In tribute of The Buckinghams

[Summertime Blooz]

     It was early 1967, and Brian and the Beach Boys were trawling through  the wreckage of the Smile album for a hit single  that could match the ecstasy of ‘Good Vibrations’, but finding mostly agony. Their descent from favor in America was imminent. In Chicago, however, there was a hot young R&B infused group that was making an impact on the local circuit, and were soon to burst onto the national  charts in a big way.

     I’ve always  loved the Buckinghams. One of the very first albums I owned was ‘The Buckinghams’ Greatest Hits’. Probably my main reason for wanting the album were the songs ‘Don’t You Care’ (#6) and ‘Kind Of A Drag’ (#1), but I discovered a number of their songs that I had never heard before, and I loved them all. It must have been the blast of the horns that got my attention, and made them stand out from the other bands on the radio in those days.
     In later years, I was able to find all four of their studio albums and found that the wonderfully strange ‘Susan’ was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of just how arty  and over-the-top the Buckinghams’ records could be. The first album ‘Kind Of A Drag’ is a  pretty straightforward party band affair with strong British Invasion leanings, but with success came major change. Columbia Records came a-callin’ and put the band under the guidance of producer James Guercio. He would go on to great fame and fortune as the manager/producer for another band that heavily featured horns, dubbed by Guercio himself Chicago Transit Authority. Under Guercio’s influence, the band’s second album ‘Time And Charges’ was a heavily  orchestrated  production that found pristine pop songs at war with quirky avant-garde arrangements to great effect. Although the album featured two hit singles, the breezy ‘Don’t You Care’ (#6) and the R&B cover ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’ (#5) those songs are not particularly representative of what the rest of the album offered.
    ‘Portraits’, the Buckinghams’ third album saw the heady influence of  The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ pulling them more strongly towards the psychedelic side of pop. Again produced by Guercio, ‘Portraits’ was another heavily orchestrated album, although one with a somewhat harder edge at times. Two more hit singles resulted, ‘Hey Baby, They’re Playing Our Song’(#12) and ‘Susan’ (#11) which  famously featured a very weird reverse-tape and sound-effects interlude (sometimes edited out for radio play). I’ve heard it said that it was Guercio’s heavy-handed treatment of  ‘Susan’ that led to the group splitting from him as they felt it should have been an even bigger hit than it was .
   Their fourth and final album from the ‘60s was the prophetically titled ‘In One Ear And Gone Tomorrow’. With Guercio gone, the album had a noticeably leaner production style that found the Buckinghams relying much less on their trademark horn arrangements. A couple songs even find the group testing the waters with a country-rock style. Unfortunately, these changes were not all for the better, and the only charting single, the wonderful ‘Back In Love Again’ stalled at only #57 on the charts. Suddenly, the Buckinghams, who had been one of the top radio acts of 1967 just one year earlier, were no more.
    Some members would regroup to hit the nostalgia circuit and make the occasional new material/oldies album (none of which I can claim to have heard), but essentially, the Buckinghams entire hit-making career was finished barely a year after it had started. They did leave behind them, however, some of the catchiest and interestingly produced time-capsule pop (psych and otherwise) of their era. If you are not familiar with their albums, but you like melodic 60s pop with psychedelic flair, I urge you to seek out their music and discover one the better forgotten bands you will hear.

                                                 
Essential Playlist:
Can't Find The Words
Back In Love Again      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAc4AyFR-b0
What Is Love
Kind Of A Drag     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq1fpN1qWv8&feature=related
Lawdy Miss Clawdy     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Kc-nhEzpc
I'll Go Crazy     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQEw6OemxkU
Don't You Care     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63y_nc1rfS0&feature=fvwrel
Remember
And Our Love     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIEvKZd-uZ8
Mercy Mercy Mercy     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9YamMiqQ0I
Susan     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=974W-hJ3kRA&feature=related
C'Mon Home     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCfIFW0Kq38
Hey Baby (They're Playing Our Song)     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Uw0q8f01a8&feature=related
I Know I Think     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Kq3HpwqwE&feature=related
Difference Of Opinion
You Misunderstand Me     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC3YSq4kUvg

[Aum Bop Diddit]

I include the Buckinghams among the great 60s singles bands (at the top the Rascals, Spoonful, and Turtles, then bands like the Raiders, Box Tops, and Buckinghams).  I have a greatest hits comp; frankly other than the charting hits there isn't much to listen to more than once.  But oh those hits -- exquisitely written, arranged, and sung.  And I agree with the group that "Susan" should have been a much bigger hit -- the gratuitous "psychedelic" middle section virtually ruins listening to this otherwise incredible track.  I used to have it on a mix tape where I edited out the mayhem.  Guercio did an amazing job with the band, but he should have been arrested (and done time) for this crime!  Anyway, all hail the Buckinghams.

