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| The first image in google's search. Fer reals, 08 09 2020 |
The Hit
Crazy Elephant came, literally, out of nowhere in 1969 with a hit that reached No. 12 on both sides of the English-speaking Atlantic Ocean, “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’.” It opens on a bass line thrumming over a marching rhythm; an electric organ comes in next, almost like horns, and the “soulful” vocals carry forward the tune with American geography for a motif. Conceptually, it borrows from The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” up to the line of owing royalties, but it’s clearly a different song…
…still pure pop confection, circa 1969, but a different song all the same.
The Rest of the Story
“Despite the single's success, however, Crazy Elephant failed to reach the charts again, instead becoming yet another interchangeable cog in the Kasenetz-Katz hit machine.”
AllMusic rarely dives all that deep into anyone, but they had to stretch Crazy Elephant’s story just to get a paragraph out of it. There isn’t a lot to add about this band, specifically, beyond a handful of names and about 15 songs.
They “Kasenatz-Katz hit machine” refers to Jerry Kasenatz and Jeffry Katz and their Super K Productions outfit that operated under the Buddah Records label - a name regular followers of this series (also, are there any?) might recognize from The Lemon Pipers’ frustration with the same label and some of the seem people. Kasenatz and Katz first met as undergrads at the University of Arizona where, reading between the lines of the sources I read, they did not major in music. When they decided to go into business as producers, the music didn’t motivate them as much as the money. Crazy Elephant came out of the “bubblegum pop” mini-genre - and I found a straight-up awesome post that interested parties can lose themselves in for, oh, a solid half-hour minimum - but they were nothing more or less than the next attempt to sell sugary pop music to a public burning out on songs about war, politics, and the Summer of Love. For anyone unfamiliar with the term “bubblegum pop,” it’s a form you’ve heard countless times over your life, only with a different name. As for its ethos:
“Power pop aims for your heart and your feet. Bubblegum aims for any part of your body it can get, as long as you buy the damn record.”
As for Crazy Elephant, specifically, the balance of the of the band came from the “Marzano-Calvert Studio Band," aka, the in-house session talent employed by Super K Productions. Only two/three members had a life before or after and outside a studio - Robert Spencer, on the mic for “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’” started with the successful doo-wop group, The Cadillacs (whattheysoundedlike ("like" is solid)), while acquaintance of the band, Kevin Godley, who only seemed to sing on “There Ain’t No Umbopo,” found later, long-term success with 10cc (wait for it...), and, finally, Kenny Cohen did back-up work with some heavies (e.g., The Eagles, Santana, Rod Stewart, and B.B King; he plays flute and sax) - the rest, honored hereafter, don’t appear to have long resumes on either side of Crazy Elephant: Bob Avery (drums; played with another Kasenatz-Katz outfit); Larry Laufer (keyboards, vocals), Hal King (…more vocals?), Ronnie Bretone (bass, but only for touring; Norman Marzano played bass on the recording of “Gimme Gimme.”
I think that’s it, honestly. The only way I can think to add something is to poke around 10cc (which I already have and…eh, so far), or around The Cadillacs, only then I wouldn’t be talking about Crazy Elephant. On the plus side, I…think I’ve publicly committed to a bubblegum pop post/history, so I’ll dig into that material a little more over the next couple weeks. But, yeah, Crazy Elephant is all done.
About the Sampler
For the ___th time running, and longer than I like, Crazy Elephant doesn’t have enough material for a sampler. They only put out the one, eponymous album. Moreover, it sounds like an “oh shit, that worked? What haven’t we recorded yet?” assortment of songs - e.g., an over-dramatic, organ-fronted reworking of “Respect” starts the album and passes from there to “Gimme Gimme” by way of music that sounds more (e.g., “Sunshine, Red Wine” and “My Baby (Honey Pie)”) or less (e.g., “Love Strike,” which borrows from Cream (wait for the bridge), or “Come to the Farm”…which I’m still working on) like their singular hit. Crazy Elephant was less a band with a sound, vision or sensibility, in other words, than a production team running after hit singles with a divining rod…
…that said, kicking off the album with Crazy Elephant’s grueling spin on (probably) Aretha Franklin’s respect makes a good stand-in for the broad shakiness of the concept…wait, have I not mentioned they were originally marketed as a group of Welsh coal miners?
