The Villagers included Phil Haskins, Rick Haskins and Charles Petit.
They cut their only single in very early 1969 at Kennett Sound Studio, located in a renovated barn just south of the village of Kinderhook, NY.
Phil Haskins wrote the words to the slow, lovely “Wishes and Memories” and co-wrote the music with Rick Haskins (Richard J. Haskins).
Charles R. Petit wrote the more soul-styled “Cry On”, copyright registered February, 1969.
There is no label name, but Kennett Sound appears on other singles by the Cleaners and East Coast Clique, and the 0018 release number is similar to others from that studio, usually four digits starting with 00.
Dewey Martin’s post-Buffalo Springfield career has never received the attention bestowed to his fellow cohorts Steve Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay.
Like his erstwhile colleague, bass player Bruce Palmer, Martin (b. Walter Milton Dewayne Midkiff, 30 September 1940, Chesterville, near Ottawa, Canada; d. 31 January 2009, Van Nuys, California) struggled to maintain a profile in the aftermath of Buffalo Springfield’s premature demise.
While Stills and Young found international stardom in the super group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and as successful solo artists, and Furay as founder and guiding light of country-rock pioneers Poco, Martin’s own projects, the ill-fated New Buffalo Springfield and Medicine Ball quickly faded into obscurity.
The fact that he revived the name of his former group suggests that Martin recognised his best hope of securing a musical future lay in carrying on where the old group had left off.
Yet when Buffalo Springfield performed their final date on 5 May 1968, the prospect of anyone reviving the band’s name was an unlikely proposition.
Initially, Martin’s plans involved going on the road as a duo with his wife Jane, but this idea never progressed beyond the statement he made to the music press that spring. It is also understood that he did some recordings with Paul Williams’ band Holy Mackerel during this period.
According to a Teen Set press release from August 1968, the married couple spent the best part of the summer playing golf, while Martin looked around for suitable players to back him in an unnamed group specialising in soul, country, blues and jazz.
A month or two later, Martin’s band began to take on shape with the recruitment of four musicians that he’d spotted playing at a club in Phoenix, Arizona.
Bass player Bob Apperson, drummer/vocalist Don Poncher (b. 29 July 1947, Chicago, Illinois), horn player Jim Price (b. 23 July 1945, Fort Worth, Texas) and lead guitarist Gary Rowles (b. 24 January 1943, New York) were friends from the San Fernando Valley in California, but had only been playing together as a band for a month when Martin discovered them.
Rowles, who was the son of famous jazz pianist, Jimmy Rowles, had organised the quartet after leaving his previous employer Nooney Rickett and his group, The Noon Express.
Prior to the quartet’s formation, Apperson and Poncher had first worked together with future Blue Rose guitarist John Uribe in power trio Brothers Keepers in the San Fernando Valley.
Apperson had joined the trio around 1967 after playing in the final incarnation of surf group, The Dartells while Poncher had gravitated to rock music after first working for country artist Tex Williams when he was 16-years-old.
According to Poncher, it was Rowles who brought in Jim Price to complete the quartet.
With the core of the band formed, Martin added another Texan, former Armadillo rhythm guitarist/vocalist David Price (b. 23 September 1944, Ballinger, Texas), an old college friend of Mike Nesmith’s from San Antonio who’d been closely involved with The Monkees’ studio work and previously worked with Austin, Texas group, The Chelsea.
David Price had also acted as Davy Jones’s stand in for the TV series and also appeared as an extra in many of the episodes of the popular TV show, most notably as the chemist in The Prince and The Pauper.
“Mike [Nesmith] called and said Dewey Martin was auditioning a post-Buffalo Springfield band at his house in the hills and suggested I come up and check it out,” remembers Dave Price. “I had known Dewey from The Monkees tour days.”
In late October, Martin’s group drove up to Boulder, Colorado to rehearse material (mixing old Springfield songs with band originals like Jim Price’s “The Pony Express Man”) and to play some warm up gigs at a local dinner club for a few weeks.
According to Jerry Fuentes’ research, the musicians held down a brief residency at the Function in Boulder from 22 October to 8 November, opening for The Everly Brothers.
It may well have been during this period that the decision was made to adopt the Buffalo Springfield moniker.
According to Gary Rowles, none of the group was a party to the decision and only realised the fact when they started turning up at concerts, only to find the band billed as “New Buffalo Springfield”.
The fateful decision to use the name would subsequently lead Rowles and others to desert Martin’s band once Stills and Young took legal action and the guitarist suspects the band’s manager, Mike Zalk, was instrumental in persuading Martin to use the name.
Dave Price concurs: “Mike Zalk was always out for a quick buck, so whatever he could book us as, he would.”
The New Buffalo Springfield soon hit the road and on 15 November performed at San Luis Obispo Junior High School and Gym with The Mynd and Wendigo.
The group then flew out to Hawaii for a show the following day, opening for The Turtles and Canned Heat at the Honolulu International Center.
“It was the first time I’d played with 50,000 people all surrounding me and I was on a 20-foot high stage,” says Poncher.
“I was about six feet above the band, so that’s something you never forget. It was really quite overwhelming.”
Back in California, the musicians performed at the Sound Factory in Sacramento on 23 November, on a bill that also included Mad River and Sanpaku.
A week later, on 30 November (and billed as The Buffalo Springfield) they supported The Sir Douglas Quintet at the Terrace Theatre in Salt Lake City.
One of the most notable shows was opening for Eric Burdon & The Animals at the Swing Auditorium, Orange Show Grounds in San Bernadino on 6 December where the group was once again billed as “The Buffalo Springfield”.
The next day, The Buffalo Springfield joined Charlie Musselwhite, Three Dog Night and Sields for a gig at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara.
More shows low-key gigs followed. Neither Stills nor Young were in California at the time, and it was only later when they caught wind of what was happening.
In fact, it was probably Furay who alerted them to the deception after his new outfit (then called Pogo) performed in San Francisco on 25-26 December, the same time that Martin’s bogus group was playing across town.
On that occasion, Pogo were performing at the Fillmore West in San Francisco while Martin’s band was taking part in the highly publicised Holiday Rock Festival, held at the Cow Palace.
The Holiday Rock Festival show on 26 December was New Buffalo Springfield’s most high-profile concert date so far and also featured top acts, Canned Heat, Santana, The Electric Prunes and Steppenwolf among others.
The Thursday before the show, Martin had been interviewed about his new group’s appearance at the festival by journalist Peggy King for an article in the Oakland Tribune, which was published under the title “A new ‘Buffalo’ in rock roundup” on Saturday, 21 December.
In the interview, Martin revealed that the show would include nine songs by the group, half old songs with the new sound and the rest new “Springfield” originals. A conglomeration of jazz, rock and blues.
“We have a more powerful sound that’s the way I would compare it with the old group,” Martin told King. “Before it was east-going country-western. Now we’ve added some electronic sound devices and Jim Price on amplified trumpet and trombone.”
Martin goes on to explain that after the show, the band will “finish mapping out an album for Atlantic” (more of which later) and also reveals that, “we’re booked up pretty solid with jobs. We just take them as they come and try to do our best with each one, no big plans.”
A week or so before the Holiday Rock Festival, the band had driven up to the Pacific Northwest, Martin’s old stomping ground and performed, somewhat mischievously, under the “Buffalo Springfield” banner at several venues – the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver on 21 December and the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, both opening for The Chambers Brothers and The Buddy Miles Express.
They also appeared at the Evergreen Ballroom in Olympia, Washington on 23 December, with The White Hearts in support.
Olympia was small enough to get away with such a stunt but the Holiday Rock Festival had received too much publicity for Mike Zalk to risk billing the group as simply “The Buffalo Springfield”.
Even so, according to Rowles, the manager pulled out all the stops to publicise the band’s performance at the festival and hired some local help to ensure that its limos arrived on time.
“The Hell’s Angels escorted us from the Fairmont Hotel to the Cow Palace gig – we didn’t have to stop once, and it was an amazing journey, to say the least.”
“I remember the Hell’s Angels breaking us into the back door of the Cow Palace even though we were an act there working,” adds Poncher.
“They broke down the door and maced one of the cops. They wanted to help us with our gear on stage. They unplugged the entire stage and the whole house went dark for a couple of minutes.”
“The Cow Palace was a real disaster,” remembers Dave Price, who has his own take on the event.
“We were supposed to go on relatively late in the day; we were fairly high on the bill and [Zalk] thought that if we just go over there and walk on stage and do our stuff, we’d just fade into the woodwork, so we needed to make a big splash.
“When we finally went on stage, the Hell’s Angels all went out and stood around the stage like they were our protectors and everybody in the place booed us something fierce. We really had a hard time. It was not a good show.”
Despite the reception, many no doubt had been led to believe that the original group had reformed for a one-off date. Having caught wind of Martin’s activities, Furay presumably contacted Stills, who was back in L.A. in early 1969 after a brief stint in London rehearsing his new project, Crosby, Stills & Nash.
On 11 January 1969 Martin’s group, billed as The Buffalo Springfield, appeared at San Diego Community Course with The Sir Douglas Quintet.
As with all of the shows the band played, Martin fronted the group on stage, with Poncher handling the drums.
“Dewey mostly would go out front and sing and then he’d come back and we’d double on drums on one song,” remembers Poncher.
