Spanky And Our Gang

Spanky and Our Gang was an American 1960s sunshine pop band led by Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane. The band derives its name from Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies of the 1930s (known to modern audiences as The Little Rascals), because of the similarity of McFarlane's surname to that of George McFarland (Spanky). The group was known for its vocal harmonies and had major hits in the US and Canada in 1967–1968 with "Sunday Will Never Be the Same," "Lazy Day," "Sunday Mornin'," and "Like to Get to Know You."The group's first album, Spanky and Our Gang, was released by Mercury Records on August 1, 1967, with three popular songs that were released as singles. These were "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" (their biggest hit, which reached No. 9 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in the summer of 1967), followed by "Making Every Minute Count" (reached No. 31/No. 23 in Canada) and "Lazy Day" (reached No. 14). Both "Sunday Will Never Be The Same" and "Lazy Day" sold over one million copies. "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" was written by Terry Cashman and Gene Pistilli. In an interview of Cashman on the Songfacts website, he revealed that the song was written as a ballad; however, the group "changed it, and they added the vocal, 'Ba-da-da-da-da,' which was a great hook."Their second album, Like to Get to Know You, was released in April 1968. Two singles were released: "Sunday Mornin'" in the winter which reached No. 30 on February 10–17, 1968, and "Like to Get to Know You" in the spring which reached No. 17 on June 8, 1968. The latter single's B-side, "Three Ways From Tomorrow" also received considerable airplay. The album included their rendition of "Stardust", and a version of folksinger Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," subsequently a hit single for Harry Nilsson and the theme song for the movie Midnight Cowboy."Give a Damn" was released as a single in late summer 1968. Although not receiving airplay in several markets because of the curse word – and because it was a comment on racial equality that became the theme song for the New York Urban Coalition – the song became a regional hit and reached No. 43. The song reached No. 26 in the Canadian RPM magazine charts.The band also performed the song on a November 1968 episode of ABC's The Hollywood Palace, as well as on a December 1968 episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that resulted in CBS' Standards and Practices division receiving numerous complaints about the song's title being used during "family viewing hours". One such complaint reportedly came from President Richard Nixon. "Give a Damn" would become John Lindsay's campaign song during his successful run for mayor of New York.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.