The Rascals
The Rascals are an American rock band, formed in Garfield, New Jersey, southeast of Paterson in 1965. The original lineup featured lead vocalist and keyboardist Felix Cavaliere, vocalist and percussionist Eddie Brigati, drummer Dino Danelli, and guitarist and vocalist Gene Cornish. Cavaliere and Brigati wrote the majority of the Rascals' original material.
Between 1966 and 1968 the band gained popularity with a blend of rock, pop and soul music. Nine of their singles charted in the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the No. 1s "Good Lovin', "Groovin', and "People Got to Be Free" ; as well as big radio hits like the much-covered "How Can I Be Sure?" and "A Beautiful Morning". Another critical favorite, "A Girl Like You", became an early example of the blue-eyed soul genre. Additionally, four of the band's LPs received gold certifications in the US, including the top 10 albums Groovin' and Once Upon a Dream. The group continued into the early 1970s after the departures of Brigati and Cornish, with Cavaliere leading the Rascals in a more album-oriented direction with strong jazz and funk influences.
The Rascals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2010, and the classic lineup also reunited in 2012 for a series of shows in New York and New Jersey. The reunion continued in 2013 with shows on Broadway. Cavaliere and Cornish began performing again as the Rascals in 2022 without Brigati and Danelli, the latter of whom died the same year.
History
Origins
was already trained in classical piano by his mother when he founded a doo-wop group, the Escorts, while enrolled at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. In 1964, Cavaliere took a job with Joey Dee's backing band, the Starliters of "Peppermint Twist" fame, where he met Starliter David Brigati. When the group played the Choo Choo Club in Garfield, Cavaliere met Brigati's younger brother, Eddie, who wanted to follow in his brother's footsteps. Cavaliere, in an interview with journalist Don Paulson, spoke about when he first met the younger Brigati:Canadian guitarist Gene Cornish left his group, The Unbeatables, for which he acted as frontman, to join the Starliters, in early 1965. After meeting Cornish, Cavaliere's interest in forming a band of his own led him to convince both Cornish and Brigati to depart from Dee's backing band to start a new one with an old acquaintance of his, jazz drummer Dino Danelli. The group came up with the name "Rascals" while at the Choo Choo Club. Prior to the Rascals name they were using another group name "Them". Because there was another group, which included Van Morrison, using the name "Them" in the UK they dropped that name and came up with The Rascals name through the help of TV comedy star Soupy Sales whom they met through manager Billy Smith. The Rascals were Sales' back up band touring local colleges in the early months of 1965.
The Rascals began rehearsing at Cavaliere's house in Pelham Manor, New York east of Yonkers and then the Choo Choo Club, mostly because it was close to Brigati's home and they needed a showcase. Later in May 1965, under the direction of their management Billy Smith, they were hired to do a summer engagement at the debut of The Barge, a floating club by Dune Road in Westhampton Beach, New York. They settled at the club in eastern Long Island and there developed their mixed R&B-soul sound based on Cavaliere's organ and soulful vocals, mostly filled with traditional R&B covers. The quartet did not have any official bass player, because of Brigati's inability to play musical instruments, other than percussion and the Rascals' wish of staying in the formula of four members. Cavaliere's organ pedals filled the bass parts.
At the Barge club in August 1965, manager Billy Smith, who discovered them at the beginning of their music career as the Rascals, introduced the group to Sid Bernstein, an impresario known at the time for helping to promote the British Invasion, bringing famous UK bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to America. Promoting the band, Bernstein and Smith came up with the publicity stunt of posting the phrase "The Rascals are coming!" at the Shea Stadium's scoreboard, at the same time that the Fab Four were doing the opening of their 1965 North American tour. Beatles manager Brian Epstein ordered the post to be removed before his band arrived on the stage.
This event helped the group to get a $15,000 contract with Atlantic Records, a label which mainly had black artists, and they became the first white-only act to be signed at Atlantic. Bernstein managed them for the next five years with Billy Smith as their publicist and promotion advisor. The contract also stipulated that the band could self-produce their records. But problems arose when they discovered that another group, Borrah Minnevitch's and Johnny Puleo's 'Harmonica Rascals', objected to their release of records under the name 'The Rascals'. To avoid conflict, Bernstein decided to rename the group 'The Young Rascals', possibly because all the members were under 25.