Critic Mike Martin, who was in attendance, was not convinced and felt the “whole scene was a cheap ride on the well-earned fame of The Buffalo Springfield. Regrettably, someone is making money off the deception.”
On 17 January, The Buffalo Springfield joined The Steve Miller Band, Black Pearl, Three Dog Night and Jet Set for a show at the Convention Center in Anaheim, California.
Soon afterwards, Stills and Young took legal action to prevent their former drummer from using the name.
Martin retaliated but subsequently lost the case, and with it his royalties. Nonetheless, he refused to give up and simply shortened the name to New Buffalo, although that didn’t last long.
While all this was going on, Jim Price took the opportunity to find employment elsewhere joining Leon Russell and later Delaney & Bonnie’s backing group.
Bob Apperson and Gary Rowles soon followed Price out the door – Apperson subsequently pursuing session work with the likes of Jose Feliciano among others, while Rowles found employment with Love, the group he’d been asked to join the previous autumn, later appearing on the albums Out Here and False Start.
Don Poncher also decided that he’d had enough and split to do session work.
“It was a dead horse,” sighs the drummer. “You’d go to a job out of state in another town and you’d get to the hotel and somebody would call up your room and say, ‘Hi, is Steve Stills there?’ Erm no.”
In February 1969, Billboard magazine revealed that Martin’s band (called The New Buffalo Springfield) had been signed by Atlantic Records to record an album.
For some reason these plans never materialised and a line up comprising Dewey Martin, Dave Price, lead guitarist Bob “B J” Jones (b. 9 November 1942, Woodbury, New Jersey; d. 15 June 2013, Sioux Falls, South Dakota), who’d previously worked with Little Richard and an obscure band called Danny & The Saints, and former Bobby Fuller Four bass player and singer Randy Fuller (b. 29 January 1944, Hobbs, New Mexico), spent the next few months or so playing venues across the country.
The new formation kicked off with a show at the Mother Duck in Chicago with Hot Fudge on 31 January. Occasionally, the band was billed as Blue Buffalo.
Billed as The Buffalo Springfield, Dewey’s new version then opened for Iron Butterfly at the Civic Auditorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 8 February.
Later that month, again billed under the old name, the quartet joined Canned Heat, The Outsiders and The Seeds for a show at the Mosque in Richmond, Virginia on 23 February.
The following month, on 22 March, The Buffalo Springfield joined a bogus version of the British band The Zombies and Dewey’s old band, The Standells for a show at the 1st Washington Spring Pop Music Festival, held at the Ritchie Coliseum, the University of Maryland.
During the spring, the band played the Easter Rock Festival at Lockhart Park in Fort Lauderdale, Florida alongside top names like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Canned Heat, Steve Miller and The Grass Roots, which ran for three days from 30 March to 1 April.
“My whole experience with Dewey was kind of playing off of, one way or another, The Buffalo Springfield, even when it was Blue Buffalo,” admits Price.
“But once we had the four-piece band with Randy and B J, we started trying to write originals and we did do some recording.
“I don’t know how it all transpired but Dewey somehow was able to get some studio time at a studio down in Hollywood. It was either Gold Star or Sunset Sound. We recorded one or two songs of mine and Dewey had some stuff of his that he threw in but it was all very chaotic. We were writing things on the spot. Dewey then sent those tapes to Atlantic.”
As Dave Price recalls, the label was not impressed with the tapes’ quality but sent out producer Tom Dowd to check out Martin’s latest project.
“Dewey had, for whatever reason, brought in Hal Blaine to play on the session,” explains Price.
“Tom Dowd was very hard-nosed about things and rightfully so. He did one session with us and obviously went back to New York and said, ‘This is bullshit’, so nothing came of it.”
In an interesting side note, the rhythm guitarist remembers Martin crossing paths with one of his former Buffalo Springfield cohorts at one of the earlier sessions.
“Before Tom Dowd came into town, Neil Young was recording in the same studio down the hall from us. I didn’t see him myself but all I heard was that he was pissed off with Dewey and whoever we were that he didn’t know.”
Interestingly, Dewey’s band and Neil Young had originally been booked to appear together at the Warehouse India in Providence, Rhode Island on 18 May but the show was cancelled when local officials banned rock shows. Not long afterwards, Young was asked to join Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Sometime in late May or early June, Blue Buffalo/Buffalo Springfield added a second lead guitarist Joey Newman (b. Vern Kjellberg, 29 August 1947, Seattle, Washington), who’d previously worked with Northwest acts Merrilee Rush & The Turnabouts, The Liberty Party and Don & The Good Times, and L.A-based outfit, Touch.
“We got him through Mike Zalk,” remembers Price. “He was from the Northwest and had been in and around all those bands. Zalk decided that B J wasn’t up to the lead guitar chores, which he was, but Mike didn’t think so. B J and I started drifting more into a hard rock sound. We were sort of Jimi Hendrix fans. I think Mike didn’t like that direction so he brought in Joey. He added a whole new dimension to the band.”
The band then set off on a six-week driving tour of the Pacific Northwest, which would test the nerves of everyone involved.
Just before the tour kicked off, the band performed two Californian shows with support acts Mixed Company and Divine Maddness – the first at the Veteran’s Memorial Building in Santa Rosa on 30 May and the second (billed as The New Buffalo Springfield) at the Municipal Auditorium in Eureka the following day.
Reverting back to using The Buffalo Springfield name, the group started off playing two low-key dates in Longview and Westport, Washington state on 6 and 7 June respectively.
Next up was a performance at Chehalis Civic Auditorium in Chehalis, Washington on 21 June where the group was supported by Slugg.
A succession of shows followed into early July, including one at the Evergreen Ballroom in Olympia on 3 July (where The New Buffalo Springfield had played the previous December), once again billed as The Buffalo Springfield.
More high-profile dates followed with the band billed as The Buffalo Springfield. These included opening for Paul Revere & The Raiders and The Grass Roots at the Seattle Center Arena on 8-9 July, the Breakthru in Tacoma, Washington on 11 July and another Seattle booking at the Happening on 19 July.
“We did some stuff along the coast and playing places like Moses Lake, Washington, Walla Walla, those sort of things,” says Price. “Hermiston, Oregon was a good one [but] it was mainly a small town tour.”
Soon into the tour, however, the relationship between the band’s leader and the group began to sour.
“Dewey and the rest of the band weren’t really getting on that well,” says Price.
“Dewey had a lot of personal demons and at that time he was really wild and basically a loose cannon, not that all the rest of us weren’t being idiots as well. We came back to L.A and we got together without Dewey and said, ‘This is crazy’ and essentially fired Dewey. Mike Zalk left with us. I don’t know if that was good or bad.”
“Dewey really should have had more success than he did but lacked a ‘song’ and was somewhat a victim of his own excessive behaviour,” adds Joey Newman, on his brief involvement with Martin.
Left without a band, Martin struck lucky and signed a solo deal with Uni Records in October 1969.
Shortly afterwards, he returned to the studio and, abetted by several session musicians (including guitar ace James Burton), he recorded a version of the country favourite “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” backed by his own composition “Ala-Bam”, as a prospective single.
Under the musical direction of Mike Zalk, his former group meanwhile changed its name to Blue Mountain Eagle and recorded an eponymous album for Atco Records under the direction of David Geffen. Listening to it, the record bears all the hallmarks of The Buffalo Springfield sound.
By the time Blue Mountain Eagle’s album finally appeared in the shops in May 1970, Martin had been busy working on his next project, which was a more straightforward country-rock affair.
Many thanks to the following for their generous help: Dewey Martin, Dave Price, Gary Rowles, Don Poncher, Randy Fuller, Joey Newman, Bob Jones, Mike Zalk, John Einarson, Carny Corbett, Trevor Brooke, Derek Atherton and David Peter Housden.
I have tried to ensure that the article is as accurate as possible. However, I accept that there may be errors and omissions and would be interested to hear from anyone who can add material or correct any mistakes.
Toronto singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jay Telfer is arguably best known for his work with 1960s rock group, A Passing Fancy, and for penning Steel River’s hit, “Ten Pound Note”.
Starting out with folk group, The Voyageurs at the age of 14, Telfer befriended future Bruce Cockburn manager Bernie Finkelstein, who was responsible for bringing the promising singer/songwriter into the ranks of The Dimensions and renaming the band, A Passing Fancy in 1965.
Fast-forward four years to spring 1969. Telfer has moved on from A Passing Fancy and composed some intriguing new songs. He approaches Finkelstein with the exciting new material and his old friend expresses an interest in producing an album, inviting into the sessions a diverse mix of musicians from the Toronto scene.
These include members of Kensington Market (managed by Finkelstein), a young Danny McBride years before he played lead guitar with Chris De Burgh and the Anglo-Canadian group Milkwood, including multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Tomlinson, who’d recently arrived in Toronto from London after working with a pre-Jethro Tull Martin Barre for two years.
As Telfer recalls, the musicians had a ton of fun doing the album, but when it came to selling it, Finkelstein asked the late Felix Pappalardi, who’d produced Kensington Market, but was turned down. The album was never mentioned again and Telfer lost his copies of the tapes. Over the years, Finkelstein also lost his.
As luck would have it, former A Passing Fancy member Fergus Hambleton salvaged some old tapes from his brother Greg’s driveway as they were being put out with the rubbish.
