Blue in the Deseret News, June 5, 1968Blue came from Salt Lake City, Utah. An ad with a photo of the group appeared in the Deseret News on June 5, 1968 and the Salt Lake Tribune on June 6:
“Blue” appearing in person at Kmart Friday … 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. – June 7th
Starring – Scott Peterson, Fred Lampropulas, Aaron Boswell and Jerry Seare
“Blue” will play their new recording “SAD ‘BOUT US” and “EVERYTHING FOR YOU.”
also autograph their new 45 R.P.M. recording
OUR REG. 77c ea. – 63c ea.
Blue do a fine version of the Who’s “Sad ‘Bout Us” keeping the harmonies and frantic drumming of the original. Not many bands covered this song at the time, at least on record.
For the flip they have a good original song, “Anything For You” (by Fred Lampropoulos, Jerry Seare, Aaron Boswell and Scott Peterson) featuring two strong instrumental breaks. The production of the record doesn’t do justice to the performances.
Released on Iris Records IR-1036 with a BMI credit on “Anything For You”.
Iris Records also released the Sounds Unreal’s “Scene of the Crime” (Tom Wright) / “On and On” in January 1967 on Iris 1005, and the Starks “Shelly Belly” / “Hop Skippin Lulu” (both words by T. Sandquist, music by the Starks) on Iris IR-1003.
More info or better photos of Blue would be appreciated.
“I’ve Wasted My Time” by Jerry and the Remnants is a single I’ve been looking for and finally found last month. The song has tough rhythm guitar, sharp drumming and bass playing, swirling organ fills and very fluid transitions from verse to chorus and back. The production is not as distinct as one might like, but the performance overcomes that deficiency.
Members of Jerry and the Remnants were:
Jerry York – lead guitar and lead vocals David Donahoe – rhythm guitar and lead vocals Frank Larsen- bass and vocals Jerry Solberg – keyboards and vocals Buzz Minson – drums
60sgaragebands.com has a history of the Remnants by lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist David Donahoe: how the band had formed out of the Plaidsmen and Vectors, and how members of these three bands eventually formed the Todes, who I’ve covered on this site before.
The Remnants cut their 45 at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles in the summer of ’66. It was the swan song of the band, who broke up immediately after as members went their separate ways. David Donahoe immediately joined the Todes, who cut their 45 in Los Angeles just a week after the Remnants, though in a different studio.
The 45 was released as Jerry & the Remnants (at live shows they were simply the Remnants) on Gini 103 in October, 1966.
Jerry York wrote “I’ve Wasted My Time” as well as the ballad flip, “If I Love You”. It was produced by Glen Law, the songs published by Glenart Music BMI. Glen Law was from Utah but had been writing songs and producing music in Los Angeles since at least 1959, when he released the first record by C. Carson Parks (Van Dyke Parks’ older brother) and Bernie Armstrong as the Steeltown Two “Wolves” / “Tarrytown” on Gini 1001. I don’t know of any other releases on Gini.
July, 1966: bands shut down for playing too loud. Unfortunately the article doesn’t list the groups.
Palladium Records promotional card for the In Mates
The In Mates came from Holladay, Utah, a suburb east of Salt Lake City. Randy Teal wrote “London Town” and Sam Parsons, who was not in the group, wrote “The Same”. Both songs are steady ’60s pop with harmony vocals and a good balance between the clean guitar work, organ and the rhythm section. Both songs have a touch of melancholy; “London Town” has a richer arrangement and harmonies, while “The Same” is more upbeat.
This 45 was released in January, 1967 on Palladium P-5011. I don’t know of any other releases on this Palladium label (there were others). Publishing by Le Mon Music, BMI.
Randy Teal wrote to me:
The members of the band were: myself on lead guitar and lead vocals, Randall Chase drums and vocals, John Foster rhythm guitar and back up vocals, Lane Clissold organ and Don Hancock bass guitar and vocals. The band lasted about three years.
