The Association is an American sunshine pop band from Los Angeles, California. During the late 1960s, the band had numerous hits at or near the top of the Billboard charts (including "Windy", "Cherish", "Never My Love" and "Along Comes Mary") and were the opening act at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival. Generally consisting of six to eight members, they are known for intricate vocal harmonies by the band's multiple singers.
Their best-known lineup included Terry Kirkman (vocals, woodwind instruments, percussion), Russ Giguere (vocals, guitar), Jim Yester (vocals, rhythm and lead guitar), Jules Alexander (vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, bass), Brian Cole (vocals, bass) and Ted Bluechel Jr. (vocals, drums, percussion). This lineup recorded their first two albums, And Then... Along Comes the Association and Renaissance (both 1966) before Larry Ramos replaced Alexander in early 1967. With Ramos, the group recorded their third and fourth albums, Insight Out and Birthday. Alexander re-joined in late 1968, and the group released their fifth album The Association in 1969. Keyboardist Richard Thompson replaced Giguere in 1970, with whom the band recorded their final two albums Stop Your Motor (1971) and Waterbeds in Trinidad! (1972). The group has since been through several lineup changes. The current lineup includes Alexander, Yester and longtime members Joe Lamanno, Gary Swan, Bruce Pictor and Paul Holland.
History Beginnings Jules Alexander was in Hawaii in 1962 serving a stint in the Navy when he met Terry Kirkman, a visiting salesman. The two young musicians jammed together and promised to get together once Alexander was discharged. That happened a year later; the two eventually moved to Los Angeles and began exploring the city's music scene in the mid-1960s, often working behind the scenes as directors and arrangers for other music acts. At the same time, Kirkman played in groups with Frank Zappa for a short period before Zappa went on to form the Mothers of Invention.
Eventually, at a Monday night hootenanny at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour in 1964, an ad hoc group called the Inner Tubes was formed by Kirkman, Alexander and Doug Dillard, whose rotating membership contained, at one time or another, Cass Elliot, David Crosby and many others who drifted in and out. This led, in the fall of 1964, to the forming of the Men, a 13-piece folk rock band. This group had a brief spell as the house band at The Troubadour.
After a short time, however, the Men disbanded, with six of the members electing to go out on their own in February 1965. At the suggestion of Kirkman's then-fiancée, Judy, they took the name the Association. The original lineup consisted of Alexander (using his middle name, Gary, on the first two albums) on vocals and lead guitar; Kirkman on vocals and a variety of wind, brass and percussion instruments; Brian Cole on vocals, bass and woodwinds; Russ Giguere on vocals, percussion and guitar; Ted Bluechel Jr. from the Cherry Hill Singers on drums, guitar, bass and vocals; and Brian Cole's friend and bandmate from the group Gnu Fokes, Bob Page on guitar, banjo and vocals. However, Page was replaced by Jim Yester on vocals, guitar and keyboards before any of the group's public performances.
The new band spent about five months rehearsing before they began performing around the Los Angeles area, most notably a regular stint at The Ice House in Pasadena (where Giguere had worked as lighting director) and its sister club, The Ice House in Glendale. Eventually, the small Jubilee label issued a single of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", a song originally recorded by Joan Baez and later popularized by Led Zeppelin, but nothing happened. Finally, Valiant Records offered them a contract, with the first result being a version of Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings", which was produced by Valiant's owner, Barry De Vorzon, at Gold Star Studios.
The Men were first managed by Doug Weston, owner of the Troubador, before switching to actor Dean Fredericks, who remained on board when the Association was formed and helped get them the Valiant deal. In 1966 Fredericks turned the reins over to Pat Colecchio, who managed the group for the next eight years, then on and off during the two years after that. Fredericks later sued the band for breach of contract and was awarded a settlement.
First success
Their national break came with the song "Along Comes Mary", written by Tandyn Almer. Alexander first heard the song when he was hired to play on a demo version and persuaded Almer to give the Association first dibs on it, with Jim Yester on lead vocals. The song was controversial with some media observers noting that "Mary" was street slang for marijuana, but it went to No. 7 on the Billboard charts and led to the group's first album, And Then... Along Comes the Association (July 1966), produced by Curt Boettcher and begun in Gary S. Paxton's garage, with vocals done separately at Columbia. Another song from the album, "Cherish", written by Kirkman, became the Association's first No. 1 hit in September 1966 and one of a handful of the Sixties' most popular "slow dance" ballads.
The group followed with their second album, Renaissance, released in November 1966. The band changed producers, dropping Boettcher in favor of Jerry Yester (brother of Jim and formerly of the Modern Folk Quartet and later, a member of the Lovin' Spoonful). The album did not spawn any major hits (the highest-charting single, "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies", stalled at No. 35), and the album only reached No. 34, compared with the No. 5 showing for And Then... Along Comes the Association.
Crest In late 1966, Warner Bros. Records, which had been distributing Valiant, bought the smaller label and, with it, the Association's contract.
In 1966, a collection of poems penned by the six members was released as Crank Your Spreaders; the book was reprinted in August 1969.