Among those tapes was Greg’s copy of “Perch”, Telfer’s unreleased album from 1969. In total, there are 10 tracks waiting to be heard. The titles and the personnel on each track are as follows and I’d personally like to thank Jay for sharing these with me before he died.
ANYTHING MORE THAN YOUR SMILE
Jay Telfer – guitar, lead and backing vocals
Keith McKie – second guitar
Jimmy Watson – drums
John Mills Cockell – synth
I WRITE YOUR NAME ON THE WALL
Jay Telfer – guitar, bar stool, organ, lead and backing vocals
Murray McLaughlan – second lead guitar
WAR BABY (BABY)
Jay Telfer – guitar, vocals
Keith McKie – electric guitar
Ronnie Blackwell – bass
Malcolm Tomlinson – drums
Fergus Hambleton – saxophone
NUMER ONE HUM
Jay Telfer – electric guitar, piano, electric piano, vibraphone, drums, bass, lead and backing vocals
REVELATION (AKA I FELL IN LOVE)
Jay Telfer – guitar, vocals
Danny McBride – electric guitar
Phillip Jalsevec – piano
DOLDRUM
Jay Telfer – guitar, vocals
Igor Romanyk – violin
Heavanly Host Rentals – see chorus below.
TO ALL
Jay Telfer – guitar, vocals
Malcolm Tomlinson – flute
Rick Lyon – drums
WASHED DOWN
Jay Telfer – guitar, vocals
Louis McKelvey – electric guitar
Alex Darou – bass
Malcolm Tomlinson – drums
SUZIE
Jay Telfer – piano, drums, guitar, vocals
Ronnie Blackwell – bass
Fergus Hambleton – clarinet
GLOW
Jay Telfer – guitar, vocals
Murray McLauchlan – second guitar
Ray Bennett – harmonica
Donna Warner – backing vocals
Orpheus – backing vocals
Cathy Young – backing vocals
Keith McKie – backing vocals
Sydney – backing vocals
Perch is a lost gem from the Toronto scene and awaiting discovery. Anyone interested in finding out more about this recording, should contact the author at Warchive@aol.com
When guitarist Jay Donnellan was dismissed from Arthur Lee’s band Love in late 1969, he reverted to his former name, Jay Lewis, and contacted guitarist/singer Barry Brown to join him in a new group with keyboard player/singer Jim Hobson, which became known as Morning (see part one of the story).
Brown had only recently dissolved his group The East Lynne and was writing a fresh batch of material.
Months earlier, during the summer of 1969, Brown had taken the opportunity to record some demos of these new songs at Hobson’s studio. For the sessions, Brown enlisted former Moorpark Intersection members, Matt Hyde on lead guitar and Jim Kehn on drums plus his old friend Gary Horn on bass to provide musical support.
According to Kehn, four tracks were recorded and attributed to East Lynne on the tape: “Good Time Music”, “I’m Just A Poor Boy”, “I’ll Be Happy”, which Hobson overdubbed organ on, and a song that subsequently turned up on Morning’s debut LP, the country-rocker “It’ll Take Time”.
As promising as these recordings were, however, they were put aside once Lewis suggested forming a new group at the end of 1969. The yet-to-be named trio then took its first steps towards recording Morning’s debut LP by cutting three tunes at Hobson’s studio, using various configurations.
The first song the trio turned to was Jim Hobson’s gospel-flavoured “Time” featuring Jay Lewis on acoustic guitar, session player Paul Martin on electric guitar and two members from Love: George Suranovich on drums and Frank Fayad on bass.
“You can hear how tight and different sounding that track is as these three played together a lot,” says Jim Kehn, who, along with Barry Brown, had no part in the recording aside from singing backing vocals.
Next up was the superb “Angelina”, an old East Lynne song co-written by Barry Brown with guitarist Rick Dinsmore.
“He helped write part of the chorus with me, so I put him on that song,” explains Brown.
“[Angelina] was about a love relationship. Actually, the name is fictitious. The relationship is not. The actual girlfriend’s name was Vicky but who’s gonna write a song called Vicky right? So, I had a bass player buddy called Gary Horn and he had a little daughter named Angelina and I grabbed the name. I was actually at his place the morning I started writing ‘Angelina’.”
With Brown’s heartbreaking vocals carrying the song, Kehn provides a solid drum pattern to complement Lewis’s tasteful acoustic guitar flourishes. But it is Hobson, doubling up on organ and piano, who really takes the song to another level with his exquisite piano solo.
“That was not the original piano,” admits Hobson. “Basically we went out in the studio and we worked on the tune, just Jim Kehn and I if I remember correctly. I played a piano part and he played off the part I was doing and then we got the drum track. Then we started from scratch, probably acoustic guitar and one step at a time to get it the way we wanted it. We had a lot of time to rehearse and essentially live in the studios.”
To complete the initial recordings, the group turned to Lewis’s “Early Morning”, a mellow jazz-flavoured number, noteworthy for its call and response harmonies and Hobson’s jazzy piano break.
As Hobson makes clear, the three tracks were recorded to shop around for a possible record deal. At this very early stage, the trio still didn’t have a drummer or bass player and there were no firm plans to put together a group at this stage.
Armed with the recordings, the musicians approached former Coachman Bob Mercer, who was now working as a record distributor, to help push the demos to various labels in search of a deal.
Hobson remembers that a number of record companies expressed an interest but in the end they signed with the tiny Vault label.
“I think the main reason why we went with Vault was because we were going to have a free rein as to how the music would develop,” he says.
One of the musicians, however, was not happy with the turn of events. Looking back on the first batch of recordings, Jim Kehn remembers that no one was particularly interested in recording his own contributions. Upset that he was not being considered as an equal member, Kehn says the experience left him deflated.
“Jay, Barry and Hobson took their three tunes and with help from Bob Mercer got a record deal, with them as producers,” he says.
“In hindsight, I probably should have left rather than becoming a sideman. Nevertheless, I played and sang on the album and eventually got a song on it.”
Hobson, however, says that the set up has to be put into context. “We didn’t have a whole lot of money from the record company so we couldn’t go out and hire musicians,” he says.
“That’s when we decided we were going to get the group thing happening. We said, ‘Anybody who has a song we have the right of not doing it but if you’ve got a song that’s going to sit with what we are doing, you get a shot and you get to keep your publishing. You also get to play in a group’. It really was a co-operative thing at the time.”
Lewis also defends the way things turned out. “It was all equal in royalties, it was equal in every single thing and they [Kehn and the other musicians] had the luxury of not being locked into a contract that held them accountable after the band broke up. In some respects they were much better off.
“We had a difficult time making them [the record company] accept three people with control and we chose the most active participants/writers. It was not presented, apart from that first cover, that the three of us were the main team. In the studio it was never presented that way.”
Kehn, however, refuses to accept this interpretation. “It was very evident they had complete control and they exercised it,” he says.
“They [later] edited my drum solo on ‘And I’m Gone’, taking out sections, throwing some away and re-sequencing the rest. All of this was done without my knowledge until after the fact. I wasn’t asked about it or present when it was done.”
Despite his initial reservations, Kehn agreed to sign on as drummer and singer.
With another former Moorpark Intersection member Terry Johnson providing rhythm guitar alongside bass player Bruce Wallace, the trio of Barry Brown, Jim Hobson and Jay Lewis began to record a new batch of material to add to the tracks already in the can.
“Terry was the original bass player in The Coachmen and he also played pretty good guitar,” says Lewis.
“We needed a second guitar in the band and he got changed over to being a guitar player and a bass player brought in.”
One of Hobson’s strongest contributions is the infectious “Tell Me A Story”, which was subsequently lifted from the debut LP as the lead off single. The track is reminiscent of Jackson Browne’s early ’70s work, which is even more remarkable considering it pre-dates the singer/songwriter’s debut LP for Asylum by an entire year.
“I have a really low tolerance for bullshit and basically there were several instances where I decided I needed to write a song about it,” explains Hobson on the meaning behind the song. Graced with a superb lead vocal from Barry Brown, “Tell Me A Story” should have been a huge hit but fell under the radar due to poor promotion on Vault’s part.
“I sang the lead on ‘Time’ but that’s the only thing I sang lead on,” admits Hobson. “I was never a great singer and I couldn’t get it together on ‘Tell Me A Story’. Barry was the strongest singer in the group.”
For “Sleepy Eyes” Hobson, Kehn and Lewis offer up a beautiful harmonic blend.
“That was all in two or three part I believe,” says Lewis. “If there was going to be harmony vocal, two or three people went out around one mike and sang it. Nothing was separated out. It was just one big room with us, which to this day, I believe is a far superior way to record than to do one instrument at a time.”
Lewis came into his own with the superb “And I’m Gone”, an eerie multi-layered vocal mood piece complete with shifting acoustic guitar figures, Hobson’s breathtaking piano interlude and Kehn’s funky drum solo, which is brought to an abrupt end by the sound of an explosion.
“I came into the studio with that idea,” explains Lewis. “I was probably very Beatles’ influenced on the ‘Day In The Life’ thing. I thought, ‘What I’d like to do is keep this song small’ and at this moment in time, I wanted to hit with everything we had in the studio. I wanted to be like the kitchen sink fell you know. As big a bomb as we can possibly lay at this one spot and then continue in this other direction.”
