Oft overlooked in retrospectives on the late ’60s, Spanky & Our Gang ran off a string of Top 40 hits from 1967-1969. Their folk influences, vocal harmonies and good feeling lyrics on such songs as “Sunday Will Never Be the Same,” “Lazy Day” and “I’d Like to Get To Know You” were cheerful anthems in the days of protest songs and hard rock. With male/female counterpoint harmonies, the group was often compared to the Mamas and the Papas. Would you like to get to know them?
The nucleus of the group centered around “Spanky” – Elaine McFarlane. Born in Peoria, Illinois, her initial interests were in blues and jazz, her first professional gig in 1962 with the jazz-based vocal group the Jamie Lyn Trio. With the burgeoning folk scene in Chicago, she headed north and in 1963 McFarlane joined the New Wine Singers who offered a mix of Irish folk and jug band protest songs. They released two albums: The New Wine Singers at the Chicago Opera House (Vee Jay VS-1071) and The New Wave (Village Gate 2003M) in 1965.
It was with the New Wine Singers she met and befriended trombonist/vocalist Malcolm Hale. And it was there McFarlane was crowned with the “Spanky” nickname, one of the group’s members commenting on her resemblance to George “Spanky” McFarland of the Little Rascals/Our Gang comedies.
The New Wavewas the last wave for the New Wine Singers, who parted ways in 1965. McFarlane, vacationing in Florida, ultimately meeting Paul “Oz” Bach and Nigel Pickering at a hurricane party. In the early ’60s, Bach was playing coffeehouses as a folksinger/comedian. By the mid ’60s he was working the folk circuit with Pickering performing with the likes of Odetta, Gordon Lightfoot and Josh White. Pickering had migrated to Florida from Michigan where in the late ’50s and early ’60s played with the Folksters, which also featured future Our Gang bassist Ken Hodges.
As the biography on Paul Bach’s website tells the story of their meeting, “One of the places he took her was the Gaslight Coffeehouse, on a night when Nigel (Pickering) was playing. They were introduced and hung out together. When a hurricane blew into town, they took refuge in a converted chicken coop.” They passed the time jamming. Surviving the storm, McFarlane invited them to come to Chicago. Meanwhile, she went back taking a job as a singing waitress at Mother Blues in Old Town. Club owner Curly Tait asked her to assemble a group to open for the acts booked into the club. She recruited Bach and Pickering and the trio hastily began putting together a repertoire for three voices. Not having enough material, they also tossed in some comedy sketches to fill the time. Jokingly, they called themselves “Spanky & Our Gang,” and as local reviews started coming in, the name stuck. Tait took on the role of their manager.
Gaining popularity, they recruited Malcolm Hale and started working the regional circuit. Hometown label Mercury Records took notice, and with the booming folk-rock scene, in 1966 signed the band. In the spring of 1967, they filled out the lineup with drummer John Seiter. They made their “formal” debut May 30, 1967, at Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago.
Their first single was a cover of the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing” b/w “Sealed With a Kiss.” It was immediately apparent the group needed to sharpen their production chops and polish their studio sound (Mercury didn’t even include the two tracks on their debut album).
The label then put all their efforts into the group, first enlisting renowned producer Jerry Ross to polish their sound. Looking for material, songwriter Terry Cashman brought them “Sunday Will Never Be the Same” https://youtu.be/Z3t9c53w2pg. With an introductory arrangement by Hale, which became a signature of the group, Spanky and Our Gang had their first hit, climbing to #9 on the Billboard charts. Their sound was a bit of fresh air in the 1967 Summer of Love. Over the next couple of months, follow up singles – “Making Every Minute Count” reaching #31 and “Lazy Day” climbing to #14 – kept the group’s popularity growing.
As Bruce Eder noted in the All Music Guide, “The group’s harmonies were impeccable, and their records and arrangements displayed a slick, smooth texture that overlapped with the sounds of pop-jazz and also with the singing that one often heard on commercials of the period.”
National TV appearances followed. Ed Sullivan. “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” https://youtu.be/cWf0YBhcelA, Don Kirshner’s “Rock Concert” https://youtu.be/8X26YbLvgLw. Campy music videos https://youtu.be/rqxkdV3Odj0?list=RDEMz1NOoTxdtITsRYSoXorsvg.
Playing off the “Spanky & Our Gang” theme, they dressed in a mix of 1920’s and hippie psychedelia. Their videos were as much comedy skits as they were music videos.
Their debut self-titled album hit #77 on the Billboard charts. But the group felt their sound was too fashionable, and not representative of their persona. They enlisted songwriter/producers Stuart Scharf and Bob Dorough who proceeded to develop their six-part harmony sound for their sophomore release Like To Get To Know You. More hits followed with the title track reaching #17 and a second single off the record “Sunday Mornin’” resting comfortably in the Top 30. The album also contained the Fred Neil track “Everybody’s Talkin’,” which later became the theme song for the movie Midnight Cowboy for Harry Nilsson (with Mercury releasing their version as a single in 1969).
Working on their third album, the group went through some personnel changes with Kenny Hodges and Lefty Baker joining the band. Both had worked with Pickering in the Folksters. Hodges was a replacement for the short-lived Geoffrey Myers, who had taken Oz Bach’s slot. It was during this period the group received some devastating news as on October 31, 1968, Malcolm Hale was found dead in his Chicago home. His death, first attributed as an attack of bronchial pneumonia, was later reported as carbon monoxide poisoning due to a bad heating system.
The album seemed to lose focus. There were certainly the harmonic vocals of “And She’s Mine,” “Yesterday’s Rain” and “Anything You Choose,” all released as singles but faring no better than #85, but also allowed for more original compositions from the group, and saw McFarlane reaching back to her blues roots, adding cute-but-quirky tracks like “Leopard Skin Phones” and “1-3-5-8,” the album as a whole presented as a continuous stream of music.