Crazy Elephant came, literally, out of nowhere in 1969 with a hit that reached No. 12 on both sides of the English-speaking Atlantic Ocean, “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’.” It opens on a bass line thrumming over a marching rhythm; an electric organ comes in next, almost like horns, and the “soulful” vocals carry forward the tune with American geography for a motif. Conceptually, it borrows from The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” up to the line of owing royalties, but it’s clearly a different song…
…still pure pop confection, circa 1969, but a different song all the same.
The Rest of the Story
“Despite the single's success, however, Crazy Elephant failed to reach the charts again, instead becoming yet another interchangeable cog in the Kasenetz-Katz hit machine.”
AllMusic rarely dives all that deep into anyone, but they had to stretch Crazy Elephant’s story just to get a paragraph out of it. There isn’t a lot to add about this band, specifically, beyond a handful of names and about 15 songs.
They “Kasenatz-Katz hit machine” refers to Jerry Kasenatz and Jeffry Katz and their Super K Productions outfit that operated under the Buddah Records label - a name regular followers of this series (also, are there any?) might recognize from The Lemon Pipers’ frustration with the same label and some of the seem people. Kasenatz and Katz first met as undergrads at the University of Arizona where, reading between the lines of the sources I read, they did not major in music. When they decided to go into business as producers, the music didn’t motivate them as much as the money. Crazy Elephant came out of the “bubblegum pop” mini-genre - and I found a straight-up awesome post that interested parties can lose themselves in for, oh, a solid half-hour minimum - but they were nothing more or less than the next attempt to sell sugary pop music to a public burning out on songs about war, politics, and the Summer of Love. For anyone unfamiliar with the term “bubblegum pop,” it’s a form you’ve heard countless times over your life, only with a different name. As for its ethos:
“Power pop aims for your heart and your feet. Bubblegum aims for any part of your body it can get, as long as you buy the damn record.”
As for Crazy Elephant, specifically, the balance of the of the band came from the “Marzano-Calvert Studio Band," aka, the in-house session talent employed by Super K Productions. Only two/three members had a life before or after and outside a studio - Robert Spencer, on the mic for “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’” started with the successful doo-wop group, The Cadillacs (whattheysoundedlike ("like" is solid)), while acquaintance of the band, Kevin Godley, who only seemed to sing on “There Ain’t No Umbopo,” found later, long-term success with 10cc (wait for it...), and, finally, Kenny Cohen did back-up work with some heavies (e.g., The Eagles, Santana, Rod Stewart, and B.B King; he plays flute and sax) - the rest, honored hereafter, don’t appear to have long resumes on either side of Crazy Elephant: Bob Avery (drums; played with another Kasenatz-Katz outfit); Larry Laufer (keyboards, vocals), Hal King (…more vocals?), Ronnie Bretone (bass, but only for touring; Norman Marzano played bass on the recording of “Gimme Gimme.”
I think that’s it, honestly. The only way I can think to add something is to poke around 10cc (which I already have and…eh, so far), or around The Cadillacs, only then I wouldn’t be talking about Crazy Elephant. On the plus side, I…think I’ve publicly committed to a bubblegum pop post/history, so I’ll dig into that material a little more over the next couple weeks. But, yeah, Crazy Elephant is all done.
About the Sampler
For the ___th time running, and longer than I like, Crazy Elephant doesn’t have enough material for a sampler. They only put out the one, eponymous album. Moreover, it sounds like an “oh shit, that worked? What haven’t we recorded yet?” assortment of songs - e.g., an over-dramatic, organ-fronted reworking of “Respect” starts the album and passes from there to “Gimme Gimme” by way of music that sounds more (e.g., “Sunshine, Red Wine” and “My Baby (Honey Pie)”) or less (e.g., “Love Strike,” which borrows from Cream (wait for the bridge), or “Come to the Farm”…which I’m still working on) like their singular hit. Crazy Elephant was less a band with a sound, vision or sensibility, in other words, than a production team running after hit singles with a divining rod…
…that said, kicking off the album with Crazy Elephant’s grueling spin on (probably) Aretha Franklin’s respect makes a good stand-in for the broad shakiness of the concept…wait, have I not mentioned they were originally marketed as a group of Welsh coal miners?
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