It was the mid 60’s and Rock and Roll had completed its next step into Rock. Folk music was still around and finding a place in the rock/pop music scene. R&B had opened up white audiences to great vocals-centered recordings, drawing from it’s strong gospel roots. One of the groups that seemed to incorporate facets of all these were The Association. Not known for their prowess as instrumental musicians, although they did play on some of their tracks, their strong suit, and identity, was their vocals and harmonies. Most of their recordings were produced by having mainly studio session musicians create the backing tracks, and the vocals recorded later. Sometimes at completely separate studios months apart.
Although they did have 5 Top 10 hits, along with as many Top 100 placements, there are 3 songs they are most remembered for. Their first album “And Then…Along Comes The Association” contained this song – “Cherish” (their first of two number 1 songs) – along with another Top 10 hit, at number 7, “Along Comes Mary” which lent its title to the album name.
As noted by Bruce Eder at Allmusic.com, the recording of those two songs was to set a new standard in the treatment of pop rock music in America. The voices were recorded at Columbia studios, while the instruments – played by Terry Kirkman and Jules Alexander, plus a group of studio musicians – were cut in an improvised four-track studio owned by Gary Paxton. Those two songs, and the entire album that followed, revealed a level of craftsmanship that was unknown in rock recordings up to that time. Producer Curt Boettcher showed incredible skill in putting together the stereo sound on that album, which was among the finest sounding pop rock records of the period. The fact that most of the members didn’t play on their records was not advertised, but it was a common decision in recording in those days — Los Angeles, in particular, was home to some of the best musicians in the country; they worked affordably and there was no reason to make less-than-perfect records.
Considering their lightweight image in the later 1960s, the Association made a controversial entry into the music market with “Along Comes Mary”, apart from its virtues as a record with great hooks and a catchy chorus, it was propelled to the number seven spot nationally with help from rumors that the song was about marijuana. No one is quite certain of what songwriter Tandyn Almer had in mind, and disputed by the group, one wonders how seriously any of this was taken at the time.
It took another year, and their third album, to produce their only other number 1 track “Windy”.
Categorized as a “sunshine pop” band from Los Angeles, their beginnings started in Hawaii in 1962. Jules Alexander was serving a stint in the Navy when he met Terry Kirkman, a visiting salesman. The two young musicians jammed together and promised to get together once Alexander was discharged. That happened a year later; the two eventually moved to Los Angeles and began exploring the city’s music scene in the mid-1960s, often working behind the scenes as directors and arrangers for other music acts. At the same time, Kirkman played in groups with Frank Zappa for a short period before Zappa went on to form the Mothers of Invention.
Eventually, at a Monday night hootenanny at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour in 1964, an ad hoc group called The Inner Tubes was formed by Kirkman, Alexander and Doug Dillard, whose rotating membership contained, at one time or another, Cass Elliot, David Crosby and many others who drifted in and out. This led, in the fall of 1964, to the forming of The Men, a 13 piece Folk rock band. This group had a brief spell as the house band at The Troubadour.
After a short time, however, The Men disbanded, with six of the members electing to go out on their own in February 1965. At the suggestion of Kirkman’s then-fiancée, Judy, they took the name “The Association”. The original lineup consisted of Alexander on vocals and lead guitar; Kirkman on vocals and a variety of wind, brass and percussion instruments; Brian Cole on vocals, bass and woodwinds; Russ Giguere on vocals, percussion and guitar; Ted Bluechel, Jr. on drums, guitar, bass and vocals; and Bob Page on guitar, banjo and vocals. However, Page was replaced by Jim Yester on vocals, guitar and keyboards before any of the group’s public performances. The new band spent about five months rehearsing before they began performing around the Los Angeles area, most notably a regular stint at The Ice House in Pasadena (where Giguere had worked as lighting director) and its sister club in Glendale.
But, as with many groups of that time, the personnel of the band began to fluctuate. In March 1967 Alexander left the band to study meditation in India, returning later in 1967 intending to form his own group which never got off the ground. He was replaced by Larry Ramos on vocals and guitar. Ramos had joined the band while Alexander was still performing with them after bassist Cole’s hand was injured by a firecracker; Alexander subbed on bass while Ramos played lead guitar. He went on to sing co-lead (along with Giguere and Kirkman) on two of the Association’s biggest hit singles, “Windy” and “Never My Love”.
The group played the most visible live gig in their history, opening the Monterey International Pop Festival. The group didn’t seem absurdly out of place, in the context of the times, on a bill with Simon & Garfunkel, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and the Mamas & The Papas. It was an ideal showcase, and as the tapes of the festival reveal, the group was tight and hard that night, their vocals spot-on and their playing a match for any folk-rock band of the era – Ted Bluechel’s drumming, in particular, and Larry Ramos’s and Jim Yester’s guitars are perfect, and even Kirkland’s flute came out well on stage.
Warner Brothers release of a greatest hits album in 1969 boosted the group’s album sales and consolidated the audience that they had, but did nothing to stop the rot that had set in. By 1969, the sensibilities of the rock audience had hardened, even as that audience splintered. Suddenly, groups that specialized in more popular, lighter fare, usually aimed at audiences outside the 17-25 age group, and especially those with a big AM radio following, such as Paul Revere & the Raiders and the Grass Roots, and the Association were considered terminally out of fashion and uncool by the new rock intelligentsia.
The group soldiered on, availing themselves of their lingering fame for their early hits, working into the following year. The death on August 2, 1973, of bassist Brian Cole, as a result of a worsening drug habit, portended the breakup of the original core membership of the Association. Kirkman stepped back from the music business, while Jules Alexander formed a group called Bijou that got one promising single out through A&M Records. Ted Bluechel kept the group going with Jim Yester and Larry Ramos, adding other players like Ric Ulskey. After running out their string on stage, Bluechel, the last original member, began leasing the group name out, thus allowing oldies tour packagers to send out a version of “the Association” without any of the original members to play shows. That ultimately came to haunt the group as those rights proved somewhat hard to withdraw for a time, and bogus versions of “the Association” turned up on and off into the 1980s. The legitimate, original group members, including Kirkman, Alexander, and Bluechel, resumed working together in various combinations on the oldies circuit in the 1980s. In 1981 and 1982, the group even briefly hooked up again with their first producer, Curt Boettcher, to record a pair of singles for Elektra Records. Their work since the early 1980s centered largely on re-creating their classic recordings on stage and in the studio.
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