The Youngbloods
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- This article refers to the 1960s band The Youngbloods. For other uses of the term please see Youngblood (disambiguation).
| The Youngbloods | |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Folk rock |
| Former members | |
| Jesse Colin Young Jerry Corbitt "Banana" Lowell Levinger Joe Bauer |
|
| Notable instrument(s) | |
| Banana played a "hot-rodded" Wurlitzer electric piano. | |
The Youngbloods were an American folk rock band consisting of Jesse Colin Young (vocals, bass), Jerry Corbitt (lead guitar), "Banana" Lowell Levinger (rhythm guitar), and Joe Bauer (drums). Despite receiving critical acclaim, they never achieved widespread popularity. Their only U.S. Top 40 entry was "Get Together".
Contents |
[edit] Band History
[edit] Background and formation
Jesse Colin Young (b, Perry Miller, November 11, 1941, Queens, New York City) was a moderately successful folk singer with two LPs under his belt--Soul of a City Boy (1964) and Youngblood (1965)--when he met fellow folk singer and former bluegrass musician from Cambridge named Jerry Corbitt (b. Tifton, Georgia). When in town, Young would drop in on Corbitt, and the two played together for hours, exchanging harmonies.
Beginning in January 1965, the two began performing on the Canadian circuit as a duo (eventually as the Youngbloods, Young played bass, and Corbitt played piano, harmonica and lead guitar). Corbitt introduced Young to a bluegrass musician, Lowell Levinger, who had the nickname of "Banana." (b. Lowell Levinger III, 1946, Cambridge, Massachusetts). Levinger could play the banjo, mandolin, mandola, guitar and bass; he had played in the Proper Bostoners and the Trolls, and knew of a fellow tenant who could flesh out the band. Joe Bauer (b. September 26, 1941, Memphis, Florida), an aspiring jazz drummer with experience playing in society dance bands, was at first unmoved by the offer to perform in a rock and roll outfit, but soon gave in.
[edit] Small gigs lead to recording success
Once the lineup was set, Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods, as the group was then known, began building a reputation from their club dates. (Early demo sides from 1965 were later issued by Mercury Records on the Two Trips album.) Their first gig had been at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village; months later, they were the house band at the Cafe Au Go Go and had signed a recording contract with RCA Records. Young, though, was not satisfied with RCA. "Nobody at [RCA] was really mean or anything; everybody was just kind of stupid," he explained to Rolling Stone magazine.[citation needed] "They never knew what to make of us, and tried to set us up as a bubblegum act...they never knew what we were, and never knew how to merchandise us."[citation needed]
The arrangement did produce one charting single in "Grizzly Bear" (#52, 1967). Several critically praised albums followed--The Youngbloods (1967; later retitled Get Together), Earth Music (1967), and Elephant Mountain (1969).
With Jerry Corbitt's departure from the band after recording the Earth Music album, Banana assumed lead guitar duties and played extensively on Wurlitzer electric piano. The band became adept at lengthy improvisations in their live performances (as captured on the albums "Ride The Wind" and "Rock Festival".)
In 1967, when "Get Together," a paean to universal brotherhood first appeared, it did not sell too well (#62, 1967).[citation needed] But two years later--after the National Council of Christians and Jews used the song as their theme song on television and radio commercials[citation needed]--the track was re-released and cracked the top five.[citation needed] The chorus of get together was used by Nirvana on the 1991 album Nevermind to introduce the song Territorial Pissings.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Clear Channel Communications, a media comglomerate company, banned "Get Together" from being aired on their radio stations claiming the song was inappropriate[citation needed].
[edit] References
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