[guitarfool2002]

I've been into the Buckinghams for some time, I wish I still had some of my previous posts and email conversations about them!

Fantastic band, great singer, terrific drummer. To the best of my knowledge, these guys were more or less a self-contained rhythm section, so there wasn't as far as I know a lot of session musicians being called in to play the parts.

If you listen to the best songs of the Buckinghams, which are probably the well-known singles from 1967 already mentioned by name, you'll hear the beginnings of the movement in rock which brought jazzy brass sections and popping loud horn arrangements into rock music, with some groups being labeled "jazz rock" and others just being known for playing aggressive rock music with a horn section.

Guercio was a major player in all of this, working on Columbia and producing Chicago Transit Authority and Blood Sweat and Tears after Al Kooper had left...and eventually making both a big commercial success.

The sounds of The Buckinghams records are some of the beginnings of that whole movement, apart from obvious songs like "Got To Get You Into My Life".

It is laughable, ridiculous, and not at all a fault of the band members themselves to see television appearances *as late as 1967* where they are for all the word being portrayed as being a British band! They're shown with British Union Jack flags hanging around them, wearing British-style matching tailored suits, etc. It's comical, and it's a part of the band's history that we listening to the records in 2012 don't think of immediately.

Here was a 100% American band, regular guys from Chicago with a helluva lot of talent and who made some unforgettable songs, and they had to be portrayed as British?

The Buckinghams were as good as any band making singles in 1967, and that year I believe they were at the top of the biggest-selling acts of the year sales lists.

My favorites are "Don't You Care" and "Hey Baby They're Playing Our Song". These records are amazing, and essential listening. Everyone should hear them immediately who doesn't already know of them. Any fans of 1967 pop music should have these.

Great band. Amazing singles. Essential!

[Ron]

I've felt for years they are one of the most underrated 60's groups ever.  Not that they were the best or anything, but NOBODY talks about them anymore and they were very very good.  You still hear or see people mention the Dave Clark 5, for instance... but nobody ever mentions the Buckinhams, it's like they didn't exist.  Great band. 

[guitarfool2002]

Good points, Ron: Not only were they very good but I think I remember seeing one of those old Billboard magazines from the 60's which had The Buckinghams as the most commercially successful band of 1967! Imagine 1967...Beatles/Pepper, Monkees, all the other amazing music from that year, perhaps one of the best single years for pop music in history, and The Buckinghams are at the top of a list in Billboard.

And I'll back this up: You had to dig *deep* to find their music apart from seeing a b&w clip of the doing "Kind Of A Drag" during the TV commercials for Time-Life music collections. I knew them in passing more than as a primary band mostly from a local oldies station we had playing all the time when I was younger.

When I got into gathering up aircheck recordings from the 60's, one of them from LA had at the tail end a clip of "Humble Harve" (the same one...) in May 1967 introducing his Top 30 songs for the week, and new that week was "Don't You Care"....First time I heard that I was literally numb, I almost teared up for some reason. It blew me away, hearing that song again after not hearing it for a long time and especially in that context of a "new" single which people that night in 67 were hearing maybe for the first time.

Don't You Care after that point has been in my top 5 of all time, it's a fantastic record.

It makes you wonder why only one song, Kind Of A Drag, seems to have received airplay in the decades after when the same stations had at least 5 chart hits they could have played and which listeners remember. I will bet that Chicago area stations feature them more heavily as a "hometown" band.

[Aum Bop Diddit]

Wasn't "Don't You Care" done before Guercio came on board?  Anyway, indeed it is a phenomenal track.  And it does seem "Kind of a Drag" has become their sole noticeable legacy, which is odd when you consider the other hits were also pretty big.  I recall "Mercy Mercy Mercy" being played literally on the hour for weeks in South Florida where I grew up and being number one for a while.

[Aum Bop Diddit]

Answering my own question -- it was "Kind of a Drag" which was done pre-Guercio.

[I. Spaceman]

And I'll back this up: You had to dig *deep* to find their music apart from seeing a b&w clip of the doing "Kind Of A Drag" during the TV commercials for Time-Life music collections. I knew them in passing more than as a primary band mostly from a local oldies station we had playing all the time when I was younger.

