Soupy Morrow had an acetate of the sessions, but it has not surfaced since.
However, two songs “I Found Out” and “Living My Love Game” were released on a Blue-Fin 45 under the name the Egyptian Candy. Earl for one had completely forgotten about this record, but he did confirm that this was recorded by the Deepest Blue for their album sessions. Earl speculated that this may have been released under the name Egyptian Candy to test the waters for how the band’s new direction would be received.
Both songs demonstrate the influence of Earl’s friend Chris Darrow on his songwriting. Earl had met Chris at the Forum Club in Montclair when Chris was with the Floggs. Chris would record both songs with his next band, Kaleidoscope in similar arrangements (“Living My Love Game” retitled “Love Games” in the Kaleidoscope version and not released at the time). Another song by Earl, “I Found Out” became one of Kaleidoscope’s signature songs. It’s unfortunate the Deepest Blue were unable to stay together to pursue this new style, as they were obviously onto something.
Lacking success and headed in different musical directions, the band split up. Soupy died in a motorcycle accident in 1967 [actually in 1968 according to Oscar Bee], and Rick Edwards was killed in a car crash the following year while on tour. Earl stayed in music, notably forming Wheels with Chris Darrow and Walter Egan, and arranging vocal harmonies on Iggy Pop’s New Values album.
Update: Russ Johnson passed away in Australia in 2007. He had a long career in music there, most notably with a group called Mississippi.
For more information on the Deepest Blue there are two interviews with Earl Shackelford, one by Mike Dugo, and one at Pulsating Dream.
Blue-Fin discography (incomplete?):
101 – Ascots: The Wonder Of It All (R. Borden, M. Borden) / I Won’t Cry (Al Politano) (engineer Doc Siegel at Gold Star Studios, Onned Music BMI) 101 – Ascots: Summer Days / The Wonder of It All (matrix #s BL-FI-1004 and, I assume, BL-FI-1000) 102 – Deepest Blue: Pretty Little Thing / Somebody’s Girl 103 – Egyptian Candy: I Found Out / Living My Love Game
Thanks to Max Waller for bringing the two separate releases of the Ascots Blue-Fin 101 to my attention. Max writes:
The Wonder Of It All” (BL-FI-1000) has Monarch 62241 in the dead wax. “I Won’t Cry” (BL-FI-1001) has 62241-X in the dead wax so this was supposedly the “B” side, although it appears from the “*” scrawls on the label that someone was pushing this track. This monarch number pairing seems to confirm that this was the original/first pressing, from June 1966.
For the “Summer Days” 45, I’d expect to see a different monarch # in the dead wax for that track, (BL-FI-1004).
Due to the “(BL-FI-1001)” ref, it appears they used the same recording of “I Won’t Cry”, so I’d expect to find Monarch #62241 in the dead wax.
The Omegas, spring 1966, from left: Mike Sarigumba, Art Brueggeman, A.T. Ryder, Mike McKeller and Steve Callahan
The Omegas were a Montgomery County group who had gone through considerable personnel changes by the time they recorded their record on United Artists.
The original group cut two songs at Edgewood Recording Studio, a good slow number with dirge-like organ called “Mean Old Man Day”, and “Mud” (aka “Mississippi Mud”), a catchy pop number with acoustic guitar, harmonies and underwater sound effects. These never saw release and I’ve only heard clips from a 2008 auction, which I didn’t win.
Art Brueggeman wrote to me about the group in 2012:
I was the original bass player and joint founding member along with Mike McKeller (drummer) and Steve Callahan (rhythm guitarist). We were high school buddies. We quickly brought in a lead guitarist and a keyboard player.
Here’s a band picture taken in the spring of 1966. That’s me with the Jazz Bass, Steve with the Gibson ES335, and Mike on drums. The other two are A.T. Ryder on Strat and Mike “Pineapple” Sarigumba on keyboard.
We were playing fraternity parties, debutante events, and dances. In early summer we ended up going to Ocean City and landing a gig at The Paddock on 17th street. It was really the only bonafide night club in OC at the time. We played 6 nights a week, and a jam session Saturday afternoon. As I recall, we were there until mid-August or so.
It was a time of the Vietnam war and the draft. Mike and Steve left the band in the Spring of 1967 to join the Air Force Reserves. I ended up joining after the end of the summer. We had a replacement drummer and rhythm guitarist for that summer. Then we returned in the summer of 1967 with the two replacements. I ended up getting married in April 1968 when I got back from active duty, and never returned to the band.
Mike returned to the band and the personnel changed. Don’t remember what Steve did exactly, but he was married by that time as well. It was the original five Omegas though who recorded the three cuts at Edgewood. As I recall, that was done in the fall of 1966, but I may be off there.
Mike and I sang “Mean Old Man Day”, and Steve and Pineapple sang “Mississippi Mud”. We did not write those songs. We did no original writing. I really do not remember who wrote them. I just remember it was two guys who we were put in touch with.
Steve Callahan wrote:
I have the original master from Edgewood studio’s which I found just recently….metal center coated with acetate. I also have the original United Artists release of the other 2 songs.
The UA record is largely the work of Tom Guernsey of the Reekers and the Hangmen. Tom wrote and arranged both sides of the record, played guitar and piano, and co-produced it with Larry Sealfon.
The vocalist on “I Can’t Believe” is Joe Triplett, who was in the Reekers with Tom and was also the vocalist on the first Hangmen 45, “What a Girl Can’t Do”. Leroy Otis played drums on the track and backing vocals were by the Jewels.
A catchy and danceable record, it was released in early 1968 and had some local chart success. With its crossover appeal I’m surprised it’s not better known these days. The flip was a ballad by Tom Guernsey, “Mr. Yates”. He told me it was one of the songs he was proudest of writing.
This site is a work in progress on 1960s garage rock bands. All entries can be updated, corrected and expanded. If you have information on a band featured here, please let me know and I will update the site and credit you accordingly.
I am dedicated to making this site a center for research about '60s music scenes. Please consider donating archival materials such as photos, records, news clippings, scrapbooks or other material from the '60s. Please contact me at rchrisbishop@gmail.com if you can loan or donate original materials
Terry Pilittere was the founder of the Rochester, NY group the Dimensions, in 1962. Members were Denny Drew lead guitar, Rob Salerno rhythm guitar, Ken Polizzi bass and vocals, and Terry on drums and vocals. In 1965 Jack Allocco joined and the band changed their name to the Wee Four, because none of the members was over 5′ 8″ tall.
Members of the band had conflicts with manager Al Cecere, but Terry decided to leave the group and go with Al as his manager for a solo record of two beautiful original songs, “It’s Not That Way” and “You Wouldn’t Believe Me”.