In April 1967, Alexander left the band to study meditation in India and was replaced by Larry Ramos (born Hilario Ramos) on vocals and guitar. Ramos joined the band while Alexander was still performing with them after bassist Cole's hand was injured by a firecracker; Alexander subbed on bass while Ramos played lead guitar. Ramos had previously performed with the New Christy Minstrels and had even recorded solo singles for Columbia Records. He went on to sing co-lead (along with Giguere and Kirkman) on two of the Association's biggest hit singles, "Windy" and "Never My Love".
With the lineup settled, the group returned to the studio, this time with Bones Howe in the producer's chair. The first fruits of this pairing were the single "Windy", written by Ruthann Friedman, topping the Billboard Hot 100 on July 1, 1967, and staying there for four consecutive weeks, preceded by the album Insight Out, which reached No. 8 in June.
On June 16, 1967, the Association was the first act to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival. (The Criterion Collection DVD of the festival includes their performance of "Along Comes Mary" on disc 3.)
The group's success continued with its next single, "Never My Love", written by Dick and Don Addrisi; it went to No. 2 in Billboard and No. 1 in Cash Box in October 1967. It became the group's only double-sided charted record, as its B-side, "Requiem for the Masses", made a brief showing on the Billboard chart. Like "Cherish" and "One Too Many Mornings", "Never My Love"'s vocal arrangement was provided by Clark Burroughs, former member of the Hi-Lo's. "Never My Love" has since been certified the second-most-frequently-played song in America during the 20th century (the group placed two other songs, "Cherish" and "Windy", on BMI's list of the 100 most played).
In 1968, after turning down a cantata composed by Jimmy Webb that included the now-classic "MacArthur Park", the group produced its fourth album, Birthday (March 1968), with Bones Howe again at the controls. This album spawned "Everything That Touches You", the group's last Hot 100 Top 10 hit, and "Time for Livin'", the group's final Hot 100 Top 40 hit.
Later that year, the group released a self-produced single, the harder-edged "Six Man Band". This song also appeared on Greatest Hits, released in November 1968.
Comings and goings At the close of 1968, Alexander, who had returned from India and had done a stint with another band called Joshua Fox, returned to the group, which now made the Association a seven-man band.
The larger band's first project was to contribute to the soundtrack for Goodbye, Columbus (1969), the film version of Philip Roth's best-selling novel. The title track, written by Yester, peaked at No. 80. John Boylan, one third of the little-known group Hamilton Streetcar, worked with the group on the soundtrack and stayed on board for its next album, The Association (August 1969). Many of the tracks on this album have a country-rock sound but none of the singles released made any impact, so the group re-teamed with Curt Boettcher in late 1969 for a one-off single, "Just About the Same" (released in February 1970), a reworking of a song Boettcher had recorded with his group, the Millennium. This too failed to catch on.
Despite all this, the band remained a popular concert draw, and on April 3, 1970, a Salt Lake City performance was recorded for The Association Live.
In June 1970, Giguere left the band; he released a solo album, Hexagram 16, the following year. The Association replaced him with keyboardist Richard Thompson (not to be confused with the English singer-songwriter/guitarist), who had contributed to previous albums and began playing live with the group for some July 4 & 5 appearances in Atlantic City. Thompson had previously been known primarily in jazz circles.
The album Stop Your Motor was released in July 1971. It was the group's least popular up to that date, reaching only No. 158 on the Billboard chart. Stop Your Motor marked the end of the Association's tenure at Warner Brothers.
In early 1972, they resurfaced on Columbia with Waterbeds in Trinidad! (April 1972), produced by Lewis Merenstein (best known for producing Van Morrison's Astral Weeks). The album fared even less well than Stop Your Motor, reaching No. 194, while a single of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darlin' Be Home Soon" failed to break the Hot 100.
Breakup and reformation
For their 1972 tour, the group expanded, bringing in first session bass player Wolfgang Melz, and then Mike Berkowitz on drums, to add more musical versatility on stage and free up Brian Cole and Ted Bluechel to concentrate on singing. But on August 2, 1972, 29-year-old Cole was found dead in his Los Angeles home of a heroin overdose.
For the rest of the 1970s, the Association was in a state of flux, releasing singles intermittently along with sporadic touring.
In September 1972 Kirkman departed, as did Melz and Berkowitz later on that fall. The group was then moved over to the CBS distributed Mums label and put out a new single, Albert Hammond's "Names, Tags, Numbers & Labels", in February 1973. It failed to make much of an impression, though, and the label's funding for a hoped for album by the group never materialized. Mums folded by the end of 1974.
In late 1972, the remaining quintet of Alexander, Bluechel, Yester, Ramos and Thompson brought in new members Maurice Miller (vocals, drums, percussion, formerly of Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band) and David Vaught (vocals, bass, fresh from a stint in the band Rosebud and later a member of the Lopez Beatles, who later played in the first lineup of Roger McGuinn's Thunderbyrd in 1976 and who died on March 20, 2013, from pancreatic cancer) and continued touring.