Vinyl Relics: Crimson & Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells
Vinyl Relics: Crimson & Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells
My original intention when setting up an interview with Tommy James was to discuss the Crimson & Clover album. I wanted to get a sense of where he was in his career at that point in time, what inspired him and his band to move into a more album-oriented direction, and to get some behind-the-scenes type stories about the tracks. And mission accomplished, as Tommy shared some great memories behind the making of the band’s best LP.
But once you get Tommy talking, it’s impossible not to ask him about the rest of his amazing career: one that is prime for a Hollywood script (note: spoiler alert!).
When it comes to Tommy James & The Shondells, I firmly believe the two following apply: 1) that this band is often overlooked when we discuss the greats of the 60’s; and 2) citing evidence of point #1, it’s a crime these guys are not yet in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Tommy’s career started unusually. “Only in America,” he told me. Growing up in Niles, Michigan, he was drawn to music as a toddler. When the rock n’ roll craze hit, and he saw artists on American Bandstand, he knew that’s what he wanted to do as well. At the age of 12, he started his first band. They played local dances while he worked at a record store. It was there that he met a cat who owned a small studio and offered to record the band. They remade the song “Long Ponytail,” released under the name Tom and the Tornadoes. Nothing much came of it, but hey, they made a record! Pretty exciting stuff for teenagers. It was good enough to impress a local DJ, who asked if they had anything else to record. James had heard another band performing the tune “Hanky Panky” and decided to try their hand at it (Tommy said he didn’t remember all the words, so he had to make them up).
Their 2nd single was released and became a minor hit in the area, but with no national distribution, that’s as far as it went. Life returned to normal. Eventually, the band broke up, and Tommy finished high school. A couple of years later, though, a DJ in Pittsburgh found a copy of the 45 at a garage sale. He took it home and liked what he heard, so he played it on the air. Suddenly, the radio station was getting flooded with requests to play the track. Music fans in the Pittsburgh area were clamoring to find copies of the “Hanky Panky” 45, but of course, none were available for purchase. Cue the bootleggers. Always keen to pounce on an opportunity, they sensed one here, and their intuition proved fruitful: the bootleg single sold 80,000 copies in a few days, making “Hanky Panky” the biggest-selling single in Pittsburgh history at the time. “God bless the crooks,” Tommy told me.
When Tommy was told what was happening, he made his way down to Pittsburgh for some promo appearances. But he had one problem: The Shondells no longer existed; they had already disbanded long ago. He needed to find a new backing band, and fast.
At a club in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Tommy caught a band called The Raconteurs playing. He liked what he heard and asked them, “Do you wanna be The Shondells?” They agreed, and the new version of the band was now in place. Next stop: NYC.
With the success of the “Hanky Panky” single, Tommy James and the new version of the Shondells went shopping for a recording contract. Everyone showed interest in the band. He said, “I went to bed that night feeling great.” The next morning, however, the phone started ringing. One after one, the big labels were bowing out. Tommy was shocked. With all the excitement from just a day before, he was sure a contract was imminent. Tommy said, “We got a yes from everybody. I figured we were going to be with one of the big corporate labels, CBS or Atlantic or somebody. The next morning, I started getting calls. ‘Sorry, Tommy, we have to pass.’ Finally, Jerry Wexler at Atlantic told me the truth–that Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records, who was a real thug– a mob guy–called all the other record companies and scared the hell out of them. (In an amazing “mob guy” voice) ‘This is my freakin’ record, back off!’, and that’s just how he talked; he was right out of the movies. We apparently were going to be on Roulette…it was the first offer I couldn’t refuse!”
Mob connections or not, when it came to the record biz – still dominated by singles at the time, Roulette knew what they were doing. They took “Hanky Panky” national, and it went all the way to #1 on the charts.
“Hanky Panky” proved to be just the starting point of Tommy James & The Shondells’ career. Several top 10 singles followed in succession over the next few years–songs you know all the words to. The next huge one was “I Think We’re Alone Now”, which reached #4. They topped it a year later with “Mony, Mony”, a #3 smash hit.
The band was a bonafide hit-making machine. “We were literally created by radio,” Tommy said. But they soon realized singles weren’t sustainable. Why? Sgt. Pepper. “We were so fortunate that radio liked us,” he said. “And Roulette was a perfect label in a creative way because they were masters of singles. It was mostly a singles market back then, very competitive. It was a world of hit singles, and that’s what everybody strove for. And then something interesting happened: the Sgt. Pepper album”.
Seemingly overnight, the market had shifted from singles to albums. Tommy and the boys were faced with the dilemma of adapting or dying. “Luckily”, he said, “we were working on a little something at the time called ‘Crimson & Clover.’”
“Crimson & Clover” represented a shift to a decidedly more psychedelic direction, complete with a tremolo vocal effect that was something different at the time. Built on just three chords, it had the perfect blend of groove, melody, and a bit of mystery to the lyrics. What does crimson and clover mean? Tommy’s still not sure. “I loved the title. I don’t know what it meant, but it sounded profound, so we had to turn it into something”.
