The first serious Grass Roots compilation since Rhino's Anthology: 1965-1975, Real Gone's 2014 The Complete Original Dunhill/ABC Hit Singles
isn't as comprehensive as that 1991 double-disc set, running 24 songs
to its predecessor's 36, but that still leaves plenty of room to be
thorough. Every one of the group's charting singles between 1966 and
1973 are here, beginning with "Where Were You When I Needed You" --
their first Top 40 hit in 1966, climbing all the way to 28 -- and ending
with "Love Is What You Make It," which topped out at 55. "Mamacita," a
1975 single for Haven, isn't here but their first Dunhill side, a cover
of Bob Dylan's
"Mr. Jones (Ballad of a Thin Man)" is, along with a censored version of
their breakthrough hit "Let's Live for Today," two inclusions which
underscore the group's folk-rock roots, but the band's hot streak really
began with "Midnight Confessions," a piece of snazzy blue-eyed soul
that opened up a run of AM pop nuggets that ran until 1972. All of these
are here, and while the big hits "I'd Wait a Million Years,"
"Temptation Eyes," "Sooner or Later," and "Two Divided by Love" are the
group's best, the Grass Roots' bench is deeper than this suggests, thanks in part to some nifty songs by Harvey Price & Dan Walsh, the authors of "Temptation Eyes" (these include "Baby Hold On" and "Heaven Knows") and Dennis Lambert & Brian Potter
("The Runaway," "Anyway the Wind Blows"). This is state of the art turn
of '70s pop, and Real Gone finally gives it the showcase it has long
deserved with this fine compilation.
Bio
The Grass Roots
had a series of major hits -- most notably "Let's Live for Today,"
"Midnight Confessions," "Temptation Eyes," and "Two Divided by Love" --
that help define the essence of the era's best AM radio. Although the
group's members weren't even close to being recognizable, and their
in-house songwriting was next to irrelevant, the Grass Roots managed to
chart 14 Top 40 hits, including seven gold singles and one platinum
single, and two had hits collections that effortlessly went gold. The
group's history is also fairly complicated, because there were at least
three different groups involved in the making of the songs identified as
being by "the Grass Roots."
The Grass Roots was originated by the writer/producer team of P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri as a pseudonym under which they would release a body of Byrds/Beau Brummels-style folk-rock. Sloan and Barri
were contracted songwriters for Trousdale Music, the publishing arm of
Dunhill Records, which wanted to cash in on the folk-rock boom of 1965.
Dunhill asked Sloan and Barri
to come up with this material, and a group alias under which they would
release it. The resulting "Grass Roots" debut song, "Where Were You
When I Needed You," sung by Sloan,
was sent to a Los Angeles radio station, which began playing it. The
problem was, there was no "Grass Roots." The next step was to recruit a
band that could become the Grass Roots. Sloan found a San Francisco group called the Bedouins that seemed promising on the basis of their lead singer, Bill Fulton. Fulton recorded a new vocal over the backing tracks laid down for the P.F. Sloan version of the song. The Bedouins were, at first, content to put their future in the hands of Sloan and Barri
as producers, despite the fact that the group was more blues-oriented
than folk-rock. However, the rest of the group was offended when Fulton was told to record their debut single, a cover of Bob Dylan's
"The Ballad of a Thin Man," backed by studio musicians. When that
single, released in October of 1965, became only a modest hit, the
Bedouins -- except for their drummer, Joel Larson -- departed for San Francisco, to re-form as the Unquenchable Thirst. Sloan and Barri
continued to record. "Where Were You When I Needed You" was released in
mid-'66 and peaked at number 28, but the album of the same name never
charted.
Amid the machinations behind Where Were You When I Needed You, no "real" Grass Roots
band existed in 1966. A possible solution came along when a Los Angeles
band called the 13th Floor submitted a demo tape to Dunhill. This
group, consisting of Warren Entner (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Creed Bratton (lead guitar), Rob Grill (vocals, bass), and Rick Coonce
(drums), was recruited and offered the choice of recording under their
own name, or to take over the name the Grass Roots, put themselves in
the hands of Sloan and Barri, and take advantage of the Grass Roots' track record. They chose the latter, with Rob Grill as primary lead vocalist. The first track cut by the new Grass Roots
in the spring of 1967 was "Let's Live for Today," a new version of a
song that had been an Italian hit, in a lighter, more up-tempo version,
for a band called the Rokes.
"Let's Live for Today" was an achingly beautiful, dramatic, and serious
single and it shot into the Top Ten upon its release in the summer of
1967. An accompanying album, Let's Live for Today, only reached number 75. The group began spreading its wings in the studio with their next album, Feelings, recorded late in 1967, which emphasized the band's material over Sloan and Barri's. This was intended as their own statement of who they were, but it lacked the commercial appeal of anything on Let's Live for Today,
sold poorly, and never yielded any hit singles. Eleven months went by
before the group had another chart entry, and during that period, Sloan and Barri's partnership broke up, with Sloan
departing for New York and an attempt at a performing career of his
own. The band even considered splitting up as all of this was happening.
The Grass Roots' return to the charts (with Barri
producing), however, was a triumphant one -- in the late fall of 1968,
"Midnight Confessions" reached number five on the charts and earned a
gold record. "Midnight Confessions" showed the strong influence of
Motown, and the R&B flavor of the song stuck with Barri and the band.
In April of 1969, Creed Bratton left the band, to be replaced by Denny Provisor on keyboards and Terry Furlong
on lead guitar. Now a quintet, the Grass Roots went on cutting records
without breaking stride, enjoying a string of Top 40 hits that ran into
the early '70s, peaking with "Temptation Eyes" at number 15 in the
summer of 1971. Coonce and Provisor left at the end of 1971, to be replaced by Reed Kailing on lead guitar, Virgil Webber on keyboards, and Joel Larson -- of the original Bedouins/Grass Roots
outfit -- on drums. They arrived just in time to take advantage of the
number 16 success of "Two Divided by Love," which was the last of the
Grass Roots' big hits. The Grass Roots
soldiered on for a few more years, reaching the Top 40 a couple of
times in 1972, but their commercial success slowly slipped away during
1973. They kept working for a few more years, but called it quits in
1975. Rob Grill remained in the music business on the organizing side, and by 1980 was persuaded by his friend John McVie to cut a solo album, Uprooted, which featured contributions by Mick Fleetwood and Lindsay Buckingham. By 1982, amid the burgeoning oldies concert circuit and the respect beginning to be accorded the Grass Roots, Grill formed a new Grass Roots -- sometimes billed as Rob Grill and the Grass Roots
-- and began performing as many as 100 shows a year. Their presence on
various oldies package tours saw to it that the Grass Roots' name
remained visible. Grill
continued performing with later incarnations of the band into the
2000s; however, he endured the pain of degenerative bone disease for
years and in June 2011 suffered a head injury. The following month Grill died in Tavares, Florida of complications from that injury at the age of 67. (allmusic.com)
One of my favourite 60's/70's pop groups. 24 songs here and not one filler ! Great. I will post more of Sloan/Barri efforts in the next days. Have fun with this great band
Frank
Flac