Despite the impressive effect, the guitarist is quick to point out that the musicians avoided using any studio tricky on the first LP.
“There was no echo available. That’s one of the reasons why it [the album] pulls off so well. There is nothing with echo on it, unless it was the reverb on my guitar. There’s nothing on the vocals, nothing on the drums. It was just simply that we worked pretty hard on the sound of the individual instruments. A lot of that thankfully was due to Jim Hobson who to this day is a real purist.”
According to Brown, the song “As It Was”, which he co-wrote with Jay Lewis, goes back to their time together in Bobby Bond & The Agents.
“We’d be sitting around at about four in the morning at his house blitzed out of our minds,” says Brown. “That’s all we’d do. We’d go do our gig and then party all night. It was all music and fun.”
For his own heartfelt ballad, “Roll ‘Em Down”, Brown turned to his religious background for inspiration.
“I was raised Jewish. I always had an affinity to open up the Old Testament here and there. I related to the freedom movement within the black community. At that time people wanted to take things in a new direction and not feel oppressed. I just related the fighting cause of freedom to how God had used Moses to free the Israelites from Egypt. That song is a parallel of different meanings in terms of people seeking their freedom.”
Closing the LP, Kehn manages to sneak on his own country-flavoured “Dirt Roads” featuring guest player Al Perkins on steel guitar.
“For two years in my life as a kid, I lived on a farm in a very small Northern California community,” says Kehn on the inspiration behind his lone contribution.
“It was the best part of my childhood and is what I was reminiscing about. I played the rhythm guitar on this track and Hobson sang harmony with me on the end section.”
Hobson adds that either Brown or Lewis also added to the background vocals/harmonies on this track and that Lewis played rhythm guitar.
Relegated to a sideman from the outset, Kehn kept busy as a session player throughout the LP’s recording.
In early-mid 1970, Richie Podolor brought him into the studio to record demos with Iron Butterfly, replacing drummer Ron Bushy, and also invited him to lay down some drum tracks for Blues Image, featuring soon-to-be Iron Butterfly member Mike Pinera.
Looking back on the whole recording process, Lewis estimates that the entire LP was laid down over a three-six month period.
“It all seemed to go pretty quick,” he says. “Everybody was pretty excited and many times our instruments were just set up in the studio, miked and ready to go, so when we walked in the door we continued from where we were and that was a great luxury.
“Occasionally, we’d have somebody like Hoyt Axton come in or some other person and we’d say, ‘Ah shit, we gotta break our stuff down and put it in the other room’ and we’d have a break for a few weeks. Those breaks were always used very well, particularly with between Barry and I. We would always get together and play guitars and work on his new song or work on mine.”
“It was hours and hours in the studio,” adds Brown. “We lived in that studio. We’d be there all night long. There were some days where we’d be in there two days straight. We’re talking all day and all night. A lot of that arranging was not that it was not very meticulously planned out and orchestrated but it was created right there in the studio. It was quite a creative process.”
Produced by Lewis, Brown and Hobson, with assistance from Matt Hyde as engineer, and mixed at Larrabee Sound, a studio built by Carole King’s former husband, Gerry Goffin, Morning’s eponymous debut was a remarkable achievement. All that was left to do was come up with a suitable name.
“If I remember correctly, I was the one that came up with it,” says Hobson. “I just thought, ‘Early Morning’, ‘New Day’ and I just thought, ‘You know what, Morning would be a cool name for this group, it’s so much like the beginning of something, an awakening’. I am pretty sure that’s how it came about. Contrary to what some websites are listing, Morning was never named ‘the Morning and the Evening’.”
For the band’s remarkable cover, the group turned to artist Kent Bash (see comment section at the end), who was homeless at the time.
Pre-release reviews sounded a positive note. John Gibson, writing in The Hollywood Reporter’s 9 September issue, was particularly impressed and presented an encouraging write up.
“The group is five guys who play, sing, write and even record themselves. This is noteworthy only because Morning is one of the few groups who know what to do with total control; they make good records.
“Their album is like Elton John’s in that it will seemingly come out of nowhere, and before you know what has happened they will be covered by everyone in the business. Their music is original and surprisingly imaginative The songs themselves are very good, and the playing is from good to incredible. Drums and piano especially.”
Record World, reviewing the LP months after its release on 2 January 1971, was equally positive.
“Here’s a new group with all the promise of their title. Label would be wise to pick almost any cut and get them going on singles as well. They are in the Creedence style of things, but have enough original of their own to make a go of it.”
David Lees, reviewing the record two week’s later in the UCLA Daily Bruin, was less impressed, however, noting, “Once beyond their aesthetically atrocious album cover it becomes apparent that the group sounds like many of your high school favourites, but it’s hard to figure out just which ones.
“Beneath their early Beach Boy high harmony patina Morning manage to approximate the styles of The Association, The Rascals, The Byrds and The Band. Even to attempt to copy the aforementioned demands a collection of first-rate musicians, writers and arrangers, and Morning include all three. The group works hard, but they’re asking you to pay for something you’ve already heard.”
This writer doesn’t agree with that assessment; Morning may have had their influences but the music is fresh and original (and really quite unique). Even so, having spent months perfecting the recordings, it was disheartening to see Vault do little to no promotion once the LP hit the shops in the fall of 1970.
“We had airplay,” remembers Hobson. “There was a station in L.A, that was actually a great old underground radio station called KPPC. I think they had the ultimate comment. I was listening one night and they played ‘New Day’, ‘As It Was’ and ‘Time’, all three of those and at the end of it the guy said: ‘That was Morning. There’s a group who’ve sold as many records as the Russians have landed men on the moon!’ I will always remember that.”
Despite the limited exposure, Morning did play about six live shows in a bid to push up sales.
“I think we did the University of Santa Barbara, something down at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the San Diego Civic Auditorium and an American Civil Liberties Union or something,” Hobson recalls.
Lewis also remembers playing at the Troubadour [opening for Mason Williams] and a private party for the record company [with The Hampton Hawes Trio] where Phil Spector was in attendance.
“Jim [Hobson] just reminded me that ‘Yeah, I’m the guy that knocked Phil Spector’s plate of food out of his hand’,” laughs the guitarist. “I was lucky he wasn’t packing a gun in those days.”
Brown has fond memories of one particular gig, which he places at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
“The bass player got so drunk that he couldn’t stand up! It wasn’t Bruce [Wallace] or Stuart [Brotman]. It’s what led us to getting Stuart. It was another bass player.”
As the guitarist notes, Morning needed to find an urgent replacement on bass when Bruce Wallace walked away from the group.
As luck would have it, the musicians enlisted the services of a brilliant musician, former Kaleidoscope member Stuart Brotman, who came on board in time to appear on most of the sessions for Morning’s second LP, Struck Like Silver, recorded in mid-1971.
One of Lewis’s strongest contributions to the set is the largely acoustic “Only To Say Goodbye”, based on several real life events, including the guitarist’s departure from Love and, more specifically, his narrow escape from a wild fire that burned down a 12-acre ranch that he had leased and was in the process of doing up. “I was realising how many things I had taken for granted in retrospect,” says Lewis.
Equally strong is the superb “And Now I Lay Me Down” with its impressive gut string guitar intro, which conjures up images of Love’s early work.
“There was quite a lot of story to that inspiration, as someone very close to me died and I was singing from their position…. or what I perceived the position to be anyway,” explains Lewis. “It was their spirit completing the tasks needed and being able to rest at long last.”
On a different note, the guitarist chips in with the beautiful instrumental piece, “Jay’s Movie Song”, featuring Lewis doubling up on bass. “That was something [Bob] Mercer brought to me to do, an instrumental song to be a theme song for this particular movie,” he explains.
“It was like a Jack Nicholson movie or something; it was some big deal. I guess I didn’t get it but we thought the song turned out good enough. It never had a title and we just left it with that and put it on the album.”
As song-writing goes, Brown came up with arguably the strongest original material on the second LP.
“You’ll see with my songs that there’s a theme and it’s relational usually,” says the guitarist on the inspiration behind his contributions to Struck Like Silver.
One of his very best, “Comin’ In Love”, featuring a superb fiddle solo courtesy of guest player Chris Darrow, is a case in point.
“My sister and her family had moved to the East Coast. I was sitting on a couch in my mom’s living room and they were coming that night to California to see us and so I wrote ‘Comin’ In Love’. It was just about the family coming in love and then I kinda singled it out a little bit but that was the inspiration behind that song.”
Brown’s “Understand My Ways”, which once again features Lewis doubling up on bass, relates to the songwriter’s struggle with his own anger.
“You’d love to have me as a friend but you just wouldn’t want me to be pissed off at you,” he laughs.
“Believe it or not, it’s a song to my wife. Basically, it’s a kind of apology [while] at the same time a statement of ‘It’s nice to know you understand my ways’.”
The songwriter’s wife is also the subject of his best contribution, the majestic “I Ain’t Gonna Leave”, which features some sumptuous piano playing from Hobson, Brown’s heartfelt lead vocals and Lewis’s spine tingling steel guitar work.
Interestingly, it’s another woman that provides the inspiration behind the LP’s title track, explains Brown. “It was actually written about this beautiful blonde girl I was chasing for a long time back in the club days. I never did hook up with her! She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. She was a groupie.”