RELATED: The Top 200 Psychedelic Songs from the Original Psychedelic Era
And turn it into something they did. They wrote two other versions of the track before landing on the one we know today. They recorded it quickly, in about 5 hours, and Tommy did a quick mix “with my elbows,” he said jokingly, “it was just a work tape.” He threw a copy of the rough mix in his suitcase, as they had a show to play in Chicago. While there, he stopped in at WLS, the biggest AM station in the country at the time. They had broken a lot of the band’s records up to this point. So, while he was chatting with the program director, he pulled out the demo and played it for him. “This is what we’re working on”, he told him. Tommy picks up the story: “He flipped. And unbeknownst to me, he tapes my tape. Nobody was supposed to hear this. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll talk to you when the record’s done,’ and I went downstairs. I get in the car, and I hear (in a perfect DJ voice) “World exclusive on WLS channel 89!’ (starts singing the song). What? He’s playing my song!!? I couldn’t believe it! He’s playing my work tape, oh my god!”
At that time, WLS was in a ratings war with its crosstown rival, WCFL, another big supporter of the band. When WCFL heard that Tommy had given their rival the exclusive for the new single, their program director was incensed, going so far as to send a funeral wreath to Roulette’s office commemorating the ‘death of Tommy James & the Shondells’ career.’ Of course, it was never Tommy’s intention to give WLS the exclusive at all, so they went into damage control. They called WLS and explained the situation. But war is war, and when they asked them to stop playing the track, they were met with this response: “Oh yeah? We were playing it every 40 minutes. Now we’re going to start playing it every 20 minutes!!”
Roulette and the band were forced to release an official version of the single – the one mixed by Tommy’s “elbows”. Even though he never thought it was complete, that didn’t seem to matter, as the single shot to #1 and became the most successful one of their career.
The song became one of the many highlights on the Crimson & Clover album, though the album version did flesh it out to make it much longer. The other popular track on the LP was “Crystal Blue Persuasion”, yet another iconic tune in the band’s catalog. Aside from those two hits, however, there are highlights aplenty on this thing. “Sugar On Sunday”, “Do Something to Me”, “I Am a Tangerine” are all beauties. A track buried on side 2, “Breakaway,” proves how strong this album really is. Any other band from the era would have likely released a song this good as a single…It probably would be the album’s leadoff track; heck, the album itself likely would have been titled Breakaway. But for Tommy and the boys, it’s just another song on this very strong album.
The goal was to move away from singles and prove they could create a set of songs that held together as a complete album, and they certainly succeeded. Crimson & Clover has gone on to become the band’s biggest-selling and their most critically acclaimed album.
I mentioned earlier that these guys don’t seem to get the credit they deserve. Had they not turned down a request to play Woodstock, who knows how their perceived status may have changed? While vacationing in Hawaii on a much-needed break, Tommy got a call asking if they wanted to play the big event. Of course, no one at the time knew what Woodstock would become. He said, “My secretary called and asked if we wanted to play it. I said, ‘You want me to leave paradise and play a pig farm in New York? I’ll tell you what. Tell them to go ahead and start without me!’, and they did. One of the great regrets of my life”.
The band followed up Crimson & Clover with Cellophane Symphony, a foray into a more electronic direction thanks to the use of the new-at-the-time synthesizer (owned by New York Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford, of all things). The final album, Travelin’ followed in 1970 when the band called it quits.
Tommy went on to a solo career that was successful at first, highlighted by the track “Draggin’ the Line”. By the mid 70’s however, albums became sporadic and interest waned. In the 80’s, Tommy’s name was back in the spotlight as both Tiffany and Billy Idol took cover versions to the top of the charts – the only time a cover song by an artist has ever been replaced at the top of the charts by another cover by that same artist (“I Think We’re Alone Now” followed by “Mony Mony”).
Today Tommy is still touring, playing several shows across the country every year. He says it’s amazing to see several generations of fans at the shows. He also has the program Gettin’ Together with Tommy James on the Sirius XM satellite network, where he gets to spin tunes and connect with fans.
In 2010, he wrote a book titled Me, The Mob and The Music, providing all the details about what it was like being signed to a label that had mob connections – something that, at the time, they simply could not talk about to anyone. The book received excellent reviews, and now Tommy is in discussions for a Broadway play and a movie based on his career, using his book as reference material.
The legacy Tommy James & The Shondells left behind is immense–eight albums between 1966 and 1970; 19 singles, seven of which cracked the top 10 in the US, nine in the top 10 in Canada. The Crimson & Clover album reached as high as #8 on the album charts. Their music has been included in countless compilations, soundtracks, and commercials. The 60’s just wouldn’t be the same without the music of Tommy James & The Shondells. And for this fan, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame won’t feel complete until they are rightly inducted.
My show, Vinyl Relics, normally delves into the lesser-known albums, the under-the-radar gems you may have missed. It’s a weekly show designed to uncover treasures time has forgotten. While Tommy James & the Shondells decidedly are NOT in that category, I still feel they are a band that doesn’t get the attention they rightly deserve. So, when the opportunity to interview Tommy came along, I jumped at it. He was super fun to talk to, sharing one amazing story after another. You can hear it by tuning in, turning on, and dropping by Vinyl Relics on Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast network. Crimson & Clover is featured in ‘Epysode’ 84.
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