Happy Together Tour Revisits Greatest Pop Songs of Yesteryear

Six Groups from Late 1960’s Take Audiences on Trip Down Memory Lane

By: Jeff Walker, Entertainment Writer

With over two dozen Top 40 hits including several number ones, and the biggest hit in 1969 the Happy Together tour is a non-stop musical collective celebrating some of the best songs to radiate from AM radio during the mid to late 1960’s. For over two hours six groups enthralled a near sellout crowd of mostly baby boomers on Wednesday (June 8th) night at the historic Charleston Music Hall.

While variations of the Happy Together tour has been crisscrossing across America since the mid 1980’s, over the past several years the line-up pretty much been the same featuring the original pop music family group The Cowsills, The Vogues, The Buckinghams, The Association, Gary Puckett, and hosts The Turtles. Together the half dozen groups took the audience back to the era of flower power and the ‘summer of love’.

A trio of Cowsills (Susan, Bob & Paul) kickstarted the evening opening the show with ‘The Rain, The Park, & Other Things’. Their humorous family banter easily set the tone for the cavalcade of hit songs to follow. The Cowsills got the audience joining in unison as they closed their four-song set with the chart-topping single ‘Hair’. From there on out it was a trip down memory lane for all in attendance.

The Vogues kept the hit parade moving sending out ‘Five O’clock World’ before settling into a couple of slow dance standards with ‘Turn Around Look at Me’, and ‘My Special Angel’ a song that spent two weeks atop the easy listening charts in the fall of 1968. Originally hailing for Chicago, The Buckinghams capitalized on the British Invasion scoring a string on Top 40 songs, delighting the Charleton crowd with ‘Don’t You Care’ ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’ ‘Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song)’, ‘Susan’ and their lone chart topper ‘Kind of a Drag’.

After a 15-minute intermission the remaining groups hit the stage. With 6 gold and 3 platinum records The Association are among one of the biggest vocal groups to emerge during the rock n’ roll generation. With one founding member (Jules Alexander) in tow the trio quickly took concert goers back to the days of their youth. ‘Windy’ set the tone for their singles arsenal which included ‘Along Comes Mary’, ‘Cherish’, and ‘Never My Love’. If couples were looking to rekindle romance, The Association’s slow dance set hit the mark.

79 years young, Gary Puckett enjoys embracing the moment and the audience. He offered up his own four set hit parade with ‘Lady Willpower’, ‘Over You’, ‘This Girl is a Woman Now’, and his biggest hit overall ‘Young Girl’, spending three weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1968 failing to unseat Otis Redding’s ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay’.

The Turtles including founding member and resident funnyman Mark Volman capped off the evening with a bevy of their hits including their first Top 40 single, a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, before adding in ‘Elenore’ and ‘She’d Rather Be with Me’.

With the ever dynamic and multi-talented Ron Dante of Archies fame filling in on vocals the crowd sang along to ‘Sugar Sugar’, hands down the biggest hit of 1969. The musical party came to an end as the audience continued in unison joining the duo on ‘Happy Together’, across the board The Turtles biggest hit and lone chart topper from 1967.

If aging pop and vocal artists continue to drink from the fountain of youth, shows such as the Happy Together tour will offer older audiences an opportunity to revisit some the greatest songs to emerge during rock n’ roll era. A few of the voices may not be as strong as they were 50 years ago, but nonetheless the songs like the groups are timeless, and spending two plus hours immersed in a trip down memory lane is well worth the price of admission.

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