The strength of the album relied on the controversial track “Give a Damn” https://youtu.be/g-hHWmZzYa8. One of the strongest human rights songs ever, the song was mired in conflict. Some stations refused to play it because of the curse word “damn.” Others refused, as the country was embattled in a social war of racial equality, as the song depicted the stark reality of the urban inner city at the time. Based on an idea created by ad agency Young and Rubicam for the New York Urban Coalition as a public service contribution to the city of New York, “Give a Damn” was the centerpiece of a campaign aimed at creating a direct link between City Hall and the ghetto. A special picture sleeve and explanatory insert were issued to radio stations around the country, at the suggestion of Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Because of the continuous flow of music on the album, some FM stations had difficulty cueing up the song as there was no spacing between tracks and vocals started immediately. The group performed the song live on an episode of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” of which CBS-TV received numerous complaints for allowing the song to be played during “family viewing hours.” The song even became a political juggernaut, President Richard Nixon voicing his complaint of the airing, while John Lindsay used the song as a campaign theme in his successful run for mayor of New York. Through all that, the song still reached #43 on the Billboard charts.
With the death of Hale leaving a shadowed pall over the group, and McFarlane pregnant (she was married to the group’s road manager Charly Galvin), the future of the band was in question. Meanwhile, Seiter was offered a slot with the Turtles. With that, they dissolved.
Trying to grab any last opportunities, Mercury issued two more albums after the group’s demise. A Greatest Hits was put together, but was mired in controversy as McFarlane was involved with having some of the original tracks remixed. And then in 1970, Mercury issued a Live album of an amateur recording of the band not long after they had signed with the label in 1966.
McFarlane and Pickering returned to the scene in 1975, keeping the moniker Spanky & Our Gang while moving to a country-western style sound. Epic Records gave them a shot with the appropriately titled album Change. The label tried to release two singles, neither of which saw any chart action. That spelled the end of Spanky & Our Gang.
As a complete retrospective, in 2005, Rhino/Hip-O Records released The Complete Mercury Sessions, a four-CD set, that included all of the studio albums released by the band, seven previously-unreleased rarities, and an entire disc of the mono mixes of the band’s singles. It also includes extensive liner notes by Richard Barton Campbell and rare photos of the band. Spanky herself was involved throughout the course of the development of the set.
Where are they now?
The Gang has lost a number of its members over the years. Malcolm Hale passed away in 1968, Nigel Pickering and Lefty Baker in 1971, Oz Bach in 1998 and Hodges in 2013.
In the early part of the 2000s, founding member Nigel Pickering, along with his band mate Jim Carrick, played a long-running weekly gig at the Trade Winds Lounge, St. Augustine, Florida, releasing a self-produced project Sunset at the Trade Winds Tropical Saloon. He passed away in 2011 after a lengthy battle with liver cancer.
From 1969-72 Paul Bach worked as a studio music/arranger/singer working with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Steve Miller and Sergio Mendes. He had brief stints with two groups – Wings (not Paul McCartney’s band) who were signed to ABC-Dunhill, and Tarantula with A&M Records. He spent the next decade in various industry management and promotional positions. He passed away in 1998.
McFarlane replaced Cass Elliott in the reformed the Mamas & the Papas in 1982 and stayed with them for twelve years, then toured as a solo act for a few years before retiring from the music scene entirely. She made a brief appearance as an actress in the role of bartender Precious in the 1975 film Moonrunners. She also is credited on the soundtracks of the 2010 film Norman and 2014 film Space Station 76, with songwriting credit for “Carmen Wear Your Red Dress.” And she made a stage appearance portraying Bloody Mary in the 2011 production of “South Pacific” at the Ferndale Repertory Theatre. In recent years, McFarlane has appeared occasionally in some local performances and supports local veterans organizations, residing in Ferndale, California.
Seiter took the gig with the Turtles, but it turned out to be for their last album. He then joined Rosebud for one album, but that band collapsed after the divorce of members Judy Henske and Jerry Yester. In the mid-’80s, Seiter headed in another direction – as a film editor – for the New York Jets football team. Still some session work followed with the likes of Tom Waits, Conception Corporation and Aztec Two-Step. His last sessions on record are from 2001.
Hodges developed viral pneumonia and passed away in 2013.
Discography
SINGLES
1966 And Your Bird Can Sing / Sealed with a Kiss (Mercury 72598)
1967 Lazy Day / Byrd Avenue (Mercury 72732)
1967 Making Every Minute Count / If You Could Only Be Me (Mercury 72714)
1967 Sunday Morning / Echoes (Mercury 72765)
1967 Sunday Will Never Be the Same / Distance (Mercury 72769)
1968 Give a Damn / Swingin’ Gate (Mercury 72831)
1968 I’d Like to Get to Know You / Three Ways from Tomorrow (Mercury 72795)
1969 Anything You Choose / Mecca Flat Blues (Mercury 72890)
1969 And She’s Mine / Leopard Skin Phones (Mercury 72926)
1969 Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me (Mercury 72982)
ALBUMS
1967 Spanky and Our Gang (Mercury SR61124)
1968 I’d Like to Get to Know You (Mercury SR61161)
1969 Without Rhyme or Reason (Mercury SR61183)
1969 Greatest Hits (Mercury SR61127)
1970 Live (Mercury SR61326)
1975 Change (Epic PE 33580)
2005 Spanky & Our Gang: The Millenium Collection (Mercury B002844-02)
2005 The Complete Mercury Recordings (Rhino/Hip-O Select B0003620-2)
2014 The Complete Mercury Singles (Real Gone RGM-0270)