We were all actually from Holladay, Utah not Kearns. I think Sam Parsons was from Kearns although, I never met him. When we went into the studio to record “London Town” we didn’t have a decent song for our B side. Our manager and producer at the time had access to Sam’s song “The Same”, so we learned it and recorded it the same day we did London Town.
I played in a variety of bands throughout the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s on up to the present including a trio with Tony Decker and Dean Widen from Fargo. In seventh grade I met Bob Holman who would end up drumming with Fargo and we were in our first band together in 1964.
In the early eighties I was in a band called Haymaker which had a lot of success playing in and around the inter-mountain west. From that band our steel guitar player Brooke Langton went on to play with Marie Osmand and Pam Tillis and is still very active in the music scene in Austin Texas.
I continue to play in a trio called The Fall River Ramblers doing all original Americana music and playing festivals throughout the western united states. I released a CD of all original music in 2010. You can view our website at fallriverramblers.com.
Despite the Hollywood, CA address on the label and the classic California garage sound, the Todes were from Provo, Utah. They traveled to Los Angeles to cut their only single, released on Emanon E-102 in the fall of ’66.”Good Things” (written by Steven Thomas) is a syncopated fuzz cruncher with the waltz bit of the Beatles “We Can Work It Out” thrown in towards the end of each verse. “One Hundred and Thirty Seven Degrees Below Zero” was filler the band assembled in the studio so as not to give up one of their better songs on a b-side (not an unusual practice at the time). Both sides list Zulu Publishing, BMI, production credited to “A Todell Production”.
At the time of recording members of the band were Steve Thomas (lead guitar and lead vocals), Dan Doty (bass and harmony vocals), Mike Hart (keyboards), David Donahoe (rhythm guitar and lead vocals, harmonica on “Good Things”), and Danny Murphy (drums). Prior members included lead vocalist Danny Davis and two keyboardists, Bill Jemisen and Bob Jetter. After the session for Emanon, Ralph Geddes joined on keyboards and Al Thomas on drums.
Dave Donahoe came from the Remnants with vocalist Jerry York, who had cut a 45 at Goldstar Studio in LA just prior to the Todes traveling there. Released on Gini 103 as Jerry & the Remnants, it features the excellent “I’ve Wasted My Time” plus “If I Love You Girl”.
60s Garage Bands has the full story on the Todes, and features both songs from their single along with two unreleased cuts, including the incredible “Heartbreaker”.
The only other artist on Emanon that I know of was Mike Lyman from Las Vegas, Nevada, a young teen backed with a quality band. Credited to Mike Lyman and the Little People, Emanon E-101 has a cover of Love’s “Message to Pretty” backed with “I Need You” an original that opens with the line “you make me kinda glad I love you”. There was also an unrelated Emanon label from Rochester NY.
There were many bands called the Henchmen throughout the U.S. in the ’60s, but this one came from Ogden, Utah.
Gary MacShara wrote in a comment below:
The “45 … was recorded at a studio at the University of Utah.
The group consisted of 5 students from Ben Lomond High School in Ogden Utah. The members were Tom Whitimore, Rick Wessler, Paul Quigley, Gary MacShara,and lead vocalist Von Nielson.
The group broke up after High School. The highlite of there career was a session with the Liverpool Five. The low point was when we took the record to a Salt Lake radio station and the jock in the studio played it and said quote,”After reading the article in [Billboard] I expected something better.”
If anyone has more info or photos of the band, or better scans of the 45, please contact me.
Because the comments below were almost entirely about the band from Utah, I have moved the original group featured in this post to a new page.
Before becoming the Tuesday Club, they were the Garfield Air Mattress. Flyer courtesy of Bruce Lambert
The Tuesday Club started as the Garfield Air Mattress, a band formed in 1966 by Bruce Lambert and Tony Tezak in Grand Junction, Colorado.
In an early flyer they are shown as a quartet with three members from Grand Junction: Terry Tezak (bass), Daryll Cooper (guitar and keyboards), Bruce Lambert (lead guitar); plus Salvador “Pete” Friese from Fort Collins on drums. Bill Wagner managed the Garfield Air Matress, who advertised as playing “rhythm and blues and what have you”.
