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grapevynerendezvous · 4 years ago

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The Beau Brummels - The Best of the Beau Brummels

The Beau Brummels had two big hits, a third one that made the Billboard Top 40, plus three other singles that were in the Billboard Hot 100. After that initial success they faded away rather quickly. It was three of their songs - Laugh Laugh, Just A Little and Don’t Talk to Strangers that persuaded me to purchase this Best of album, issued on Vault Records in 1967. As it turns out, not long after it had been released. In addition to those three songs I found most of the material very appealing with the exception of They’ll Make You Cry, which was on their Introduction album. The song is well written, by Ron Elliott of course, but the lead vocal by Ron Meagher never appealed to me. Still In Love With You Baby is one of my favorites. You Tell Me Why, Sad Little Girl, the instrumental, Woman, and I Want You are also songs that I really like. In Good Time and Good Time Music are both a hoot. It should be noted that I indeed wrote in the songs I Want You and Woman on the record sleeve. Their absence on the sleeve may have been an omission in the early printing of it, but fortunately the songs are present on the record.

Singer Sal Valentino, a San Francisco native who grew up in North Beach, had been doing some solo work and appeared on local television when he got an offer to play regularly at a club called El Cid. A band was needed so he reached out to his childhood friend Ron Elliott, a guitarist and songwriter. Elliott then enlisted the rest of the eventual band made up of John Peterson on drums, Declan Mulligan on guitar, harmonica and vocals, and Ron Meagher on bass. They took their name from the English dandy Beau Brummell, and according to Valentino, just liked the name. Some think that the band may have liked that it was British-sounding, especially since this was at the time of the British Music Invasion. In either case they were among, if not the earliest to respond to that “invasion”. With Elliott’s strong songwriting chops, and Sal Valentino’s memorable voice, they were soon to have their impressive moments in music history.

Rich Romanello soon hired them to play his Morocco Club in San Mateo. San Francisco disc jockeys Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell were in the process of forming a new music label, Autumn Records, and were looking for acts. Romanello invited them to his club to hear The Beau Brummels. The band signed with Autumn and for the first album, which included their first two singles. Sylvester Stewart, later known as Sly Stone, was the producer. He was credited as producer of their second album, but later, according to Valentino and Elliott, he had little if nothing to do with it, perhaps not even being involved with much of the first album’s recording other than Laugh Laugh and Just A Little.

Laugh Laugh was recorded in 1964 and released that December, quickly reaching its’ high point of No. 15 on Billboard in February 1965. It was backed by Still in Love With You Baby which also got some airplay with some saying it was also one of their “hits”, although not officially. Tom Donahue would later say that he felt Laugh Laugh could have gone all the way to No. 1 with stronger label distribution. Not only was it the band’s first single, it also was the first hit record in the growing San Francisco music scene.

Just a Little was recorded in early 1965, released that April just as their first album Introducing The Beau Brummels was about to come out. The song ended up spending nine weeks in the Billboard top 40, hitting No. 8 on the chart in June. Written by Ron Elliott with collaborator Bob Durand, the song contained elements of British beat and what came to be known as Folk-Rock. Having been released one month before The Byrds’ Tamborine Man, this made The Beau Brummels’ Just A Little the true birth of Folk-Rock.

You Tell Me Why was the initial single release from the album, coming out in the summer and in August peaking at No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100. SF Weekly journalist Justin F. Farrar said the song was “…prescient of the lush, melancholic vibe of early Jefferson Airplane, The B-side number, I Want You was considered by music critic and author Richie Unterberger to be "as good as any song the Beau Brummels ever did”.

The fourth single, Don’t Talk To Strangers, released in October, spent one week at No. 52 in November on the Billboard Top 100. It is possible that with Autumn Records near collapse the song’s relative low placement was a result. San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joel Selvin called the song “inventive, and author Maury Dean praised the song's "raging chord patterns and dynamic harmonies,” The aforementioned Richie Unterberger criticized the song for it’s harmonies and twelve-string guitar work being too similar to The Byrds. I find that kind of strange because the use of the twelve-string was likely an attempt to add more variety to the musical concept, and the album had full, rich harmonies throughout. It seems unlikely to me that they were in the studio worrying about whether they would sound like someone else. Ron Elliott said that folk-rock was not a thing they were trying to achieve, but rather a result of their attempt to indeed stretch their sound with alternative instrumentation while using things like acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica, and it seems a twelve-string guitar.

