EASTON, Pa. — In January 1965, popular music charts were in the midst of the British Invasion.
Less than a year earlier, The Beatles were introduced to America on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and the Top 10 singles chart was filled with British acts such as Herman's Hermits.
That's when Gary Lewis & The Playboys, led by the son of legendary comedian/actor Jerry Lewis, released its debut single, "This Diamond Ring."
The song zoomed to No. 1. The group's second single, "Count Me In," followed a month later, and reached No. 2 when every other song in the Top 10 was a British act.
Gary Lewis & The Playboys ended up having seven consecutive Top 10 hits in the 1960s — a record, shared only by The Lovin' Spoonful, that not even The Beatles could match.
Also available are $110 Lehigh Valley Public Media ConnectLive donation-level tickets that include a prime seat and a year of membership benefits with Lehigh Valley Public Media. Or, for $160, get an additional VIP experience that includes a 6 p.m. pre-show reception with heavy d'oeuvres, a meet-and-greet experience with The Lovin' Spoonful.Lehigh Valley Public Media
“It was such a thrill for me to be in music at that time because of The Beatles and The British Invasion," Lewis said in a recent phone call.
“So it was an absolute thrill for me. I just loved it that we could stay up there with all the British stuff happening.”
Gary Lewis & The Playboys and The Lovin' Spoonful will perform as part of The My Generation Tour at 7:30 p.m. March 13 at Easton's State Theatre.
Joining them will be Terry Sylvester of The Hollies, one of those British groups with which they competed, and which had five Top 10 hits of their own in the 1960s.
Tickets, at $58.93-$109, remain available at the State Theatre website and the box office at 453 Northampton St., Easton.
Also available are $110 Lehigh Valley Public Media ConnectLive donation-level ticketsthat include a prime seat and a year of membership benefits with Lehigh Valley Public Media.
Or for $160, add a VIP Experience that includes a 6 p.m. pre-show reception with heavy hors d'oeuvres in the Gallery event space, a meet-and-greet with The Lovin' Spoonful.
“There's an awful lot of hits on this tour," Lewis said in the call from his New York home. "Both myself and The Lovin' Spoonful both had seven Top 10 records. And Terry Sylvester of the Hollies — I mean, they had tons of hits."
'Boom, the new group in town'
Despite carrying the banner for U.S. Pop-rock during the mid-1960s, Lewis said it was the British Invasion the influenced his entry into the music world.
Though he became a drummer at 15, he said he was attending a theater arts college in Pasadena, California, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life.
"All I knew, growing up with my dad and everything, was showbiz," he said.
He had even appeared in a few of his father's movies.
“Oh yeah, yeah — little cameo roles, quick one-minute clips," he said — such as 1958's "Rock-A-Bye Baby,“ in which he played his father as a boy.
He also was to be in a scene in 1963's "The Nutty Professor," one of Jerry Lewis's most successful films, "but I was cut out of it because I was only 17, and I was sitting at a bar," he said.
"My lines were at a bar, and they said, ‘No, no, no, you can't do that.’ So I got cut out of that movie," he said.
"When I started listening to The Beatles, I said, ‘Man, that's it for me,’ because I already taught myself drums and guitar, but I had no outlet for it, you know?"Gary Lewis
"All showbiz, yeah, so I figured that that's what I knew most about. So I went to a theater arts college, just to learn and put on plays and everything. That's how we got our grades, by doing plays.
"And so I'm going through the motions and everything, and I didn't really, didn't really enjoy it, and then boom, the new group on town, The Beatles.
“And when I started listening to The Beatles, I said, ‘Man, that's it for me,’ because I already taught myself drums and guitar, but I had no outlet for it, you know?"
He said he formed the original Playboys with college classmates at that college, and "we practiced for about a year just to get a repertoire to see if we had any chops at all."
The group auditioned for Disneyland, and got the job, but didn't use his name or reveal his family ties, "because I wanted to see if we had it."