Brown’s “Struck Like Silver” is also, incidentally, the only song on the album that does not feature Kehn’s drum work with the songwriter doing the duties.
Billboard, which reviewed the album in its 6 November issue, gave the album a positive spin.
“Morning’s first album was recorded for the Vault label a little over a year ago and was one of those meritable sleepers that critics liked but few others got to hear,” it reported. “Their new release, Struck Like Silver includes Joni Mitchell’s ‘For Free’ and ‘Never Been To Spain’, written for the group by Hoyt Axton (Ed-this is not true), in addition to Morning’s own musical alchemy. It’s a new dawn.”
While Struck Like Silver is a natural progression from Morning’s eponymous debut, and arguably a more mature offering, the sessions were marred slightly by the coming and goings of various musicians, including Terry Johnson, who stuck around to play on only “Comin’ In Love” before dropping out.
“[It was] personalities I think and nothing happened [with the first album],” says Hobson.
“There was a lot of work going into the group. It was typical of a lot of bands. I’ve seen more bands over the years with a lot of talent that couldn’t stay together for practical reasons or personal reasons or whatever.”
“We put all this heart and effort into the first album and we’re really proud of it and nothing happened,” adds Lewis on Morning’s slow unraveling. “I think that’s what started to take the band apart.”
On a more alarming note, Hobson was starting to separate himself from the rest of Morning, contributing no songs to the new record. Not only that, but he left production chores to Lewis and Brown and only pitched in to engineer the LP with Hyde and Lewis. What’s more string arrangements are by Lewis and former Coachman Mike Dean, who sadly died of cancer in 2013.
“I was basically fulfilling my contract,” suggests Hobson on his gradual withdrawal from the recording process. “I was starting to go in a different direction. I had some personal situations that I wasn’t happy with so I was getting pretty negative about things.”
To compensate for the loss of Hobson’s songs, Brown and Lewis brought in material that Morning had been playing live, a superb version of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free” and an equally superlative reading of Hoyt Axton’s “Never Been To Spain”.
“Hoyt was in the studio for a couple of weeks I guess,” says Brown. “We loved ‘Spain’ so we started doing it like a live rendition. ‘For Free’ was a philosophical statement. I mean obviously, what a beautiful tune. We used those tunes live and then decided to record them.”
According to Hobson, Morning had first heard “Never Been To Spain” in early 1970 when Axton was recording at the studio while the group was laying down “Angelina” for its debut LP.
Morning had approached the singer/songwriter with the intention of recording a cover only to discover that Three Dog Night had already expressed an interest in cutting their own version.
“Then Three Dog Night came out with ‘Joy To The World’ and we were thrilled that they didn’t do ‘Spain’, so we recorded it,” says Hobson.
“If I remember correctly, it was almost simultaneous, the day the second Morning album was released and the day Three Dog Night’s version of ‘Never Been To Spain’ was released. Totally different feels between our version and theirs of course, but you already knew who was going to get the attention on this tune.”
Despite playing on most of the record, Hobson increasingly focused his attention on doing engineering work at Larrabee Sound. Morning recorded and mixed most of Struck Like Silver there and Hobson would use the facilities to engineer John Mayall’s Memories.
“There was going to be a third album,” says Hobson. “Barry and Jay were keeping it going and I remember we recorded a couple of my tunes at Western [Recorders]. One of them was called ‘Lady’ and the other one was called ‘Take Me In’. [But] We never finished them.”
This writer has been fortunate enough to hear the still-to-be-released “Lady”, which features L.A. bass player Jim King and Texan drummer Jim Marriot . If the recording was a barometer of what might have followed, Morning’s third LP would have been an absolute killer.
With Hobson providing a rare lead vocal, the track has all of the ingredients that make up a classic Morning song: brilliant musicianship, gorgeous multi-part harmonies and a melody to die for. To top of it off, Chris Darrow provides another stellar performance on fiddle.
“There’s another one of mine,” says Lewis regarding an unfinished, untitled piece that he contributed to the final Morning sessions.
“I can’t judge it. It’s not one of my best efforts but other people tell me exactly the opposite, so I would be happy if it was considered [for release]. Maybe it would be called ‘In My Eyes’. That’s the title I would use today.”
As Brown recounts on the group’s final weeks together, business decisions were a major cause behind the band’s eventual demise.
“Everything was being sold off to Fantasy,” he says. “We weren’t the best businessmen and there was a lot going on. There was a lot of dissension and a lot of problems within the band.
“We went up to Fantasy and started asking for all kinds of money and here they’d already poured money into two albums and hadn’t had the sales they wanted. They said, ‘We’ll give you this to finish the album’, and we were stupid and said, ‘No, we want this’ and that’s why the third album never got done.”
Looking back on Morning’s final split, Brown feels that there wasn’t enough money being pumped into promoting the albums to keep the band afloat. With no one interested in pursuing the Morning project further, the individual musicians went their separate ways.
“I was totally disgusted with the whole thing,” says Brown. “I did do some demos after that of some of my new tunes. They were post-Morning demos, which I sent around here and there. I ended up, interestingly enough [in order] to make a living and pay some bills, playing drums and singing background for a guy called Walking Cochran. It must have been two years straight with this guy. It was a covers band.”
Burned by the whole Morning experience, Brown subsequently quit the music business and moved into the real estate industry. While he gave up performing in the commercial field decades ago, he continues to perform at his local church near Ventura, California and recorded a number of gospel CDs.
The whereabouts of guitarist Terry Johnson remained a mystery for a long time. However, after this article was originally published in 2009, the guitarist got in touch and reunited with his former band mates.
“Benson Electronics was sold around 1968 and I went with it,” says Johnson. “That company was then sold in 1972 and again I went with it to Kinemetrics. I worked for that company until retirement in 2016. I’m still consulting for them part-time. The company made earthquake sensors and recording equipment.
“I quit music entirely by 1975. After a long layoff, I took up guitar and bass again in 2012. Still playing just for myself for fun now.”
Drummer James Kehn maintained his personal and professional relationship with Richie Podolor and joined a group he had recorded called Gold.
“We did several gigs but not much transpired from it,” he says. “But the leader of that group, Larry E Williams, went on to write a big hit called ‘Let Your Love Flow’.”
From there, he joined Uncle Tom, working with producers Jerry Goldsmith and Steve Gold. The group began work on an LP but it was never completed and lead singer Bubba Keith and guitar player Richard Shack subsequently joined The James Gang.
“We used to open for War around town at the Roxy at the Watts Jazz Festival,” remembers Kehn.
“They changed the band name to L.A.P.D and put one of our tunes on the Live at Watts Jazz Festival, Volume 1. I’m referred to as Jim Keen.”
The band later put out an LP called LAPD, which, according to Kehn, was a take off on the Los Angeles Police Department. “To protect and serve” was on the side of police cars at the time and the LP had “to play and sing” as a take off on that. The group featured Andy Chapin on organ and the writer/guitarist Richard Shack who can be heard on the instrumental track “Big Herm”.
After a brief break from the craziness of Hollywood in the early 1970s when he gained a BA in Music in Olympia, Washington, Kehn returned to L.A and recorded with British artists Chad Stuart of Chad and Jeremy fame and actress Sarah Miles.
Reuniting with Al Perkins in the late 1970s, Kehn played with the group Ark and recorded a lone LP, The Angels Come. Around the same time, he appeared on an LP by well-known steel guitar players, once again featuring Perkins, called Pacific Steel Co.
Then in the early 1980s, Kehn met and worked with Bryan MacLean of Love fame.
“We recorded several songs with his sister Maria McKee who went on to form Lone Justice,” says Kehn.
“Bryan discussed contemporary country music a lot and soon wrote a hit song recorded by Patty Loveless called ‘Don’t Toss Us Away’.”
The drummer finally got tired of the roller coaster income from playing sessions and gigs around L.A and abandoned live work to go to technical school and learn computer programming.
When Kehn was interviewed in 2009, the drummer was in the process of recording a CD of his songs.
“I have been doing [computer programming] for the last 20 years plus, all the time writing, recording and playing in various bands,” he said at the time.
“I am currently the leader of the percussion section in a 70-piece concert band and I also play the kit in a 16-piece swing/dance band.”
By 2020, Kehn had retired from computer programing, left the concert band and had renewed contact with original Coachman member Matt Hyde. Kehn was still living in Portland, Oregon.
“Hyde and I have been recording original tunes (over the internet, as he is in the Los Angeles area),” he says.
“We made two CDs, are currently getting our third pressed, while working on our fourth. Having lots of fun doing whatever we want, however we choose. We doubt anyone else is interested so give the CDs to family and friends.”
Jim Hobson’s post Morning years were a mine of activity. Over the next forty years, he gained extensive experience as a staff and freelance recording engineer and did recording sessions that covered everything from song demos to radio and TV commercials, and from LP recordings for people like Albert King, John Mayall, John Fahey, Albert Hammond and Delaney Bramlett to CBS TV’s Sonny & Cher and movies.
During the mid-1970s, Hobson even reunited with Jay Lewis, working together with Albert Hammond.
After basing himself in San Francisco where he worked at Fantasy Studios and re-did the keyboard parts to the Emotions’ Sunshine LP, Hobson moved up to Seattle in 1978 and became a full-time employee at KING Broadcasting in its radio engineering department. There he helped build and install new studios for KING AM and KING FM in Seattle. He also found time to play keyboards on Country Joe McDonald’s LP Leisure Suite.
