I
am sending MP3's
via separate e-mail. I have DSL and file size is not
a problem, but I don't know if either of you have dial-up, so I'll
send them separately just in case that you do. "While
We Were Dancin'" and "My Girl" were recorded in Jack
Vallatti's basement in Middletown. A quick guess would be circa
1964 when we were calling ourselves The DuValles. These
have severe surface noise and hum, so I had to crank up the
processing quite a bit. The noise factor is pretty bad. I had no
mixer at that time, so I fashioned two mics together by lashing coax to
connect them.
About
18 to 24 months separates the DuValles and Intention recordings and
demonstrates a tremendous growth in the group's development and also
shows the advanced equipment that Frank Virtue utilized,
verses the garage band recording technology. While
Jack's interpretation of "My Girl" leaves something
to be desired, we all matured rapidly into a very tight group
in the next year or so following these recordings.
While
Denny is familiar with all of this, I recently e-mailed him
last week and volunteered to assist in filling in the history,
if you would like my input. I was initially the group's first
manager, then joined the band on keyboard replacing Corey.
I briefly used Corey's Hammond Extravoice that had a speaker
mounted in an old TV set, but soon purchased a B-3 w/ Leslie. The
photo was taken around 1964 when we were between guitar players
(between Runyon and George Sweeney, I believe). The members from
front to back are: Greg Coates (Fender bass), Jack Vallatti (alto,
alternate lead), Brian Humble (lead, alternate alto), yours
truly (keyboard), Rick Smith (drums), Dennis Brennan (vocal tenor)
and Ron Brennan (vocal bass). Denny's brother Ron had recently joined
us from another Middletown group, The Exciting Invictas.
My
first recollection of the initial formation of the
DuValles was at Rick Smith's house. Most of us were about
15 years old. Most of the original group members harmonized to
songs like "Little Girl of Mine" by the Cleftones and
"Just Two Kind of People" by Little Anthony, which were
both included in the group's initial itinerary of
songs. I was a horrible singer, trying to fake my way through a
dramatic interpretation of "Valerie" by Jackie & the
Starlights, and found myself relegated to manager. Within a
fairly short amount of time after that meeting, instrumentation
of guitar, organ and drums accompanied the four singers and the
group initially performed at friend's parties.
I'll
have to think about the logical order in filling in the
rest between there and Frank Virtue's place. Would love to see what
you have thus far ---
