The Cyrkle

The Cyrkle didn't seem like much more than a two-hit wonder in 1966 when they charted with "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn Down Day." Their pleasant, upbeat folk/pop/rock sound, coupled with the fact that they got to record two complete LPs, speaks volumes about how good music was in the years 1965-1967 as even second-tier groups like this were a delight to hear. Ironically, for a group remembered for just a pair of singles, the Cyrkle were considered a promising and choice signing, and were, to different degrees, wired into the management and creative circles surrounding the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. Brooklyn-born Tom Dawes, an ex-folky who had previously played in a group called the Ironwood Knights, and Albany, NY, born Don Dannemann were both attending Lafayette College in Easton, PA, in 1961 when they decided to form a frat band called the Rhondells (not to be confused with the Rhondels, of Bill Deal & the Rhondels fame who, oddly enough, later ended up signed to a label in Pennsylvania). The Rhondells mostly played covers of current pop/rock hits by the Four Seasons and other top groups of the era, as well as basic, dance-oriented rock & roll. They were a cut above most other frat bands, however, in the care they gave to those covers, which mostly grew out of Dawes' and Dannemann's respective ears for music. Though officially the group's bassist, Dawes could also analyze the interior structure of any vocal ensemble that he heard and also began writing songs after meeting Dannemann, who was already writing songs when they met. They were good enough to play some of the better rooms in Atlantic City (long before the legalization of gambling), which was then a popular but somewhat declining East Coast resort. While playing the Alibi Lounge during the summer of 1964,...