From the mid-1980s, Hobson began freelance contract engineering for numerous radio stations in the Seattle area but kept his hand in the performance side by playing jazz piano gigs. He also maintained his interest in writing, engineering, arranging and recording his own personal music project.
Since the early 2000s, Hobson’s focused largely on his personal solo piano music project and has kept in regular contact with Jay Lewis, contributing piano to two songs on the guitarist’s 2003 solo CD, This Island Earth, released under the name James J Donnellan.
Donnellan enjoyed an equally hectic career since Morning’s demise. His most notable achievement was a Grammy nomination for his work on engineering Gary Wright’s Dreamweaver LP in 1976. His engineering and production credits include such notable artists as Danny O’Keefe, Ringo Starr, John Travolta and Gordon Lightfoot.
As a musician, he’s recorded and/or performed with a who’s who of famous artists, including Art Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Petula Clark, Albert Hammond and Mark/Almond. He’s also struck gold with his compositions, scoring numerous songs for a number of noteworthy movies, such as Fatal Charm, Almost Dead and the Teen Wolf TV series.
In 2003, Donnellan recorded his debut solo CD, This Island Earth. Tragically, his health deteriorated in 2010s and his current whereabouts are unknown.
The only thing that is left to do is get Morning’s recorded work from the early 1970s to a wider audience by finding a suitable label to re-issue the group’s two LPs plus previously unreleased tracks from the aborted third LP on one CD.
Huge thanks to Jeff Allen for the kind use of his photos. Copyright applies to all his photos. His work can be seen at this website.
I’d like to thank Barry Brown, James Donnellan, Jim Hobson, Terry Johnson and James Kehn for generously giving up their time to help piece Morning’s story together. Thanks as always to Mike Paxman for his help.
“Unequivocally the best ‘first’ LP I have heard for years, Morning’s music defies description” praised Ripple’s glowing review, albeit some six months after the group’s eponymous debut sneaked out on the tiny Vault label.
Quite a compliment you may well think and a little too presumptuous?
Well maybe, but when Morning’s debut outing hit the record stores in November 1970, very few were fortunate enough to snap up this rare and increasingly sought-after record; a highly polished production, and, to this writer’s ears, arguably one of the most eclectic and innovative records of its time.
Undoubtedly there was tough competition when Ripple’s review hit the news stores in May 1971, what with David Crosby’s superlative debut solo album one of the leading contenders.
But whereas the musicians’ anonymity went a long way in ensuring Morning never graced the heights of their more self-promotional contemporaries, the music speaks for itself and remains as fresh and timeless as it was when the group wrapped up recording the LP in the summer of 1970. And that’s without mentioning the band’s equally superlative second LP, released nearly two years later.
By then, most of the musicians who eventually Morning had accumulated a decade’s worth of collaborative work.
Looking back over the group’s long and tangled history, Morning’s roots can be traced back to a San Fernando Valley high school outfit called The Coachmen, formed in the early months of 1960.
One of Morning’s central figures, pianist, organist and singer Jim Hobson (b. 27 December 1945, Chester County, Pennsylvania) and rhythm guitarist Terry Johnson, who played bass with The Coachmen, appear to have been members of this group near the outset alongside lead guitarist and front-man Matt Hyde.
While never a member of Morning, Hyde would become part of the tight circle of friends and later assist in engineering both of the band’s LPs.
Towards the end of 1960, another future Morning alumni, drummer and singer Jim Kehn (b. 30 August 1947, Los Angeles), who today prefers to be referred to as James Kehn, took over the drum stool but the line-up refused to settle.
Invited to join another local group, The Duvals, Hobson defected and spent the next four years playing around the L.A area, including a brief spell in 1963 providing back up for The O’Jays.
While with The Duvals, Hobson cut a lone 45 coupling “The Last Surf” with “Ferny Roast” on the Prelude label.
“The Duvals were several years older than I was and were gigging a lot, so I was making a bit of money during my high school years playing with them,” says Hobson, who also worked with several other groups during this time.
In spring 1965, after an eight-month club gig with two different bands, Hobson began recording and participating in demo sessions at American Recording Studios for producer Richie Podolor (more of which later).
To fill the vacant spot in The Coachmen, the remaining members turned to James Donnellan (b. 16 December 1946, Burbank, California), a prodigious guitarist, who grew up with the name Jay Lewis.
James Donnellan/Jay Lewis would become one of the central figures in Morning’s story and arguably the band’s most famous member thanks to his participation in Arthur Lee’s legendary group, Love with whom he recorded under the name, Jay Donnellan. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves here.
With the novelty of showcasing two lead guitar players, The Coachmen began to pick up more lucrative work in the valley.
Trading largely in instrumentals, the quartet remained steady over the next four years but in 1964 took on a front man, singer Bob Mercer, as well as sax, organ and flute player Mike Dean, who was snatched from Richie Ray & The Del Prados.
“One day my stepbrother and I heard a band without a drummer at a neighbour’s,” says Kehn, who ended up taking the job and working with The Coachmen and Richie Ray & The Del Prados simultaneously.
“Mike Dean was playing saxophone with them. I asked Mike to do some gigs with The Coachmen, so he played on and off with the group. I also played several gigs with Richie Ray and recorded a dance song called ‘The Twirl’ at American Recording in Studio City.” (Ed: During 1965, Dean, Hyde and Kehn also played as a trio in The Krabs).
Photographs from this period reveal that, for a brief time, The Coachmen also secured the services of two female singers.
However, by late 1965, both they and Mercer (who would years later assume a management role for Morning) had departed as The Coachmen morphed into a new identity, the inappropriately named, Wind.
Under its new guise, the band began rubbing shoulders with L.A’s hip and happening crowd, and in early 1966 got hired to play private parties for blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield and English actor Peter Lawford.
Word soon spread among the well-to-do and socially connected, and in a truly remarkable turn of events, the American government asked the musicians to entertain the Mexican president on his arrival in the United States!
While all of this was going on, Kehn had started working on sessions at American Recording Studios with producer Richie Podolor, oblivious to the fact that Podolor had recently taken on former Coachman, Jim Hobson as a session pianist.
Through Kehn’s association with Podolor, Wind were able to utilise the producer’s studio and paid for the recording of two tracks for a prospective single.
(Ed. In an interesting side note, Hobson’s entry into American Recording was a former DuVal member, Roger Yorke, who was writing and recording some demos at American Recording and Screen Gems for Lester Sill. Yorke and DuVal band leader Bill Wild had been in the Munster’s TV show band, and had played gigs promoting the TV programme.)
Issued in April 1966 on the obscure Van Nuys-based label, Early Morning (an early nod to the later group), the single coupled the Hyde, Kehn and Mercer penned “Your Man Is Gonna Leave You”, with the intriguingly titled, “He Who Laughs Last (Laughs Best)”, a Hyde-Mercer co-write, featuring Kehn and Lewis singing harmony lead.
As very few pressings were made, original copies are virtually impossible to find these days and would certainly fetch a hefty price.
Even so, and despite its rarity, the A-side surfaced decades later on the compilation album, Teenage Shutdown 15: She’s A Pest, released on the tiny Teenage Shutdown label in 2000.
Interestingly, a short while before the single was cut, the band (possibly still billed as The Coachmen) had recorded three tracks on an acetate, which surfaced years later attributed to Moorpark Intersection (more of which later) – “Come and Take a Walk with Me”, “Young Married Blues” and “Your Man” (aka “Your Man Is Gonna Leave You”).
Kehn recalls rehearsing “Come and Take a Walk with Me” in a back room at the Lively Arts music store in Northridge. He believes Jay Lewis wrote the song.
“You can definitely hear The Beatles influence – though we all liked them, Jay and Terry were the stalwart fans back then,” he says.
“I think Mike sang the lead vocal, Jay the low harmony and I did the high harmonies.”
Kehn says that Mike Dean wrote the basic parts of “Young Married Blues” and Matt Hyde and Jay Lewis wrote the chorus.
“Matt sang lead vocal and I sang harmony,” he recalls. “Jay played the continuous lead guitar parts weaving in and out of the song, with Mike on keyboards. I played the drums with Terry on bass and Matt playing other guitar parts.”
The final track, “Your Man”, was a demo version of the soon-to-be cut “Your Man Is Gonna Leave You”.
“It’s slightly different from the 45 we put out with a more melodic bridge and a bit rougher feel,” says the drummer.
“We cut it at American Recording with Richard Podolor and Bill Cooper at the controls. Matt and I sang unison and then broke into harmonies.
“It may have been Podolor who sat in with his fantastic old Telecaster – he let us record for free in return for allowing him and Bill to produce and play on the tune. I may have done some sessions for them in exchange.”
However, when the lone single failed to take off, Wind’s members scattered to pursue separate projects with Kehn resuming his session work with Podolor.
The drummer’s former band mates, Jay Lewis and Terry Johnson decided to stick together and joined forces with the final piece in the Morning jigsaw, singer/songwriter and guitarist Barry Brown (b. 4 August 1947, Toronto, Canada), who had moved to California with his family at an early age and taken up drums in his teens.
Fresh out of high school, Brown signed on with Bobby Bond & The Agents as a drummer and with Lewis and Johnson also added to the group’s ranks, the quartet (later expanded when pianist Dick Hargreaves joined) began playing the clubs in the San Fernando Valley, including the Fireball Inn.