Tony Decker of Salt Lake City, a freshman at Mesa College, joined on guitar and lead vocals.
The Garfield Air Mattress profiled in the Mesa College Criterion in May, 1967, courtesy of Bruce Lambert. From left: Daryll Cooper, Bruce Lambert, Pete Frease, Terry Tezak and Tony Decker
When the Mesa College paper, The Criterion profiled the Garfield Air Mattress on May 16, 1967, Mercury Records had just signed the group and Ray Ruff was their manager. All of the group were freshmen at Mesa College, except Bruce Lambert, a senior at Grand Junction High School. Tony Decker had already written “A Goddess in Many Ways”, which would be the A-side of their single for Philips (a Mercury subsidiary), and the group had already decided to change their name to The Tuesday Club.
The Tuesday Club relocated to Amarillo, Texas, recording at Checkmate Studios, with Marty Cooper and Ray Ruff producing. Ray Ruff was producing and managing a number of bands at the time, including Tracers, Them, the Orange Confederation and the Page Boys.
A-side of their single, with goddess misspelled!
Even though Tony Decker wrote both sides of the 45, each song is incredibly different from the other; they could almost be by separate bands. The top side is “A Goddess in Many Ways” a gentle paean to a seventeen year old beauty who commits suicide. For years it’s been overshadowed by the flip, the garage classic “Only Human”, but will probably be garnering more fans from the recent resurgence of interest in Fargo. It did reach #24 on Grand Junction AM station KEXO on August 26, 1967.
Notice in Billboard, August 19, 1967
I’m sure “Only Human” is familiar to every fan of ’60s punk, with it’s memorable opening bass slides and tambourine, the powerful guitar line and Tony Decker’s shouting delivery of the lines “… when you turn the heads of everybody in the crowd!” and “… but all this competition’s driving me insane!”
After the 45 was recorded, Terry Tezak and Bruce Lambert left the group and returned to Colorado. Dean Wilden joined: he had been in Maudz Only with Tony Decker at their Salt Lake City high school. The band changed their name to Fargo, and in 1968 relocated first to Grand Junction, where Cooper and Friese left the group, and then to Salt Lake, where Randle Potts joined on drums, later replaced by Bob Holman. By the time they became Fargo, neither song from the Tuesday Club single was part of their live sets.
Fargo traveled to Los Angeles to record a single, “Robins, Robins” / “Sunny Day Blue” for Capitol and an LP I See It Now for RCA, both produced by Marty Cooper.
Dean wrote to me about how he joined the group and their change to Fargo:
Garfield Air Mattress was a Grand Junction based band with Tony Decker. When they moved to Texas, two of the members quit and I joined. At that time we were called the Tuesday Club. Tony & I had previously played together in a band called Maudz Only.
I never recorded with Tony’s early Grand Junction band, so I really don’t know where the two tunes were recorded. I don’t remember ever even hearing those two Tuesday Club songs, and they weren’t anything we ever played live. The Tuesday Club/Fargo, Texas drummer was Pete Frease. I was on bass, Tony on guitar & Daryl Cooper on keyboard. Tony & I went to Grand Junction for a short time after Texas. Long enough to lose the other two and return to Salty.
In Amarillo, Ruff’s company, Checkmate Productions, included the bands Them, The Tracers, The Orange Confederation & Fargo. We played Texas, New Mexico, Kansas & Oklahoma. I would take a dozen or better of the Salt Lake bands over the best band I ever heard in Texas, during that period. We played venues alongside many of them & they all seemed to be listening in the past. You didn’t hear much of the British Invasion coming out their speakers. In fact, having played both Texas & Oklahoma, I’d say the three most requested songs were “Louie Louie”, “Wipe Out” & “Gloria”. It was as if they couldn’t comprehend beyond three chords. It was nice to leave there & get back to the ’60s.
As for those Texas bands, I’d say the Tracers were the best I heard. Richie was The Tracers drummer & one of the funniest people I ever knew.
