Giving The Cyrkle a Few Spins

The brilliant '60s American soft rock pioneers managed by Brian Epstein

In the mid-Sixties, there happened to be a short-lived trend of successful acts recording songs which celebrated the joy of goofing off. I’m referring to songs like the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine”, the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream”, Spanky and Our Gang’s “Lazy Day”, and Simon and Garfunkel’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy). Three of these numbers were hit singles and all four expressed the basic satisfaction to be had in just taking it easy. I could also add the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon” to this small list, but like with so much of Ray Davies’ song-writing at that time, it added a dimension of satirical social comment that wasn’t present in any of the other material mentioned above.

Interestingly enough, I don’t recall ever having read in either books or magazines anything about this vogue for tunes about the pure pleasure of relaxation. What’s intriguing about these hymns to slacking off is that they were released by artists who were engaged in quite the opposite. They all had their hands full recording their music, touring, and making TV and/or movie appearances, and most likely had been happy and grateful to get off the treadmill for a bit. The music biz of the era pushed its hit-makers hard. (Bob Dylan, on the edge of collapse in ‘66, had to have a motorcycle accident in order to get some much-needed time off.) Is it possible that songs like “Daydream” reflected wishes that their composers’ deeply entertained?

And perhaps that was also the case for the Cyrkle, a combo from Easton, Pennsylvania, whose second single - and top 20 hit - was their infectious 1966 ode to lazing about, “Turn-Down Day”. It’s a slightly melancholic soft rock gem from a group whose stock-in-trade was the creation of such music. I remember that in the early ‘80s I would occasionally be serenaded by “Turn-Down Day” as well as the Cyrkle’s first hit: “Red Rubber Ball”, written by Paul Simon and the Seekers’ Bruce Woodley. The latter song was, ahem, bouncy enough for my tastes when I heard it on the radio, while “Turn-Down Day” and its gentle lovely sound and three-part harmonies appealed to my ears well before I became a garage rock nut with an insatiable hunger for frantic fast ‘n’ furious fuzz pedal-powered tunage.

As with so many of these purveyors of Sixties harmony/sunshine pop, it took until the early 2000s for me to start exploring the Cyrkle’s music in some depth. And as with the recorded output of lots of these groups, what I discovered delighted me to no end. The high quality of the Cyrkle’s songs only went to prove something that I’ve emphasized here on Painted Dayglo Smiles: that there is so much more to bands which are considered one or two-hit wonders, namely a plethora of singles and album cuts guaranteed to please the listener time and time again.

The Cyrkle’s origins go back to 1961 when three guys attending Lafayette College in Easton, PA, got together to form a rock ‘n’ roll combo called the Rhondells. The students in question were Tom Dawes (vocals, guitar, bass), Don Dannemann (vocals, guitar) and Jim Maiella (drums). Dawes and Dannemann were the nucleus of what eventually became the Cyrkle. After a few years, keyboardist Earle Pickens was added to the lineup and Marty Fried took over on drums. The Rhondells might’ve gone down in history as one of thousands of frat-rock groups which never made an impact outside the region they played in were it not for an extremely lucky twist of fate.

In September ‘65, Nat Weiss, the business partner of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, caught the Rhondells in action and recommended that Eppy (as the Fab Four called Epstein) sign them. A name change was in order and it was John Lennon himself who suggested that the group be rechristened as the Cyrkle with a y and a k. Was Lennon’s idea a subtle nod in the Byrds’ direction? Perhaps. (By the way, the Turtles had considered replacing the u in their name with a y that same year.) Dawes, Dannemann and co. got a recording deal from the Columbia label, home of the Byrds as well as Paul Revere and the Raiders. The Cyrkle duly cut “Red Rubber Ball” which landed them a smash single right out of the gate.

By the way, Don Dannemann’s unfashionably short hair in this 1966 appearance on the fab teen music show Hullabaloo can be explained by the fact that he was in the U.S. Coast Guard at the time. The success of “Red Rubber Ball” gave added impetus to the release of the Cyrkle’s debut album in June ‘66 entitled - surprise! - Red Rubber Ball. Produced by John Simon who was eventually at the helm of LPs by Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Band, Red Rubber Ball features eleven numbers, many of which were composed by members of the Cyrkle. Each song is either gently melodic or gently rocking, and a folk rock flavor is also found on some of the album’s material. Along with the title track, "Why Can't You Give Me What I Want", "There's a Fire in the Fireplace", and "Money to Burn" particularly stand out as memorable songs.

I shouldn’t neglect, however, to provide a link to the lovely “Turn-Down Day” which became the group’s second and, alas, final hit, making it to #16 in the U.S. as well as here in Canada. Like “Red Rubber Ball”, “Turn-Down Day” was not a Cyrkle original, but no matter, as they did a outstanding job making the song their own. Here they are as a quartet this time, on a TV variety series happily miming to their wistful hit single.