Judging by everyone’s recollections of this “hazy period”, Lewis and Johnson’s tenure with Bobby Bond lasted little more than a year.
During their time playing together, Lewis and Brown forged a strong friendship and when the pair decided to go their separate ways in the summer of 1967, a tacit understanding was that they would collaborate in the future.
“I was very close with Jay for a quite while, even though we weren’t involved musically,” says Brown. “He was going different directions and I was going different directions but we were always tight. We were always hanging out.”
While Brown moved on to form the original version of East Lynne with bass player Jack McAuley and singer/songwriter and guitarist Rick Dinsmore, Lewis and Johnson revived the old Wind line-up with former cohorts, Matt Hyde, Mike Dean and Jim Kehn, re-branding themselves as Moorpark Intersection.
One story goes that it was Pat Hicks, a local music store owner in the San Fernando Valley, who introduced the group to jazz guitarist Howard Roberts.
It was Roberts who used his connections at Capitol Records to get Moorpark Intersection signed to the label and placed under the wing of hip and up and coming producer, David Axelrod.
However, it’s possible Terry Johnson was the link. “I started at Benson Electronics making ‘boutique’ amps for Hollywood studio musicians,” he says.
“The company was owned by Howard Roberts and Ron Benson with several studio musicians being minor shareholders.”
Whatever the truth, the future looked promising but it wasn’t to be. As work commenced on recording a single in November 1967, Axelrod got pulled away from the session.
“David’s time got consumed with issues he was having with a more important client of his, Lou Rawls,” remembers Kehn.
“So he passed us over to a new house producer – Bob Padilla – and this proved to be a death knell because we had no support anymore, got lost in the shuffle and withered away.”
The ensuing session produced two completed tracks, which turned up on a lone single in early 1968.
The breezy folk-pop cover of in-house writer Jack Keller’s “I Think I’ll Go Out and Find Me a Flower” may not have been the musicians’ desired choice of material but the song is executed brilliantly.
Kicking off with Lewis’s ringing acoustic guitar, the track builds up to a superb and atmospheric flute solo courtesy of Mike Dean, who also provides the lead voice, culminating in some excellent harmony work.
The flip side, “Yesterday Holds On”, written by David Axelrod and Jay Lewis, is arguably superior and is notable for its dense vocal harmonies and intricate guitar work that remind this listener of Curt Boetcher and Gary Usher’s innovative work with Sagittarius.
Also during the sessions, the group recorded a third track “Sure Is Good” as a rough take on 10 November, which survives as an acetate in Kehn’s possession.
Like its previous incarnation, Wind, Moorpark Intersection’s lone recording suffered a similar fate chart-wise and around February 1968 the musicians once more scattered to pursue separate projects.
To add to Kehn’s frustration, it was while he was pondering the Capitol deal with Moorpark Intersection that he made the fateful decision to turn down an offer to join another group destined for greater things.
“A friend of mine had asked me to join him in a ‘sure thing’ band as we were working out contract issues but I turned him down,” rues the drummer. “That group became Kenny Rogers and The First Edition.”
With Moorpark Intersection consigned to the history books, Kehn began gigging with another local group, The Accent’s Limited. To help pay the bills, he also reconnected with his former employer.
“I played on a session for Richie Podolor, which produced several songs on Donovan’s Barabajagal album in 1969,” recalls the drummer.
“I played on ‘Atlantis’, ‘To Susan on The West Coast Waiting’, ‘I Love My Shirt’ and ‘Pamela Jo’. I sang background on a couple of tunes as well with Davy Jones of The Monkees.”
Tired of the endless slog of playing night after night, Kehn’s former band mate Matt Hyde hung up his guitar and joined an existing business partnership with his old friend from The Coachmen, Jim Hobson.
“I had drifted into the recording studio business with Joe Long by accident, way before Hyde got involved,” says Hobson.
“During these times, I continued to do club and casual work along with some recording work.”
As well as session work with Richie Podolor in 1967, appearing on six Sandy Nelson albums for Imperials Records and also touring with the drummer, Hobson had also been working for Holzer Audio Engineering, building and installing recording equipment and consoles, including A&M’s new studios, located on the site of Charlie Chaplin’s old sound stage.
With the help of financial partner, Joe Long, Hobson (abetted by Hyde as business partner) built “The Recording Studio” (including the mixing console) in Tarzana, California, which is where Love and Hoyt Axton recorded among others. In 1970, it would also provide the setting for Morning’s own studio sessions.
While all of this was going on, Jay Lewis, who’d taken to being called Jay Donnellan, had signed up with The Mustard Greens, an upscale club band led by former Love members Snoopy Pfisterer and Tjay Cantrelli.
Donnellan’s recollections of this band are hazy but he does recall one humorous incident while playing at the Factory in Beverly Hills (most likely in May 1968).
“The Beatles came in the place one night and watched a couple of sets. The leader [of the group] had an ego the size of a small planet and when The Beatles sat down, he said, ‘Okay Lady Madonna 1,2, 3,4’ and I was so embarrassed I wanted to melt into the corner.”
While playing with Snoopy’s group, Donnellan made sure to keep in touch with Barry Brown, and on numerous occasions dropped in at East Lynne’s gigs at the Corral in Topanga Canyon (where they were house band) to sit in on several numbers of their set.
“We played at the Topanga Corral before it burnt down the first time,” remembers Brown.
“A lot of famous people used to jam at the Corral, you know like Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young, they all lived up there. Spirit lived up there too. I remember jamming with Stephen Stills.”
Fortunately for Donnellan, his tenure with The Mustard Greens was sparingly short and a more attractive offer soon appeared on the table, an invitation to audition for a revamped Love.
“Snoopy was the one who hooked me up with Arthur Lee and I did an audition at Arthur’s house with George [Suranovich] and Frank [Fayad] already in the band” recalls Donnellan, who signed up to Lee’s new vision of Love in October 1968.
“I thought it was going to be something like Forever Changes and pulled out an acoustic guitar but they dove into ‘August’ so a quick change of guitars and amp and that was my ‘audition’ song. One hour later I was in the band.”
Donnellan made his public debut with Love at the Shrine Exhibition Hall in Los Angeles on 9 November and remained with the band for about a year, contributing to the Elektra LP Four Sail and the double set, Out Here, issued on the Blue Thumb label. It was while with Arthur Lee’s group that Donnellan began to take his song-writing seriously and penned a couple of notable songs.
“The ‘Singing Cowboy’ song I did co-write with Arthur,” says the guitarist.
“I had the melody and the chords and I lived in Laurel Canyon somewhere near him. He came over to visit one day and we talked for a minute and I said, ‘Hey, check this out’ and he said, ‘Whoa, I’ve got a lyric for that’. The other one, ‘I Still Wonder’ – that was my own drug experience. I wrote that without him and just brought it to the band and they recorded it. Since then, many, many albums give him half the credit and all of the publishing.”
As events turned out, it was Donnellan’s decision to take Love into Hobson’s recording studio in Tarzana to finish up recording Out Here that ultimately paved the way for Morning in early 1970.
“Jay was playing with Love and I went to one of their recording sessions to listen,” recalls Kehn, who was responsible for putting the two musicians back in touch and turned down an opportunity to replace Suranovich.
“I suggested to Jay that they contact Matt or Jim to use their studio, which they did.”
Hobson’s studio provided the perfect environment for Love to wind up the Out Here sessions. Unfortunately, it was also the setting for Donnellan’s dismissal from Arthur Lee’s group.
“I can remember the last moment with Love very clearly,” recalls the guitarist.
“One day I showed up to the studio and the door was locked. I banged on the door and it was still locked. I sat down and waited for three or four minutes and then all of a sudden the door opened and Arthur stuck his head out and said, ‘We don’t need you today’. I said, ‘Oh Really?’ and he said ‘Yeah, we got someone else on this song’ and closed the door and locked it.
“Later that day, I got a telegram from the manager or the record company and to this day I remember the exact words because it said: ‘Pursuant to your desires and wishes you are no longer a member of the group Love’.”
I’d like to thank Barry Brown, James Donnellan, Jim Hobson, Terry Johnson and James Kehn for generously giving up their time to help piece Morning’s story together. Thanks as always to Mike Paxman for his help over the years. Thanks to Mike Duggo for info about The Coachmen acetate.
Huge thanks to Jeff Allen for the kind use of his photos. His work can be seen at this website.
Here’s an obscure one out of Nashville, from the early-70s I would guess. Fire, Rhythm and Smoke do a good hard rock number called “Fire & Rhythm” with very gravely vocals, released on Sissie’s 001.
The flip is “Sissie’s Place”, kind of a ’60s Sam the Sham sound to advertise Sissie’s Uptown Lounge on 125 6th Ave N in Nashville. I can’t find any mention of that lounge in news archives or on the web, and the site may be a parking lot now. For decades it was the address of Rock City Amusement Co. which advertised jukeboxes and pinball machines in Cash Box.
James Snell gets song writing credit on both labels, but BMI lists Dave Sunderland and Gary Turner on both songs, as well as Snell.
Desert Trash published both songs. The only other songs in their catalog are “Lay Me Down By Your Side” & “Cheatin’ on Him” by Ellen Daley, but I can’t find a recording of those.
