Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle (1966)

As I mentioned The Cyrkle in John Simon's album, I picked up The Cyrkle's Red Rubber Ball today!

Don Dannemann and Tom Dawes met at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and formed a band called Rhondells, and Brian Epstein, The Beatle's manager at that time, found them and that led to their contract with Brian Epstein's NEMS Enterprise in 1966.

They were renamed as The Cyrkle (and it is said that John Lennon provided them with their unique spelling of their new name!), and released their debut album called Red Rubber Ball.

Tom Dawes toured as a bassist of Simon & Garfunkel's band, so it is said that Paul Simon gave him a song "Red Rubber Band" penned by Paul Simon and The Seeker's Bruce Woodley.

This debut album was produced by John Simon as I mentioned before, and this was released from Columbia and became the first hit for both The Cyrkle and John Simon. 

Red Rubber Ball reached No.2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Paul Simon also recorded this as well as Simon & Garfunkel. They also covered Simon & Garfunkel's "Cloudy."

This album has one more hit song called "Turn-Down Day," which wasn't written by them, but this is a classic soft rock tune.

Except "Red Rubber Ball," "Turn-Down Day" and "Bony Moronie," most of the songs are their original songs. 

Since their manager was Brian Epstein, they became an opening act of The Beatles during their US tour! They released their second album in late 1966, and a year after Epstein died, they broke up.  
By the way, Dawes produced Foghat's Rock & Roll and Energized.

I've listened to only this album, but their music is like The Youngbloods in my opinion! They were both active in the late 60's, but The Cyrkle was more soft rock than The Youngbloods (you can understand what I mean if you know The Youngbloods before lol). I think I'll wirte about The Youngbloods later!