We Five

We Five was a 1960s folk rock musical group based in San Francisco, California. Their best-known hit was their 1965 remake of Ian & Sylvia's "You Were on My Mind", which reached No. 1 on the Cashbox chart, No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The original group split after recording their second album in 1967, but a re-formed band produced three more albums between 1968 and 1977.Michael Stewart was the brother of John Stewart of The Kingston Trio and came from Claremont, California. When Michael was a student at the University of San Francisco in 1964, he formed We Five as a quartet, although it soon added another member. The group played adult rock 'n roll, pop jazz, Broadway show tunes, and Disney tunes. Stewart did all the arrangements, which ranged from "My Favorite Things", in a style which reflected Bach, to "Very Merry Un-birthday". He put in several additional hours working on arrangements after the five band members worked together for five or six hours each day.The ensemble played acoustic guitars, electric guitar, and bass guitar and sang multi-part harmonies. The original quintet line-up, which grew out of a band called the Ridgerunners, included:Record label A&M Records, owned by Herb Alpert, responded to the new popularity of folk and rock music by adding new artists starting in 1965 to its existing line-up of middle-of-the road material turned out by Alpert's Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba Band, and Brasil '66. In addition to We Five, Alpert's label released albums by Boyce and Hart, the Garden Club, and The Merry-Go-Round.We Five's first album produced a major hit with the title tune, Stewart's re-arrangement of the Ian & Sylvia song "You Were on My Mind". Stewart made several changes to the original Sylvia Tyson composition, and the song went directly to the Billboard Top Five in 1965. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record. The group's second single was an arrangement of the popular song "Let's Get Together," written by Chester Powers, who performed under the name Dino Valenti. It reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and was later a Top Five hit and a million-seller for The Youngbloods as "Get Together").

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.