Artist: Gary Puckett
Genre(s):
Other
Discography:
Gary Puckett and the Union Gap - Greatest Hits
Year: 1968
Tracks: 11
During the late '60s -- a period forever distinguished as rock's most radical, advanced, and far-reaching -- Gary Puckett and the Union Gap forged a series of massive chart ballads near transcendental in their right-down sincerity and melodrama. Likely the only pop ring of the era to play deuce nightly shows in the Catskills -- the early gig for their younger fans, the by and by appearance for the fans' parents -- the radical pioneered the hip-to-be-square conception deuce decades before spiritual posterity Huey Lewis and the News; clad in Civil War-era get-ups (fill out with fictitious military ranks) and bizarrely pedophilic lyrics, Puckett and the Union Gap were in their own way as kinky and curious as whatever other work of the geological period.
Frontman Puckett was born October 17, 1942, in of all places Hibbing, MN, (where Bob Dylan went to high schooling). Raised chiefly in Yakima, WA, he picked up the guitar as a teen, and spell attendance college in San Diego played in a identification number of local bands before quitting school to focus on music. Puckett eventually landed with the Outcasts, a heavy john Rock group comprised of bassist Kerry Chater, keyboardist Gary "Mutha" Withem, strain saxist Dwight Bement, and drummer Paul Wheatbread. Despite earning a strong local following, in 1966 Wheatbread resettled to Los Angeles to help as the house drummer on the television series Where the Action Is; the odd members of the Outcasts toured the Pacific Northwest, and on their return, Wheatbread besides touched endorse to San Diego and rejoined the batting order. For reasons unknown, director Dick Badger -- convinced his charges requisite a potent ocular hook -- then sent the chemical group to Tijuana, where they were outfitted with Union Army-style Civil War uniforms.
A demo was before long cut in L.A., and Badger arranged a encounter with CBS producer Jerry Fuller. Though impressed by Puckett's soaring baritone horn, Fuller believed the band's coarse-grained, R&B-influenced approach was all wrong, merely agreed to check out their unrecorded show at the San Diego bowling alley the Quad Room. Believing Fuller was due to arrive on Saturday, the Outcasts opted to preserve their energy, delivering an atypically high plant on Friday night. Fuller, wHO was in the crowd for both shows, gestural the group dependent on on their willingness to foster their latent cushy rock and roll leanings. Re-christened the Union Gap in award of a suburb of Yakima, on August 16, 1967, the band recorded its first individual, "Woman Woman." Suggesting a mellower Righteous Brothers sans producer Phil Spector's lofty firepower, the single reached the Top Ten late in 1967 and was a million-seller by February of 1968; coincidental CBS push releases gave each appendage his possess complex number military rank -- Puckett was the general, Bement the sergeant, Chater the corporal, and both Withem and Wheatbread were relegated to private parts.
In the outflow of 1968, the Union Gap scored their biggest slay, "Young Girl," written by Fuller in the style of "Adult female, Woman," merely exchanging the antique musical theme of infidelity for the age-old motif of the temptation of underage latinian language: "My love for you is fashion out of line/you better unravel, miss, you're a great deal as well young, young lady," an tortured Puckett wailed. The juggernaut involute on, and the group continued lively off hits -- "Dame Willpower," "Over You," and "Don't Give in to Him" among them -- and as well headlined at the White House and Disneyland. But there was discord in the ranks: the Union Gap treasured to spell and get their own real, and Puckett ground himself progressively confined within the CBS-mandated ballad formula. In 1969, stalemate: Fuller assembled a 40-piece studio orchestra for a raw song he had scripted, merely Puckett and the Union Gap refused to cut the melodic phrase. The sitting was at last canceled, and Fuller never once more worked with the group. For the Union Gap, it was a pyrrhic victory.
The band immediately returned to the Top Ten that fall with the Dick Glasser-produced "This Girl Is a Woman Now," but it was to be their last hit. The reexamination, "Let's Give Adam and Eve Another Chance," tanked, and after management determined that Puckett's bandmates now receive a weekly pay rather of a percentage of the gross, Chater and Withem left the band. Bement false bass duties, keyboardist Barry McCoy and horn player Richard Gabriel were added, and gospel vocalists the Eddie Kendrick Singers as well signed on. The Civil War paraphernalia was presently jettisoned, only fifty-fifty so, prospects did not better. In 1970, Puckett began recording as a solo act, simply his efforts were not well-received; the Union Gap remained his live championship unit, until they were dismissed following an appearance at the 1971 Orange County Fair. Puckett's contract with CBS was terminated one year later.
Puckett continued qualification solo appearances in the months to come, simply by 1973 he had fundamentally disappeared from music, opting or else to study playacting and terpsichore. He performed in theatrical productions in and around L.A., but his playacting career never real took off, and in 1984 he signed on with the Happy Together oldies software package tour. Two days after, Puckett was tapped to open for the Monkees on their twentieth Anniversary duty tour, and he remained a staple of the revival lap into the next century. Among his original bandmates, Bement later joined the oldies act Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids, spell Chater relocated to Nashville, where he plied his trade as a songster. Wheatbread, meantime, turned to concert promotion, and Withem returned to San Diego to teach highschool band.
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