The Arbors

The Arbors should be as fondly remembered by oldies enthusiasts as the Tokens, the Association, or Harpers Bizarre -- or at least as fondly as the Lettermen or the Sandpipers. The fact that they aren't is more a function of bad luck and the sheer diversity of their sound rather than anything lacking in their music. As it is, few music groups of the 1960s experienced a more wide-ranging evolution than the Arbors, starting off in a Four Freshmen mold in the middle of the decade and covering (most effectively) songs by Bob Dylan and the Doors by its end. Two sets of brothers -- Tom and Scott Herrick from East Lansing, MI, and Ed and Fred Farran from Grand Rapids, MI -- met at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (whence their name came), and found they all loved harmony singing in the manner of the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Lo's. By 1965 they were appearing at Detroit-area country clubs, and they went to New York that same year. A single for Mercury failed, but then they cut a rather more elaborate record, "A Symphony for Susan," for a tiny label called Carney. This was later picked up by Columbia and reissued nationally on the Date label (the same imprint that the Zombies ended up on), and hit number 18 on the listings. A pair of modest soft pop efforts ("Just Let It Happen," "Graduation Day") followed. The group's prospects away from the easy listening charts were always limited in the midst of the late-'60s rock boom, but their future was hemmed in further when they were caught in the middle of a pair of musical and music business squeeze plays. In 1968, they recorded a song called "Valley of the Dolls," written in connection with (but not used in) the film of that title, and endorsed by original author Jacqueline Susann; it failed utterly in the shadow of the song...