John Shepherd produced and has his name etched in the runout.
That’s all I can find out. Surely these musicians had some roots in earlier groups.
Dennis Lascelles (keyboards) replaced by Mick Fletcher
Terry Hewitt (bass)
Pete ? (drums)
This short-lived band was called The Rifle and was the brainchild of former Carl Douglas & The Big Stampede guitarist Del Grace, who put together an earlier line up in late 1967 to play a lucrative ski resort gig in Verbier, Switzerland over the Christmas period.
Malcolm Magaron had started out fronting Malcolm Magaron & The Blueshealers who were regulars at the Bag O’Nails in late 1966, which is probably where he first met Del Grace as Carl Douglas’ band worked there extensively during the same period.
The original keyboard player Dennis Lascelles went on to play with Fat Daughter but at the time was a member of Herbie & The Royalists who ended up recording a lone LP for Saga Records in 1968.
Mick Fletcher, who’d worked with Del Grace in The Epitaph Soul Band during 1963-1965 period, replaced Dennis Lascelles in early 1968 after working with Hamilton & The Hamilton Movement.
When the band split up, Del Grace did some recordings for Liberty Records. Mick Fletcher joined The Amboy Dukes and Malcolm Magaron sang with The Les Humphries Singers.
We’d love to hear from anyone who can add any additional information in the comments section below.
Dave Whittaker (aka Chet Mason) (lead vocals/congas)
Del Grace (lead guitar)
Bruce Duckworth (rhythm guitar)
Mick Kinzett (bass/manager) replaced by Mick Holland (bass)
Mick Fletcher (keyboards)
Dave Rolfick (baritone sax)
Mick Lye (tenor sax)
Rodney Peters (aka Karl Lee) (drums)
Formed as Karl Lee & The Epitaphs in Welling, southeast London in January 1963, they changed name to The Epitaphs in 1964 and then The Epitaph Soul Band in 1965.
Most of the group’s members were from the Sidcup/Bexley area although Lye came from Battersea and Rolfick was from Streatham.
The group often played at the Black Prince Hotel in Bexley. Len Fletcher who ran the club was their manager.
Del Grace says the band’s line-up was fluid with musicians coming and going. The spelling may not be correct for some of the players listed above.
Bruce Duckworth didn’t stay long and they stuck with only one guitarist after he departed.
Mick Holland joined on bass in 1964 so that Mick Kinzett could assume road management duties.
The band’s van was involved in a horrific crash on Rochester Way in October 1964 (see newspaper clipping below) and two of the members were hospitalised. Mick Holland was so badly injured that he couldn’t continue with the group.
The group was put on hold until early February 1965 when it was reformed with the following musicians:
Dave Whitaker (aka Chet Mason) (lead vocals/congas)
Del Grace (lead guitar)
Mick Fletcher (keyboards)
John James (bass) (possibly also known as John Porter)
Dave Rolfick (baritone sax)
Mick Lye (tenor sax)
Rodney Peters (aka Karl Lee) (drums)
The new formation played at the Black Prince Hotel in Bexley on Sunday, 21 February and began working as the resident band at the Last Chance Club in Oxford Street, central London.
Towards the end of 1965 Del Grace’s friend Andy Clark came in on baritone sax.
Soon after Mick Fletcher joined The Sound System who backed Jimmy Cliff before working with Hamilton & The Hamilton Movement, The Rifle (reuniting with Del Grace) and The Amboy Dukes.
Around the same time Del Grace joined The Big Wheel, who later recruited Andy Clark and Mick Holland.
Grace joined Carl Douglas & The Big Stampede in 1966 while Andy Clark later worked with The Fenmen, Sam Gopal Dream, VAMP, Clark-Hutchinson and Jeff Beck among many others.
Notable gigs:
2 May 1964 – Beat Group Contest, Wickham Hall, West Wickham, Kent with The Blackhawks, Chris Finn & The Solents, The Sonics, The Melvin Toole Combo, The Original Deltones, The Electrons, The Copains, The Consorts and Paul & The Playboys (Beckenham & Penge Advertiser) Billed as The Epitaphs
February 1965 – Last Chance Club, Oxford Street, central London (Bexley Heath & Welling Observer and Kentish Times)
21 February 1965 – Black Prince Hotel, Bexley, southeast London with The Graham Bond Organisation (Bexley Heath & Welling Observer and Kentish Times)
1 June 1965 – 100 Club, Oxford Street, central London with The Bo Street Runners (Melody Maker)
5 June 1965 – Wimbledon Odeon, Wimbledon, southwest London with Beat Unlimited (Kingston & Malden Borough News) Advert says The Epitaphs are from Streatham so may be another band
17 June 1965 – Bromley Court Hotel, Bromley, southeast London (Melody Maker)
19 June 1965 – Jazz & Blues Festival, Black Prince Hotel, Bexley, southeast London with The Dutch Swing College, Solomon Burke, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, Unit 4 Plus 2, The Spencer Davis Group, The Downliners Sect, Alan Elsdon’s Jazzband, Brian Green New-O-Stompers and The Loose Ends (Bexley Heath & Welling Observer and Kentish Times)
Festival review in the same newspaper, 25 June 1965, page 12
30 June 1965 – Bromley Court Hotel, Bromley, southeast London (Melody Maker)
25 July 1965 – Black Prince Hotel, Bexley, southeast London with The Spencer Davis Group (Melody Maker)
Jim Kriss compiled an amazing history of Thee Illusion (later known as Thee Illusion and Brass). There are dozens of great photos, a detailed history, and info on other groups from the area like the Humans and the Cult.
The PDF is available at the link below – a fairly large file, 22 MB.
Below is Jim’s list of musicians in the Misfits and Thee Illusion and Brass:
Tom McNall – (original member of the Misfits and Thee Illusion – Rhythm/Lead guitar and vocals T. Slate Raymond – (original member of the Misfits and Thee Illusion) – Lead Guitar Alan Farnsworth – (original member of the Misfits and Thee Illusion – Drums, Bass Guitar and Vocals Jim Kriss – (original member of Thee Illusion) – Drums and Vocals Mark Heard – (second generation member of Thee Illusion) – Keyboards Ray Colonna – (second generation member of Thee Illusion and Brass) – Percussion and Roadie Steve Rustay – (first generation member of Thee Illusion and Brass) – Trumpet and Percussion Bob Mathes – (first generation, former member of Thee Illusion and Brass) – Trumpet Chuck Lafferty – (second generation member of Thee Illusion and Brass) – Trumpet and Percussion
The American Teens came from Frederick, Maryland, about an hour’s drive northwest of Washington, DC. The members were:
Bobby Stevens – guitar and vocals Jim Stevens – guitar Gene Ponton – saxophone Bill Koontz – bass guitar Ronnie Stevens – drums
Ray Vernon signed the band to Swan Records and produced this great single at his studio in Accokeek, Wray’s Shack Three Track.
“Shake Shake Baby” is a danceable original written and arranged by Ray Vernon’s brother, Link Wray (using his common pseudonym, F.L. Wray Sr). I actually prefer the flip, “A Brand New Love”, credited to Bobby Stevens.
The labels list Florentine Music and Palmina Music as publisher of both songs, but I don’t see either in the BMI database or Library of Congress registrations.
The Frederick News-Post covered the band twice. The first article on March 5, 1966 had the most extensive profile of the band:
Local Band Records First Single by Marie Howell
With the release of their first single record this week, five county youths have started keeping tabs on the national and local record ratings.
Known as “The American Teens.” the quintet includes three brothers, Bobby, Ronnie and Jim Stevens, plus Gene Ponton and Bill Koontz.
The group’s original recording, “Shake, Shake Baby,” was released on the Swan Label earlier this week. Words for the rock and roll song were written by Ray Vernon who’s managing the group and the record was taped at Vernon’s studio at Achocokee [Accokeek].
On the flip side of is “One That’s Old,” [sic] written by Bobby and Jim.
The boys, who have performed throughout the state, left Thursday night for Buffalo, N.Y., where they’re scheduled to perform tonight at a radio station’s record hop.
All but two of the youths have graduated from high school and are holding down jobs in addition to their practices and performances.
Bill is a graduate of St. John’s High School and Ronnie and Jim are graduates of Middletown High School. Bobby is a junior at Middletown and Gene’s a senior at Frederick High School.
The band, which practices about twice a week, has signed a contract which calls for them to cut four records a year.
Ronnie, who’s the drummer, admits that “I didn’t realize how much time and hard work it took to get a good recording. We worked week after week, hour upon hour with Ray Vernon to get a good tape,” he explained. “We finally made it and I hope it will go over big.”
… Bobby plays guitar and is the group’s vocalist.
And, Bobby added, “The band as a whole feels that meeting Ray Vernon was the biggest break that we’ve ever had.”
I wonder if the record made any headway in Buffalo. It’s a rare item now.
On June 30, a full page of photos from a Baker Park concert discusses teen trends of the day, with quotes from Kristina Parker, Laurencine Thomas, Mark Nelson, Buster McKenzie, Joyce Stimmel, Brenda Cregger, and also Bill Devilbiss, bassist for the Five Acts, a group I know nothing about. There is also a good photo of Ronnie Stevens on drums.
For whatever reason, the band didn’t last, but their single showed promise, and I hope there are a few unreleased recordings out there.
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