Brian Epstein’s management of the Cyrkle resulted in the band getting the opportunity to open for the Beatles on their final tour in August ‘66. The other acts supporting Ringo, John, Paul, and George on this fourteen city marathon were garage greats the Remains, girl group extraordinaire the Ronettes, and soul singer Bobby Hebb whose immortal hit song “Sunny” had been released earlier that summer. Despite “Sunny” and “Turn-Down Day” getting maximum radio exposure in mid-1966, the kids attending the Beatle concerts were no doubt eager for the opening acts to be done playing in order to scream at the Beatles.

Fast forward to the end of the year and the Cyrkle were back in the studio with John Simon again on board, recording their second album known as Neon which came out in late January ‘67. I find their sophomore effort to be an improvement over their debut LP with a stronger set of songs replete with strings, woodwind, brass, and sitar on some of the tracks.

Neon kicks off with the ultra-catchy “Don’t Cry, No Fears, No Tears Coming Your Way” featuring Tom Dawes on the aforementioned sitar. It’s my favorite number on the album, penned by Dawes and Dannemann with the former on lead vocals. But Neon doesn’t stop there in delivering the soft rock goods. The beautiful “The Visit (She Was Here)” follows, a ballad sung by keyboardist Michael Losekamp who had replaced Earle Pickens somewhere down the line. Later on side one, what do we find but another excellent Paul Simon/Bruce Woodley co-write: the exquisitely downcast “I Wish You Could Be Here”. The flip side of the album contains five fine songs, the best of which is the fast-paced original ditty “Our Love Affair’s in Question”, with lead vocals by Don Danneman.

If the Cyrkle’s first album had climbed to a respectable 47th place on the Billboard charts, Neon only managed to crawl up to the 164th position by the spring of ‘67. Sadly, the single culled from the LP, “I Wish You Could Be Here”/“The Visit (She Was Here)”, didn’t result in a hit and the group never again recorded an album for Columbia. But the label wasn’t yet done with the Cyrkle. Far from it. Before dropping them, it released an additional six 45s by the combo including a promo 7” extolling the appeal of the Chevy Camaro!

These half-dozen additional Cyrkle singles saw the light of day in ‘67 and ‘68. Two of them only made it to the bottom reaches of the top 100, and the remainder didn’t chart whatsoever. But this certainly doesn’t reflect poorly on the quality of the material which includes not one but two Bee Gees covers! These are well-handled by the group, but I prefer to put the spotlight on these two tunes: the Tom Dawes composition “The Words”, which takes a jangly cue or two from the Byrds , as well as Don Dannemann’s irresistible “Where Are You Going.", the B-side of the Cyrkle’s final 45 on Columbia Records.

Despite being label-less, the Cyrkle still didn’t stop spinning as some of the tunes they recorded in ‘67 wound up becoming the soundtrack to the late 1969 adult film “The Minx”. The movie’s plot involves an all-girl espionage team of the same name working as call girls and blackmailing businessmen. I can’t vouch for this X-rated flick, never having laid eyes on it, but I can vouch for the its music composed by Dannemann and Dawes with the latter on arrangement and production duties. The Minx soundtrack album, released in 1970 on the independent jazz label Flying Dutchman, consists of the Cyrkle’s most sophisticated work and is a delight from start to finish. Of note is the album opener, “Squeeze Play” which gives both the Beatles and Brian Wilson a run for their money. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the Cyrkle’s masterpiece, but “Murray the Why”, a humorous nod in the direction of New York City radio DJ Murray the K, is utterly poptastic, as is the ballad “It’s a Lovely Game, Louise”.

This clip of the Cyrkle miming “Murray The Why” is actually an excerpt from “The Minx”.

The Minx LP is well-worth hunting down. Original copies are understandably expensive but it has been reissued a couple of times since the early 2000s. The album came out posthumously as the Cyrkle had actually split up in mid ‘68. Both Tom Dawes and Don Dannemann went on to have successful careers as jingle writers (for which they had shown promise with that Camaro song.) Dawes also continued to produce records for other acts and passed away in 2017 at the age of 64. Dannemann and Mike Losecamp got back together for the first time in years in 2016 and continue to play in a contemporary lineup of the Cyrkle that also released an album last year.

Although not as innovative as the Byrds, the Lovin’ Spoonful or Buffalo Springfield, the Cyrkle nonetheless had talent to spare and remain one of the more impressive exponents of harmony pop/rock that America had to offer at the time. And with that statement, I’ll leave you with a little something extra by the Cyrkle that you might indeed find refreshing: their nifty 1968 jingle for 7 Up soda pop! Cheers!