Spanky & Our Gang 26-26-26 Greatest Hits Singles CD New

Pricing & History

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Spanky & Our Gang is one of those odd groups that, despite havinghad a string of Top 40 chart hits in a two-year period from 1967 through 1969, somehow falls between the cracks of 1960s pop music history. Their hits, particularly "Sunday Will Never Be the Same," "Lazy Day," "Like to Get to Know You," and "Give a Damn," were as much a part of the ambience of the middle to late '60s as any of the best known songs of the Mamas & the Papas with whom they're frequently compared. Yet they fell short of the latter group as cultural icons; they lacked the L.A.-based group's distinctively accessible collective personality, or anything like its individual members' visual appeal, and they also had none of the Mamas & the Papas ' in-house songwriting talent. They did have good voices and musical instincts, however, and a lot more to their sound than the cheerful anthems that made them famous. Their sound most obviously displayed a folk-rock influence, but Spanky & Our Gang actually came just as much out of a pop-jazz background. Elaine McFarlane was into blues and jazz, and her first professional gig was in a jazz-based singing group called the Jamie Lyn Trio in 1962. By the start of 1963, lured by the booming folk music scene, she joined the New Wine Singers who mixed folk and protest songs with Dixieland jazz. It was during her tenure with this group that she acquired the friendship of trombonist/singer Malcolm Hale , and also the nickname "Spanky," owing to her resemblance -- in the eyes of fellow group member Arnie Lanza -- to George "Spanky" McFarland of the Little Rascals/Our Gang comedies. By 1965, the New Wine Singers were history and McFarlane headed for Florida that winter w she met Oz Bach and Nigel Pickering at a hurricane party. Their three days of jamming while the storm left them stranded resulted in an invitation for them to join her up in Chicago, of which Bach and Pickering availed themselves later that year. McFarlane was working as a singing waitress at a club called Mother Blues when she was told by the owner, Curly Tait , to assemble a group to open for the outside acts that were booked. She recruited Bach and Pickering who began arranging their repertory for three voices; they also recognized that with an act thrown together at the last minute, they might be a little short on time, and so (following a tradition going back at least to the Kingston Trio ), they wrote some comedy sketches. The trio, which resembled nothing so much as a broken down jugband with a sense of humor -- similar, in fact, to the early Nitty Gritty Dirt Band -- with Bach on bass, Pickering playing guitar, and McFarlane playing washboard and kazoo. They called themselves Spanky & Our Gang as a joke, playing on their singer's nickname, but when local newspapers began reviewing their performances in favorable terms, the name ended up sticking. Malcolm Hale joined on guitar and percussion as the group moved out of Mother Blues and into bigger clubs, with Tait serving as their manager. As folk-rock became the booming sound of 1965-1966, Mercury Records, which was based in the group's hometown of Chicago, began taking notice of Spanky & Our Gang, and by late 1966 they were signed. The group spent its first year with the label assigned to producer Jerry Ross , of Heritage Records fame, who gave them a very polished sound in the studio, not too different from that of the Mamas & the Papas . At their first recording session in New York, they were given a song called "Sunday Will Never Be the Same," which had already been offered to the Mamas & the Papas and the Left Banke . Malcolm Hale came up with the song's vamped vocal opening, which became the group's signature. The resulting single, released in May of 1967, peaked at number nine on the charts in June of 1967, one of the fresher pop-folk sounds amid the Summer of Love. Drummer John Seiter joined in the summer of 1967 just as the group was breaking. A second hit, "Making Every Minute Count," although not as distinctive as their debut, rose to number 22 nationall... read more

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