A final single from the album released by Autumn Records, was Good Time Music, a cover of John Sebastian’s composition done by The Lovin’ Spoonful It was backed by Sad Little Girl. It only reached No. 98 while Autumn Records was on the verge of being shifted to Warner Bros. Records. Sad Little Girl could easily have been a solid single in it’s own right, with Richie Unterberger conjecturing that it may have been a better choice as the third single after Laugh Laugh and Just A Little.

As 1965 progressed the band became a quartet when Declan Mulligan departed prior to the recording of their Volume 2 album. Because Ron Elliott was suffering from seizures caused by a diabetic condition, Don Irving joined the band on guitar for live performances and also recorded with the them. Shortly after the release of the the band’s third album Irving was inducted into the armed services. That third album was the first on Warner Brothers Records, who strangely had them make an all covers album. Although the Brummels had some songs already written Warner did not hold the publishing rights to them and had no interest in recording them. The final two studio albums recorded in the ‘60s saw further reduction in members as John Peterson left to join Harper’s Bazaar and later, in 1968, Ron Meagher was drafted into the armed services. Both the aforementioned albums, Triangle and Bradley’s Barn, utilized original material and were critically acclaimed but never charted. Triangle found three members left in the band while only Elliott, who was stabilized by now, and Sebastian were around for Bradley’s Barn. The latter record is recognized as one of the early country-rock albums. The original five members (with one leaving fairly early on) reunited in 1974 and stayed together until 1975, producing one album that got a moderate reception, but only reached No.180 on the Billboard Top 200. They toured during that time and a live album was recorded at Fair Oaks Village near Sacramento CA and later released in 2000. Following their break up the band continued to occasionally perform in various reincarnations in the ‘70s into the ‘90s. They also performed at a few Festivals in the early 2000s.

I never got the opportunity to see The Beau Brummels play live, but I, and many others, cannot forget their appearance in animation as The Beau Brummelstones in a Flintstones cartoon episode in December 1965. They also were seen in a few movies and several music tv shows in same time period. After the demise of The Beau Brummels, Sal Valentino formed the group Stoneground in 1970 of which three of the members eventually became the band Pablo Cruise, including my high school classmate, pianist Cory Lerios. After Sal left the band in 1973 he reunited with The Beau Brummels in ’74-‘75 and then his career went dormant, In July 2005 I went to see Jackie Greene play at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz CA. At one point he introduced someone whom I thought he referred to as his uncle. It was Sal Valentino, and he came out and performed with Jackie on a song or two. I was able to find out more recently that, while they aren’t related, Sal met Jackie while living in Sacramento. They played at open mics at Fox and the Goose. This was a pub that I had lunch at on a couple of occasions when I was in town for a few work related activities around that time. For Sal it was a tentative step back into performance after a long hiatus. He ended up being involved in a live recording with Jackie in 2003. While not his uncle, Valentino apparently became somewhat of a mentor for the upcoming Greene. Sal went on to record a very well received album in 2006, Dreamin’ Man, with his long time collaborator John Blakeley.

Ron Elliott continued to be involved in the music business in various ways. Per Richie Unterberger, in 2016 he teamed up with producer Lou Dorren to record a new Beau Brummels album, Continuum, with contributions from Sal Valentino, Ron Meagher, and Declan Mulligan. While John Petersen died in 2008, Elliott and Dorren discovered an unused drum track he had recorded, and it was used as the basis for one of the album's songs.

Declan Mulligan and Ron Meagher were members of The Black Velvets. John Peterson was with Harper’s Bazaar until they broke up. He married Roberta Templeman, the sister of one of his bandmates Ted Templeman. Ted Templeman went on to produce albums with The Doobie Brothers amongst many other artists, including The Beau Brummels in 1975.

In the brief time that The Beau Brummels were in their glory they are considered to be the first band from San Francisco to gain widespread success in the face of the British Invasion. Their music was on the cutting edge of new trends such as folk-rock and country rock, and their two biggest hits are arguably among the best songs ever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beau_Brummels#Discography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beau_Brummels_discography

https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Decades-in-obscurity-Beau-Brummels-front-man-2522300.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal_Valentino

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-beau-brummels-mn0000135032/biography

Don’t Talk to Strangers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQ-MYwjLu4 LP29

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