The Seekers
The Seekers were an Australian folk pop and gospel band originally formed in Melbourne in 1962. They were the first Australian pop band to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States. They were especially popular during the 1960s, with their best-known configuration of Judith Durham on vocals, piano and tambourine; Athol Guy on double bass and vocals; Keith Potger on twelve-string guitar, banjo and vocals; and Bruce Woodley on guitar, mandolin, banjo and vocals.
The group had Top 10 hits in the 1960s with "I'll Never Find Another You", "A World of Our Own", "Morningtown Ride", "Someday, One Day", "Georgy Girl" and "The Carnival Is Over". Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described their style as "concentrated on a bright, uptempo sound, although they were too pop to be considered strictly folk and too folk to be rock". In 1967, they were named as joint "Australians of the Year" – the only group thus honoured. In July 1968, Durham left to pursue a solo career, and the group disbanded. Keith Potger formed a new group in the UK, the New Seekers; they had their first hit single in 1971 with "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing".
In 1995, the Seekers were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. "I'll Never Find Another You" was added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's Sounds of Australia registry in 2011. Woodley's and Dobe Newton's song "I Am Australian", which was recorded by the Seekers as well as Durham with Russell Hitchcock and Mandawuy Yunupingu, has become an unofficial Australian anthem. With "I'll Never Find Another You" and "Georgy Girl", the group also achieved success in the United States, but not nearly at the same level as in the rest of the world. The Seekers have sold over 50 million records worldwide and were individually honoured as Officers of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 2014.
Early years
The Seekers were formed in 1962 in Melbourne by Athol Guy on double bass, Keith Potger on twelve-string guitar, and Bruce Woodley on guitar. Guy, Potger, and Woodley had all attended Melbourne Boys High School in Victoria. In the late 1950s, Potger led the Trinamics, a rock 'n' roll group, Guy led the Ramblers and, joining with Woodley, they decided to form a doo-wop music group, the Escorts. The Escorts had Ken Ray as the lead singer, and in 1962 they became "The Seekers". Ray left the group to get married. His place was taken by Judith Durham, an established traditional jazz singer who added a distinctive female lead voice. She had earlier recorded an extended play disc on W&G Records with the Melbourne group Frank Traynor's Jazz Preachers.Durham and Guy had met when they both worked in an advertising agency – initially Durham only sang periodically with the Seekers, when not performing at local jazz clubs. She was replaced in Traynor's jazz ensemble by Margret RoadKnight. The Seekers performed folk-influenced pop music and soon gathered a strong following in Melbourne. Durham's connections with W&G Records led to the group's later signing a recording contract with the label. Their debut album, Introducing the Seekers, was released in 1963. Their debut single, released in mid-1963, was the African American spiritual song "Kumbaya". Their second single was the traditional historic Australian bush ballad from 1894, "Waltzing Matilda", which appeared in November and which reached the Melbourne "Top 40" singles chart. and peaked at number 74 on the national chart. When being photographed for the album's cover, Potger was replaced by Ray – his day job with the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a radio producer barred him from involvement in a commercial enterprise.
Discovery in the United Kingdom
The Seekers were offered a twelve-month position as on-board entertainment on the Sitmar Line passenger cruise ship Fairsky in March 1964. In May, they travelled to the UK and had intended to return to Australia after staying ten weeks, but upon arrival they were offered work by a London booking agency, the Grade Organisation. They signed there with World Record Club and issued a single, "Myra", co-written by the group. The group regularly appeared on a British TV show series, "Call in on Carroll", hosted by Ronnie Carroll.After filling in on a bill headlined by singer Dusty Springfield, they met her brother, songwriter and producer Tom Springfield, who had experience with writing folk-pop material and lyrics/tunes with the siblings' earlier group The Springfields. He penned "I'll Never Find Another You", which they recorded in November 1964. It was released by EMI Records, on their Columbia Graphophone Company
label, in December and was championed by the offshore radio station "Radio Caroline" which frequently played and promoted their music. Despite the fact that the group had not signed a contract with EMI, the single reached the UK "Top 50" and began selling well. In February 1965, it reached No.1 in the UK and Australia, and No.4 in the United States where it was released on EMI's Capitol Records label. "I'll Never Find Another You" was the seventh biggest-selling single in Britain for 1965 though their own "The Carnival Is Over", released later in the year, would eventually eclipse it – and went on to sell 1.75 million copies worldwide.
