trickg

Wilmer, this is going to come out of left field, especially since I'm asking about a specific session back in about 1974, but I was curious to know if you happened to be there for it.

A friend of mine whom I play with in the party band, The New Monopoly, has an interesting past in the music business. Doug Lewis was a member of the Baltimore based bubble gum band "The Peppermint Rainbow" and they had a top 20 hit in 1969 called "Will You Be Staying After Sunday"

Doug bounced around the music business, but after the Peppermint Rainbow, he never really "made it". He got close a couple of times, and it was one of these tunes that I wanted to ask you about.

Sometime around 1974 in New York, he recorded another version of "Higher and Higher" - the Jackie Wilson tune. I've heard a recording of this session and it was killer - great arrangement, Doug sang his bootie off, and it has some fantastic horns in it too. Coincidentally, it was recorded in the same studio where Harry Chapin recorded "Cat's In The Cradle" with leftover studio time from that session.

Anyway, to finally get to my question, were you there for that session? By 1974 you were already working in New York, right?

For this particular tune, the story (as told by Doug) was that they were going to release it as a remake, but they got beat to release by about 2 weeks by someone else. This happened to him twice - he also recorded a demo to a tune the Carpenters made famous, "We've Only Just Begun".

Here is a picture of the Peppermint Rainbow Album Cover - Doug is the second from the right.

Here is a site that tells a little more about the band.
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~nostnest/trm.html

wiseone2

This one doesn't ring a bell. We did lots of dates after midnight during the seventies, I can't remember quite a few of them
Wilmer

trickg

Well, I figured it was at least worth asking.

It's funny when you think about that whole fame and "making it" thing with the music industry.

Doug was right in the thick of it - played the Ed Sullivan show, found Zsa Zsa Gabor's dog for her, shared the stage with all kinds of famous people...and it dried up on him and he's doing much the same thing that I'm doing - working a regular day job and gigging on the weekends. In fact, when compared to some of the other "stars" and hit groups from that time frame, in some ways he's doing better than they are, at least from a money per gig standpoint. New Monopoly commands top dollar in the Baltimore/DC area, even if we are only a wedding/party cover band, and that money is often better than what some of those vintage hit groups are making per gig.