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Nov. 12, 2003 12 AM PT. Times Staff Writer. Singer Bobby Hatfield, half of the groundbreaking Righteous Brothers, was remembered Tuesday in death for the varied roles he played in his 63 years of ...
- Overview
- Origin
- Hit-making popularity
- Post-breakup tensions, reunion, and legacy
the Rascals, American pop group who, along with the Righteous Brothers, were the preeminent practitioners in the 1960s of blue-eyed soul (music created by white recording artists who faithfully imitated soul music). The Rascals’ music was an eclectic mix of influences and styles, including soul, rhythm and blues (R&B), Motown, Afro-Cuban music, and...
The group’s members were experienced musicians who had played with various bands before forming the Rascals in 1964. Cavaliere, a classically trained pianist, had been the only white member of an R&B band in high school and had formed a doo-wop group in college. Brigati had been a pickup singer with local R&B bands. While he was a teenager, Danelli...
In the mid-1960s the Rascals played gigs on the New York club scene, in New Jersey, and as the regular band on a floating nightclub off Long Island. New York promoter Sid Bernstein, who had brought the Beatles to the United States, took over as manager and signed them to Atlantic Records as the Young Rascals (they were compelled to add “Young” to their name to distinguish themselves from another group, the Harmonica Rascals). In 1965 they opened for the Beatles at New York’s Shea Stadium. The Young Rascals’ first single, “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” (1965) was followed by “Good Lovin’ ” (1966), which soared to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earned them the first of several appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. By this time they had taken to performing in Little Lord Fauntleroy–style outfits.
Over the next few years the band turned out a number of Top 40 hits, including “You Better Run” (1966, which peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100), “(I’ve Been) Lonely Too Long” (1967, number 16), “Groovin’ ” (1967, number 1), “A Girl Like You” (1967, number 10), “How Can I Be Sure” (1967, number 4), “It’s Wonderful” (1968, number 20), “A Beautiful Morning” (1968, number 3), and “People Got to Be Free” (1968, number 1), the last written shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.
The Young Rascals’ debut album, The Young Rascals (1966), went gold, as did their subsequent releases Collections (1967), Groovin’ (1967), Time/Peace: The Rascals’ Greatest Hits (1968), and Freedom Suite (1969). In 1968 they dropped the “Young” from their name and returned to being the Rascals.
Writing for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Patti Smith’s longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye described the Rascals’ sound this way:
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Cavaliere went on to pursue a solo career as a performer and producer; Brigati and his brother, David, recorded together; and Cornish and Danelli formed a new group called Bulldog that later evolved into Fotomaker (which included Wally Bryson, formerly of the Raspberries). In 1988 Danelli, Cornish, and Cavaliere reunited for an American tour, though the following year they became embroiled in a lawsuit over use of the Rascals name. Cornish and Danelli ended up calling themselves the New Rascals, while Cavaliere billed himself as “formerly of the Young Rascals.” In 1992 a two-CD career retrospective, The Rascals Anthology 1965–1972, was released. In 1994 Cavaliere released his first solo album in more than a decade. The Rascals were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
In 2013 Steven Van Zandt, best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, reunited the four original members of the Rascals for Once Upon a Dream, a hybrid theatrical event that played on Broadway and then toured the country. The show featured a concert as well as taped segments that included interviews with the group and recreations by actors of important events from the band’s history.
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Mar 15, 2023 · 7. “Love Gone Bad” — Chris Clark; 1967. One of the few white artists on Motown, British singer Chris Clark showed off a husky voice and lots of spunk on this single from her debut, Soul ...
Mar 15, 2023 · March 15, 2023 10:09 AM PT. Bobby Caldwell, a blue-eyed soul singer whose smooth touch camouflaged his idiosyncrasies, died on Tuesday following a long illness. He was 71. His wife Mary Caldwell ...
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Jun 15, 2006 · Hinton died in 1995 at age 51, but he’s still unchallenged as the greatest blue-eyed soul singer ever to live. “He remains unique,” wrote Wexler, “a white boy who truly sang and played in ...
- Bob Mehr
David Eldon Lasley (August 20, 1947 – December 9, 2021) was an American recording artist, singer, musician and songwriter. He was best known as a touring background singer for James Taylor, as a session singer on recordings by artists including Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Luther Vandross, Chic, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Bette Midler, Cher, Dusty Springfield and Boz Scaggs; as a songwriter ...
Nov 28, 2017 · November 28, 2017 / 4:39 PM EST / AP. MIAMI -- Wayne Cochran, the "blue-eyed soul" singer known for his towering pompadour, has died of cancer at his Florida home, according to his son Christopher ...