"There were 10 other acts, and ... we got the job," he said. "That's where our producer saw us. And it started that way.”
'Wonderful, wonderful'
Gary Lewis & The Playboys was playing its first paying gig at Disneyland in June, July and August of 1964 when producer Snuff Garrett "was out at the park with his family," Lewis said.
"Afterwards, he came backstage and said, gave me his card and said, ‘You guys sound pretty good. I'd like to talk to you about doing some recording,’" he said.
“Now, isn't that the way everybody wishes it would happen?"
At Liberty Records, Lewis said, Garrett "pulled out a drawer full of demos."
"He said, 'I got a song for you that I think will be great for you," Lewis said. "'It's called ‘This Diamond Ring.’ I offered it to The Drifters, and they turned it down. And then he offered it to Bobby V and he turned it down.'
“And when he offered it to me, it didn't matter what the song was, I said, ‘Yes, I'll do it.’"
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician Leon Russel arranged the song, and "he tailor-made it to me — the sound we had. And, you know, the rest is history. I mean, it was just a wonderful, wonderful song."
In six weeks, the song went to No. 1, "and Liberty Records was worried about that, because they said it went up so fast that we might not get a lot of sales. But that was wrong."
"This Diamond Ring" sold six times gold, "which is wonderful, wonderful,” Lewis said.
'When did you do this?'
That success, Lewis said, also is when his famous father first learned of his career.
“He had nothing to do with my career whatsoever, because my mom was the one who financed everything for us — rehearsal, rehearsal halls, all the instruments, microphones," he said.
“And she said, 'Don't tell your dad anything about this, because if this fails, I have to come up with an excuse as to where this money went,’" he said with a laugh.
"So I said, ‘Fine,' and I wasn't worried about my dad listening to rock ‘n’ roll radio, because he never did, ever, ever. So there's no way he could have known.
“So when ‘Diamond Ring’ went to number one and sold a million records, I brought him the first gold record at Paramount Studios.
"He saw me come in, and he shut down his shooting, whatever movie it was, and I gave him the gold record.
“And he looked at me and he said, ‘When did you do this?’
"I said, ‘Man, we've been doing it for like, a year and a half already, you know? And my mom said, ‘OK, now, you can tell him.’ So that's why I brought them the gold record."
The song eventually was featured in the 1965 Jerry Lewis film "The Family Jewels."
“He was an airplane pilot [in the film], and the music was going on and everything on the plane, and the ladies say, ‘Captain, captain, can you turn that music down? We can't even hear ourselves talk.’
“And he says, ‘Sure. And he opens this door, boom, and we're all stuffed in there playing. You know, now that was my favorite one. That just was so, so much fun. It was all fun.
"I loved it, you know, especially because I had my own career."
'That's it!'
Garrett, the Playboys' producer, was "brilliant ... a great producer," Lewis said.
"He knew how to pick hit songs," he said. "He knew when to put them out, which is critical.
"Like, if the Beatles came out with a new tune, he wouldn't release anything by me. He'd wait three or four weeks, you know, and then put it out.
“As far as picking hit records, I couldn't believe it. He picked five of the seven from demos submitted into Liberty records, and the other two, myself and Leon Russell wrote together.”
"Count Me In" was released just two months after "This Diamond Ring."
“We were in the studio one day; we started at 10 in the morning, and we went all day and most of the night into the early hours," Lewis said.
"We recorded four songs, and my producer says, ‘You know, I don't like any of them for a single.'
“And then all of a sudden, a guy named an Glenn Dee Hardin [a piano player and arranger who performed and recorded with Orbison, Elvis, Ricky Nelson and others] ran in at about four in the morning and said, ‘I just finished this tune. Listen to it.’
“And he played it ... and Snuffy said, ‘That's it! You guys go in the studio. We're going to do it.’
"I said, ‘Now we're going to do it?’ And he said, ‘Some of the best records come when the groups are tired.’
