![]() The group came completely into its own, however, with the recording of the singles "Along Comes Mary" and "Cherish." The Association shopped itself around Los Angeles but couldn't do any better initially than a single release on the Jubilee label - their debut, "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You," wasn't a success, nor was their subsequent 1965 recording of Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings" on Valiant Records, which was an early folk-rock effort that was probably a little too complex for national exposure - though it got decent local radio play in Los Angeles. The group rehearsed for six months before they began performing, developing an extremely polished, sophisticated, and complex sound. Each member was also a singer - indeed, their vocal abilities were far more important than their skills on any specific instruments - and several were multi-instrumentalists, able to free others up to play more exotic instruments on stage. was their drummer, Brian Cole played bass, Russ Giguere was on percussion, and Jim Yester, brother of Easy Riders/Modern Folk Quartet alumnus Jerry Yester, played rhythm guitar behind Alexander. The remaining six formed The Association, the name coming at the suggestion of Kirkman's wife Judy. The group's promising future was cut short, however, when the group's lineup split in two after just a few weeks with seven members exiting. The result was the Men, a 13-member band that played folk, rock, and jazz, who earned a spot as the house band at the L.A. That happened at the beginning of 1965, and they at once pursued a shared goal, to put together a large-scale ensemble that would be more ambitious than such existing big-band folk outfits as the New Christy Minstrels and the Serendipity Singers. Navy at the time, serving out his hitch, and they agreed to link up professionally once he was out. The group's roots go back to a meeting in 1964 between Terry Kirkman, a Kansas-born, California-raised music major, proficient on upwards of two dozen instruments, and Jules Alexander, a Tennessee-born high school drop-out with an interest in R&B who was a budding guitar virtuoso. ![]() The Association was as anonymous an outfit as their contemporaries the Grass Roots, in terms of any individual names or attributes, despite the fact that both groups generated immensely popular hits that millions of listeners embraced on a deeply personal level. Additionally, their ensemble singing, essential to the group's sound and appeal, all but ensured that the individual members never emerged as personalities in their own right. That same sound, along with their AM radio popularity, however, proved a liability as the music environment around them changed at the end of the decade. The group's smooth harmonies and pop-oriented sound (which occasionally moved into psychedelia and, much more rarely, into a harder, almost garage-punk vein) made them regular occupants of the highest reaches of the pop charts for two years - their biggest hits, including "Along Comes Mary," "Cherish," "Windy," and "Never My Love," became instant staples of AM play lists, which was a respectable achievement for most musicians at the time. Creators of an enviable string of hits from 1966 through 1969, they got caught in a shift in popular culture and the unwritten criteria for significance in that field and never recovered. The Association was one of the more underrated groups to come out of the mid- to late '60s. The Association - French '60s EP Collection (2002)
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