So Jeff came out to the Shakamaxon Swim Club in Scotch Plains, NJ to hear us play, and he realized we were the same group that had recorded the acetate and that we could play and that we could play well. He listened to the demo, liked what he heard, and called us up and asked, “Can I come hear you play live?” This was in the summer of ’67 and at the time we were playing at a swim club. The elderly gentleman - who was the father of Jeff Katz - said, “Well, let’s get them all together,” and, soon, the acetate got into the hands of Jeff Katz of of Kasenetz and Katz. Butch and this elderly gentleman got into frequent discussions and eventually the gentleman said, “You know, my son is a record producer who just had a couple of hits,” and Butch said, “Well, guess what? My friend’s got this band and they just recorded this four-song demo and they’re fabulous.” Butch was a counter person who would ham it up with the customers - when he would take orders, he would often chat with the people. Spotlight Central: How did that acetate demo lead to a recording contract?įrank Jeckell: Pat Karwan had a very good friend, Butch, who worked at a local luncheonette called Father & Son. The three of us teamed up with Floyd Marcus on drums and Pat Karwan on lead guitar and formed the group that went on to record that acetate demo at Dick Charles and ultimately became the 1910 Fruitgum Company. We were Jeckell and the Hydes, and in September of 1967, the drummer in Jeckell and the Hydes left, and that left three of us - myself on guitar, Mark Gutkowski on electronic accordion, and Steve Mortkowitz on bass. Spotlight Central: Is this the same group that went on to cut a four-song demo at Dick Charles Recording in NYC?įrank Jeckell: Some of it. Sometimes we’d play at swim clubs, and sometimes we would play dances at high school gyms or in church basements, but certainly there weren’t any bars as we weren’t old enough to do that! We played pop songs of the day - a lot of British Invasion stuff and Beach Boys and various hit songs - and our gigs were pretty much everywhere. What kind of music did you perform and where did you play?įrank Jeckell: We were just a cover band none of us in the band at the time were writing anything. Spotlight Central: A few years later - in 1965 - you founded the group, Jeckell and the Hydes, a high school garage band. My father paid him $25 for it, and I began playing it when I was 14. And I never got around to taking up the guitar until a lot of years later when one of my guitar-playing uncles came back from the service in Germany in 1960 and brought back a guitar which I ended up procuring. So I grew up with that type of music around me and I wanted to do what they did, but my father said, “No, I played accordion and your grandfather played accordion - you need to play accordion.” So I took accordion lessons for about a year when I was about eight years old until I convinced my parents that I wasn’t interested and they let me quit. In fact, I was coerced into taking accordion lessons when I was eight years old, which I did not want to do, because many of my aunts and uncles - my father’s brothers and sisters - played guitar and sang country and western music in the ’50s when I was a youngster.
My grandfather played accordion for fun and my father played a little bit of accordion for fun.
#1910 fruitgum co simon says professional
Spotlight Central: Did you grow up in a musical family?įrank Jeckell: Yes - not a professional musical family, but an amateur musical family. Spotlight Central recently caught up with Jeckell and asked him about his formative years, the origins of the 1910 Fruitgum Company, the group’s rise to fame, his early days touring on the road, and what he and the band have planned for the near future. By 1967, the group had signed with Buddah Records, a label which released five of their LPs and a variety of singles which became Top 40 hits including “1, 2, 3 Red Light,” “Goody Goody Gumdrops,” and “Simon Says.” The 1910 Fruitgum Company was founded in 1965 in Linden, NJ by guitarist Frank Jeckell. “Simon Says!” Spotlight on The 1910 Fruitgum Company’s Frank Jeckellīy Spotlight Central.
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