The Buckinghams' Greatest Hits was always in print during the vinyl era and easy to find cheap as a Nice Price $3.99 item. I grew up hearing all of their hits endlessly on KRTH in Los Angeles.

[guitarfool2002]

I'm saying they weren't discussed nor played in heavy rotation anywhere close to other bands of the same era who may have only had one hit, never mind four or five! Given the choice to play a one-hit-wonder by Barry McGuire or Scott MacKenzie versus any Buckinghams besides "Kind Of A Drag", and the Buckinghams didn't get the same oldies/classic exposure. It just seemed they got passed over a bit. It's a regional thing too, in Boston I'd hear a record like "Can't Find The Time" by Orpheus or "Whammer Jammer" by J. Geils played regularly on oldies and classic rock radio, and in Philly and other markets those records are all but unknown, considered "lost classics" or whatever.

[Ron]

When I was a kid, we listened to 'oldies' all the time... this was a band that you'd hear their songs, and know the songs, but not even know who the band was.  I was probably 20 before I even realized that several of these songs I'd loved all my life were actually by them, they're very 'under the radar' but had hit after hit.  I couldn't believe it when I figured out that was ALSO them doing "Mercy Mercy Mercy".  When I finally heard "Susan" it just confirmed what I already knew about them, great songwriting, great singing, great rhythm section... just great music. 

[endofposts]

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" is about the only song of theirs that I know from start to finish.  Interesting changes in that song, both chords and rhythm.

[Aum Bop Diddit]

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" is about the only song of theirs that I know from start to finish.  Interesting changes in that song, both chords and rhythm.

The song was written by Joe Zaniwul (later of Weather Report) and I think was originally done by the Cannonball Adderly (Quintet?) in which Zaniwul played.  So it is a jazz tune with some R&B feel --interesting pedigree -- which explains why it sounds a bit different for a pop song.  Not sure where the lyrics came from but I suppose they are Zaniwul's as well.  Anyway, here is the Cannonball version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3djKXcsqDM8

[guitarfool2002]

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" is about the only song of theirs that I know from start to finish.  Interesting changes in that song, both chords and rhythm.

The song was written by Joe Zaniwul (later of Weather Report) and I think was originally done by the Cannonball Adderly (Quintet?) in which Zaniwul played.  So it is a jazz tune with some R&B feel --interesting pedigree -- which explains why it sounds a bit different for a pop song.  Not sure where the lyrics came from but I suppose they are Zaniwul's as well.  Anyway, here is the Cannonball version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3djKXcsqDM8

The story of who wrote the lyrics is a novel...

Joe Zawinul only wrote the music - I haven't gotten the full story on the how's and why's, but the lyrics were credited to Vincent "John" Levy, Gail (Fisher) Levy, and official credit is also given to Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Larry Williams!

John Levy was the agent who represented Cannonball Adderley. He married Gail Fisher, who was later an Emmy winning actress on the show Mannix, and who was a knockout. The Levy's are listed with Zawinul on the sheet music. Watson and Williams are listed with the Levys and Zawinul officially on ASCAP.

Now the really interesting part is that Curtis Mayfield also wrote lyrics for the same song and those were recorded on the version by another Chicago horn-driven band called The Mauds, also released in 1967.

The original instrumental was only a year old when the Buckinghams recorded the bigger hit version with lyrics in '67, so for many pop listeners who didn't know Cannonball Adderley, it felt like a new tune.

[endofposts]

So, all of their big hits were done in one year, 1967?  It's amazing they could get airplay for five songs in one year, let alone have them all go Top 20. 

What I find interesting about "oldies" records is how many of them have horn sections, and in some cases strings, including on singles where the act proved to only have one or two hits.  Was it that much cheaper to produce records at one time that an unproven act could get an arranger, a section, and studio time to add horns and strings?  I can understand an established act like the Beatles having that ability, but no one had heard of the Buckinghams, yet they had a full horn arrangement on their first single, "Kind of a Drag."

[Ron]

Well you're thinking about it from a modern perspective.  The reason that the Buckinghams were played on the radio is because a record company created their image, decided what songs they were going to record, decided what the singles were going to be, paid radio stations to play it, etc.

Modern music is done a lot like that too, but it's really common now for an unheard of band to pay to record their own album. 

The record company probably paid for the Buckinghams stuff and probably pushed them in a big way, at least that first year.