“I didn't question him, you know, because he told me, he said, ‘I have to be in complete control of this whole thing.’ And I said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ What did I know? I was 19.
"And of course, he was right, so that that makes it easier to take, right?"
When the song went to No. 2, Lewis said, "Oh my gosh, I was so wildly crazy because two big hits in a row.
"And then something Garrett told me. He said, ‘You better calm down,' you know? He said, ‘You know how many one- and two-hit artists there are in the world?’
“He said, ‘We got to be calm, concentrate on getting three and four, and then maybe we'll be on our way, you know. And so he brought us back down to earth. And that was an excellent move.”
A gift for his father, and 'Elvis did it'
Before 1965 was over, Gary Lewis & The Playboys had hits including "She's Just My Style" and "Save Your Heart for Me."
But perhaps the most poignant hit was "Everybody Loves a Clown," which Lewis wrote for his comedian father.
"When I started writing it, I was just going to write a couple of verses, like a little novelty number, and just give it to him on his birthday," he said.
“But I kept writing, and it kept sounding better and better to me. And at the end, I decided, well, I'm going to keep this tune. So I gave my dad a real nice card.”
“It affected my career very badly," Lewis said. "When I came back out of the Army in ‘68, I said to my producer, ‘Come on, let's, let's get back in the studio, you know? I thought I could just pick up where I left off."Gary Lewis, about serving in the Vietnam War
Gary Lewis & The Playboys played his father's annual telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association "every year, for about 20 years.
"The first one we did was 1965 when it was, when it was coming out of New York,” and they even played the last one in 2010.
At the height of the band's popularity, Lewis got his draft notice for the Vietnam War, an honored it with two years of service, as Elvis Presley had before him.
“The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Elvis did it. I'm doing it,'" he said. "You know, that's all there was to it.
"And everybody was saying, your dad could have got you out of that, but, but how would I feel about myself afterwards?
“You know, I was young, but I still had those kind of brains to think about that stuff. I don't want to do that. I went. I just went.”
But after the two-year hiatus, the hits stopped coming.
“It affected my career very badly," Lewis said. "When I came back out of the Army in ‘68, I said to my producer, ‘Come on, let's, let's get back in the studio, you know? I thought I could just pick up where I left off.
“And he says, ‘Well, I mean, we can, but, you know, there's new people out here, like Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin and The Doors, and they're pretty good.’
“So I said, ‘Well, let's get back in the studio before they get popular.' And we did. We went back in the studio. We had two more hits — we did cover singles of ‘Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain’ and a new version of ‘Sealed with a Kiss’ by Brian Hyland," in 1968 that was his last Top 20 hit.
'This is really good music'
Sixty years after his amazing chart run, Lewis looks back fondly on the songs.
"I think it was wonderful music," he said. "And it was at a time that we had to be good. I mean, I didn't think about that, you know, back then, but we did have to be good.
"I love the songs. And people actually say to me, ‘Oh, you know, you must be sick and tired of playing these songs.’ Are you crazy? Look what it did for me, you know?
“And the young people always compliment me and say, ‘This is really good music.' They say, ‘I don't like what's happening today.’ You know, I say, ‘Good for you.’”Gary Lewis
"Plus, every time I do those songs, I have a great memory in my head.”
Lewis said he's constantly amazed that when he plays the songs on The My Generation Tour, “it's wonderful because I'm seeing the crowd smile, they're mouthing the words right along with me."
“And if they're mouthing the words along with me, those songs are embedded in their brains, you know. And that's a tremendous compliment when they're mouthing the words with me.
“The fans are the ones that put me wherever I am, and that's why I give back to them. We sign things for them after the shows and just meet them and all that.
"The truth of the matter is that we actually play to three generations — because we're still playing to the people who liked us in the ‘60s, and they bring their kids, who also have kids that they bring.
“And the young people always compliment me and say, ‘This is really good music.' They say, ‘I don't like what's happening today.’ You know, I say, ‘Good for you.’”