Ray was our gig manager, and a good record producer, but Marty Cooper was our producer. Marty was based in L.A. and this was where Fargo recorded all it’s tracks. Tony & I had a unique vocal blend. Our – Fargo’s – earliest Capital recording was “Robins, Robins” / “Sunny Day Blue”.
Back in Utah, we decided to go three-piece. We needed a drummer and I suggested my old school mate & drummer from Maudz II, Randle Potts. He played on one album cut, “Lady Goodbye”. He froze up like playing in front of 100,000 people, so we hired 2 different studio players to finish off the recordings. We got rid of Potts and stole Bob [Holman] from a band called the Avanti’s, which was strange, seems how Potts drove an Avanti. So Bob was our live drummer and was with us to the end. We’re still in touch. Bob is a remarkable artist with a clever edge to his creations.
I played bass on all but two of the “I See It Now” cuts, and Tony did a great deal of the guitar work. Why bass & guitar credits were given otherwise on the back of the album is baffling. Kind of negated us as musicians. We were damned good & tight on stage. Dr. John played piano on the album but was given no credit, nor were the drummers. Tony was given composer credit for “The Sound Of It,” which is one of my songs. I had Tony sing the first verse because of how I’d layered the harmonies, thus the confusion. When I first saw the back of that album I thought I must be in a parallel universe. The references to religion, alone, blew me away. I was and am as far removed from that world as is possible.
The post-RCA Fargo recordings were mostly made on a Sony sound-on-sound recorder using those cheap little microphones. We were a 3 piece band back then: Tony on guitar, Bob Holman on drums, & me on bass. These later nine sound-on-sound recordings need to be tuned-up a bit before I’d feel comfortable with anyone hearing them.
I’m still writing up a storm & recording “one-man-band” tracks in my studio. I’ve recorded recently in Nashville, & am now working with a couple of different people to promote me as either a singer/songwriter, or songwriter.
Dean and Tony are working on reissuing Fargo’s Capitol single and RCA LP, possibly with bonus tracks from their later self-produced recordings.
Thank you to Dean for information on his time with the Tuesday Club and Fargo.
Special thanks to Bruce Lambert for the Garfield Air Mattress flyer and news clip and for additional information about the group.
“A Godess in Many Ways” enters KEXO’s survey at #24, August 26, 1967 (chart from ARSA)
Steve Carter of Phoenix rescued this very rare LP by the Surf Side 5 from the trash, scanned the labels and transferred the LP to CD to share with Garage Hangover. Steve didn’t find the cover, and it wasn’t until August 2012 that Ed Nadorozny found the low-resolution photos of the front and back cover seen below.
Recorded live at the Surf Side Club in Salt Lake City, Utah in front of a small but raucous crowd, this is a solid set of mostly standard cover songs of the day. The performances are well done. “Sparkling Sands” is something of a standout and the track I would recommend.
“Greenback Dollar”, “Louie Louie”, “Surfer Joe”, “Memphis” (the Lonnie Mack version), “Kansas City” (the Trini Lopez version) and “Long Tall Texan” were all hits of 1963, and “California Sun” hit big in early 1964, so I think it’s safe to date this to very early ’64. Certainly there’s zero British Invasion influence in their choice of material or style.
In 2017 I heard from Brent Littlefield, the drummer for the Surf Side 5 who sent in the larger cover scans seen here and answered my request for some history on the group:
I had a three piece band during high school and we mostly played at school dances and assemblies during the Beatles rage at Bountiful High School in Utah.
Walt Sanders (rhythm guitar), Randy Young (lead guitar), and Ted Gosdis (bass) all played together at Granite High School in Salt Lake City. I think Larry Higginson (lead vocal) was also with them. I joined the band in summer of 1964 right after high school graduation.
Walt’s older brother George Sanders formed a teen club named Surf Side and the band played at the club for next to free after they deducted food and Cokes from our pay. That summer their drummer went on vacation and they asked me to sit in for the drummer until he returned from vacation. When he came back they asked me if I would stay and he was not invited back. We were rocking and bringing in packed crowds every night at the teen club.