The Seekers were the first Australian pop group to have a Top 5 hit in Australia, the UK and the US. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described their style as "concentrated on a bright, uptempo sound, although they were too pop oriented to be considered strictly folk and too folk to be rock". The distinctive soprano voice of Durham, the group's vocal harmonies, and memorable songs encouraged the British media, including the national broadcasting agency on radio and television, the BBC, to give them exposure, allowing them to appeal to a broad cross-section of the young British folk, pop, and rock music audience.
String of hits
The Seekers achieved their first success in the United States in 1965 with their hit "I'll Never Find Another You" reaching peaks of No. 4 for pop and No. 2 for easy listening on Billboard magazine charts. They followed "I'll Never Find Another You" with the protest song, "What Have They Done to the Rain?" in February 1965, which did not chart in the Top 40.The group were named "Best New Group of 1964" at the April 1965 New Musical Express Poll Winners Awards. They appeared at the annual celebratory Wembley Empire Pool concert, on a bill which included the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield and the Animals. In May, another Tom Springfield composition was issued, "A World of Our Own", which reached Top 3 in Australia and the UK and Top 20 in the US. Malvina Reynolds' lullaby "Morningtown Ride" was issued in Australia in July and peaked in the Top 10. That same month, Durham had to temporarily leave the group due to emergency nasal surgery; she was replaced on live dates from July to early September by Scottish-born singer Ellen Wade.
Durham quickly returned to the group, and their next single, "The Carnival Is Over", appeared in November 1965. The melody is based on a Russian folk song, while the lyrics were written by Tom Springfield; it reached No. 1 on both the Australian and the UK charts and, at its peak, the single was selling around 93,000 copies a day in the UK alone. However, although "The Carnival Is Over" became a signature song for the group, it was not a great success in North America, peaking at No. 105 in the US and missing the Canadian charts completely.
On 16 November 1965, they appeared at a Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium before Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
Also in 1965, the group met Paul Simon, of the American duo Simon & Garfunkel, before the success of The Sound of Silence, who was pursuing a solo career in the UK following the initial poor chart success of the duo's debut LP, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.. Being an itinerant folk singer in London, he met Bruce Woodley, and they co-wrote the million-selling Red Rubber Ball. It became an American No. 2 single for an American group, the Cyrkle.
The Seekers' version was provided on their 1966 album Come the Day. Later, in 1966, the Seekers released the Simon-penned "Someday One Day", which reached No. 4 in Australia and No. 11 in the UK. Their version was Simon's first UK success as a songwriter and his first major hit as a composer separately from his work with Art Garfunkel. He and Woodley co-wrote two more songs together. Afterwards, however, Woodley's relationship with Simon deteriorated and Woodley later struggled to get his share of the royalties— for example, his songwriting credit on another song, "Cloudy" was omitted from the release of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme., and his royalties stolen. Woodley and Simon stopped working together due to the mentioned royalty problems and creative differences, and the collaborations ended after that.
Early in 1966, after returning to Australia, the Seekers filmed their first TV special, At Home with the Seekers. In November, a re-recorded version of "Morningtown Ride" was released in the UK which reached No. 2. The song had been recorded earlier as an Australian single on the 1964 album Hide and Seekers and appeared on the 1965 American debut, The New Seekers.
In December 1966 they issued "Georgy Girl", which became their highest charting American hit when it reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Cashbox Top 100 in February 1967. It was the title song and theme for the British film of the same name starring Lynn Redgrave and James Mason and sold 3.5 million copies worldwide. They were awarded a gold record certificate by the Recording Industry Association of America. Meanwhile, it was No. 3 in the UK and No. 1 in Australia. Its writers, Jim Dale and Tom Springfield, were nominated for the 1967 Academy Award for Best Original Song of 1966, but the Oscar was won by the title song of the film Born Free.
In February 1967, "Morningtown Ride" reached the Top 50 in the US.