Commercial success and songwriting development
The line-up of Brigati on lead vocals, Cavaliere on organ, Cornish on guitar and Danelli on drums was present in the Young Rascals' debut single, the Pam Sawyer/Lori Burton "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore", which was performed in their first television performance on the program Hullabaloo on February 24, 1966. But the track reached only No. 23 in Canada and did not reach the Top 40 of the US chart. After the modest success of "Eat Out My Heart Anymore", Cavaliere assumed the lead vocals on their subsequent records, starting with its follow-up "Good Lovin', originally recorded by Lemme B. Good and The Olympics in 1965, with the same arrangement and different lyrics from the original. Ironically, David Brigati had been the lead singer of the Starliters, but never had any hits; once Joey Dee had a hit with "The Peppermint Twist" he took over the lead vocals. History repeated itself when Felix replaced Eddie as the Rascals' lead singer. They performed "Good Lovin on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Young Rascals version became their first Canada/USA No. 1. Shortly after, their eponymous debut album was released, mostly composed of garage rock renditions of folk rock, and soul tunes, with only one original, the Cavaliere/Cornish penned "Do You Feel It". The Young Rascals reached No. 15 on the Billboard Top LPs chart and No. 10 in Cashbox. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA.From there the songwriting partnership between Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati began to flourish. Cavaliere wrote the music and themes, and Brigati, the verses with the former's help. Their second album, Collections, had four Cavaliere/Brigati songs and two Cornish originals in its eleven tracks. Follow-ups to their number one record, "You Better Run"–later covered by Pat Benatar in 1980 – and "Come On Up", did not do as well as their predecessor. The band made their UK debut on December1, 1966, at The Scotch of St. James club in London. Paul McCartney attended the concert and was so excited by the band that he also attended their show the following night, held at the Blaises Club.
In the meantime, Cavaliere began dating high school student Adrienne Bechurri. Their relationship inspired him to write several songs in 1967, including Top 20 "I've Been Lonely Too Long" and Top 10's "How Can I Be Sure", and "Groovin', their second No. 1. "Groovin, having its laid-back sound and an Afro-Cuban groove, found some resistance with Atlantic's head Jerry Wexler; "I've Been Lonely Too Long" and the jazz-influenced "A Girl Like You" talked about the advantages of a relationship against loneliness, but the introspective "How Can I Be Sure", with Brigati's lead vocals, expressed the doubts about love, like Cavaliere's conflicting feelings about Bechurri. All these songs were included on the Groovin' album, which had the majority of the tracks penned by Cavaliere/Brigati. Bruce Eder, writing for AllMusic, rates Groovin as the Rascals' best, noting the record's soulful core and innovative use of jazz and Latin instrumental arrangements.
Groovin marked the first time that the Young Rascals used outside musicians, bringing some important collaborators like Chuck Rainey, Hubert Laws, and David Brigati to augment their sound. Particularly, David Brigati also helped his brother's band in arranging vocal harmonies and singing background on many Rascals records. The band, especially Cavaliere, wanted to depart from their "singles act" label to be more like an "albums act", something that would become common to more artists at the late 1960s. The album Once Upon a Dream, released at 1968, is an example of this change, because it was the first Rascals album designed from conception as an album, rather than as a vehicle to package their singles. Once Upon a Dream also incorporated Indian music in its sound, adding Eastern instruments like sitar, tamboura, and tabla. David Brigati made a special appearance on the album, singing lead on the title track. The psychedelic "It's Wonderful" was released before the album, but its different style from their earlier singles hindered its sales, and the single only reached No. 20. The album's song "My Hawaii" became a top-of-the-charts hit in Hawaii.
The band billed themselves as the Young Rascals for the last time with the single release of "It's Wonderful"; from that point on they were known as simply The Rascals. Their first single release as the Rascals was 1968's optimistic "A Beautiful Morning", which reached No. 3. Internationally, the band was exceptionally popular in Canada, where "A Girl Like You", "How Can I Be Sure?" and "A Beautiful Morning" all reached No. 1. But they struggled in the UK, where they only twice reached the top 75, with "Groovin and "A Girl Like You".
Time Peace: The Rascals' Greatest Hits, released in mid-1968, topped the U.S. album chart and became the group's best-selling album. In the same year, "People Got to Be Free", a horn-punctuated plea for racial tolerance just months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and of Robert F. Kennedy, became their third and final U.S. No. 1 single, and their sixth and final Canadian No. 1. It was also their final U.S. Top Ten hit, although they remained a Canadian top 10 act for the next few years.
In 1969, the Rascals released the double album Freedom Suite. An album with one LP dedicated to "conventional" songs and another to instrumentals, it should have been the band's definitive change to produce more ambitious albums, according to Richie Unterberger. But Freedom Suite was their last Top 40 album, peaking at No. 17. Brigati's songwriting contributions were diminished on this album, in favor of Cavaliere's solo compositions, as well his vocals, singing lead only on two songs on Freedom Suite. Brigati's participation declined even more in later albums.