When we cut the album we had only been together for about 4 months, after a few more months we really got good. The album is called the second edition because the first recording was done so poorly we made them re-do it for free. I have the original but it is terrible.
In 1965 during the “British Invasion” a promoter by the name of Al Michaels (from England) heard of us and wanted to help promote the band. He was very obnoxious but a good promoter. We had no money for promotion so he was on his own.
He arranged a “western tour” for the band. We spent a few days traveling in Idaho. In each town he arranged local performances for the band. We were greeted with convertible Cadillacs driven by a chauffeur and went through a downtown parade. We performed on the city hall steps in front of the mayor, the city council and the community. We performed at an old folks home and later that night participated in a “Battle of the Bands”.
We stayed at a dumpy hotel, but it was OK because our groupies followed us from Salt Lake and a lot of the locals joined us. I guess we got a little crazy.
On the way out of town on Sunday we were listening to the local Sunday morning talk show and they were talking about these rock bands who come into town and raid their culture and people.
We played several gigs at the Lagoon Amusement Park, the same venue used by all the top groups of the day. The Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, and Paul Revere and the Raiders and others all performed at the Lagoon.
We also played in big promotion concerts at the Terrace Ballroom, another great Salt Lake venue.
While I was in the band I worked in the teen club as a janitor, at Albertson’s grocery as a bagger, and had a full schedule at the University of Utah. I flunked my 7 AM class, as I could never get my butt out of bed to get to class.
I quit the band in early 1966 as I got a pretty good job in the finance industry and planned on getting married in June of 1966.
Brent Littlefield Feb 11, 2017
It’s amazing that this LP had two editions, with some differences in song choice and the covers. The 1st edition, which the band withdrew, had “Mashed Potatoes”, “Lonesome Town”, “Abilene”, which were replaced by “Vic’s Song”, “Winter Winds”, “Long Tall Texan” and “Memphis” in the 2nd edition.
The Intermountain Recording Service has a Salt Lake address on the label, I believe the studio has moved and is now the Inter-Mountain Recording Studio in Carson City, Nevada, unless that is a different studio altogether.
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
Blue came from Salt Lake City, Utah. An ad with a photo of the group appeared in the Deseret News on June 5, 1968 and the Salt Lake Tribune on June 6:
The In Mates came from Holladay, Utah, a suburb east of Salt Lake City. Randy Teal wrote “London Town” and Sam Parsons, who was not in the group, wrote “The Same”. Both songs are steady ’60s pop with harmony vocals and a good balance between the clean guitar work, organ and the rhythm section. Both songs have a touch of melancholy; “London Town” has a richer arrangement and harmonies, while “The Same” is more upbeat.
Despite the Hollywood, CA address on the label and the classic California garage sound, the Todes were from Provo, Utah. They traveled to Los Angeles to cut their only single, released on Emanon E-102 in the fall of ’66.”Good Things” (written by Steven Thomas) is a syncopated fuzz cruncher with the waltz bit of the Beatles “We Can Work It Out” thrown in towards the end of each verse. “One Hundred and Thirty Seven Degrees Below Zero” was filler the band assembled in the studio so as not to give up one of their better songs on a b-side (not an unusual practice at the time). Both sides list Zulu Publishing, BMI, production credited to “A Todell Production”.
Dave Donahoe came from the Remnants with vocalist Jerry York, who had cut a 45 at Goldstar Studio in LA just prior to the Todes traveling there. Released on Gini 103 as 
Steve Carter of Phoenix rescued this very rare LP by the Surf Side 5 from the trash, scanned the labels and transferred the LP to CD to share with Garage Hangover. Steve didn’t find the cover, and it wasn’t until August 2012 that Ed Nadorozny found the low-resolution photos of the front and back cover seen below.
“Greenback Dollar”, “Louie Louie”, “Surfer Joe”, “Memphis” (the Lonnie Mack version), “Kansas City” (the Trini Lopez version) and “Long Tall Texan” were all hits of 1963, and “California Sun” hit big in early 1964, so I think it’s safe to date this to very early ’64. Certainly there’s zero British Invasion influence in their choice of material or style.
