The Young Rascals - It's Wonderful FLAC

Nineteen Fifty Six/What Is The Reason/It's Wonderful/Of Course


The Rascals (initially known as The Young Rascals) were an American rock band, formed in Garfield, New Jersey in 1965. Between 1966 and 1968 the New Jersey act reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 with nine singles, including the #1s "Good Lovin'" (1966), "Groovin'" (1967), and "People Got to Be Free" (1968), as well as big radio hits such as the much-covered "How Can I Be Sure?" (#4 1967) and "A Beautiful Morning" (#3 1968), plus another critical favorite "A Girl Like You" (#10 1967). The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

The Rascals were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2010 and also reunited in 2012 for a series of shows in New York and New Jersey. The reunion continued on in 2013 with shows on Broadway.

 Eddie Brigati (vocals), Felix Cavaliere (keyboard, vocals), Gene Cornish (guitar) and Dino Danelli (drums) started the band in Brigati and Danelli's hometown of Garfield, New Jersey. Brigati, Cavaliere, and Cornish had previously been members of Joey Dee and the Starliters. Eddie's brother, David Brigati, an original Starliter, helped arrange the vocal harmonies and sang backgrounds on many of the group's recordings (informally earning the designation as the "fifth Rascal"). When Atlantic Records signed them, they discovered that another group, Borrah Minnevitch's and Johnny Puleo's 'Harmonica Rascals', objected to their release of records under the name 'The Rascals'. To avoid conflict, manager Sid Bernstein decided to rename the group 'The Young Rascals'.

The Young Rascals' first television performance was on the program Hullabaloo on 27 February 1965 where they performed their debut single "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore". The track reached #23 in Canada and touched the lower reaches of the US charts. This modest success was followed by the US/Canada #1 single "Good Lovin'" (1966, originally recorded by Lemme B. Good & The Olympics in 1965 with much different lyrics).

 The band's songwriting team of Eddie Brigati and Cavaliere then began providing most of their songs, and the hits kept coming for two years. Their immediate follow-ups to "Good Lovin'", including "You Better Run" (1966; covered in 1980 by Pat Benatar) and "Come On Up" were only modest hits. "(I've Been) Lonely Too Long" (1967) did better, and "Groovin'"[3] (#1 US/Canada, 1967) returned them to the top of the charts. They reeled off a succession of top 20 US hits, including "A Girl Like You" (1967), "How Can I Be Sure" (1967), "It's Wonderful" (1968), and "A Beautiful Morning" (1968). The band were exceptionally popular in Canada where "A Girl Like You", "How Can I Be Sure?", and "A Beautiful Morning" all reached #1. But they struggled in the UK, where they only twice reached the top 75, with "Groovin'" (#8) and "A Girl Like You" (#35). The band would bill themselves as the Young Rascals for the last time with the single release of "It's Wonderful"; they were known thenceforwards as simply 'the Rascals'.

 Bruce Eder, writing for AllMusic, rates the band's 1967 album Groovin' as their best, noting the record's soulful core and innovative use of jazz and Latin instrumental arrangements. 1968's Once Upon A Dream was the first Rascals album designed from conception as an album, rather than as a vehicle to package their singles (eight of Groovin''s eleven songs had been released as single A or B sides, most in advance of the album). Once Upon a Dream, which peaked at #9 on the album charts, contained the single "It's Wonderful" plus many other strong songs, including "Easy Rollin'," "Rainy Day," "My World," and the title track. Perhaps understandably, the album's song "My Hawaii" became a top of the charts hit in Hawaii.

Time Peace: The Rascals' Greatest Hits, released in mid-1968, topped the U.S. album chart and became the group's best-selling album. The same year, "People Got to Be Free", a horn-punctuated plea for racial tolerance (the band was known for refusing to tour on segregated bills) in the wake of the assassinations that year of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., became their third and final U.S. #1 single, and their sixth and final Canadian #1. It was also their final U.S. Top Ten hit, although they remained a Canadian top 10 act for the next few years. 

 "A Ray of Hope", "Heaven", "See", and "Carry Me Back" were all modest U.S. hits for the band during late 1968 and 1969; all entered the top 40, but none higher than #24. In Canada, however, the Rascals were still major stars; all these songs went top ten, completing a run of 11 straight Canadian top ten hits for The Rascals from 1967 to 1969. December 1969's "Hold On" broke the run of top 40 US singles for the Rascals, stalling at #51, as well as the run of Canadian top tens, peaking at #22.

During their period of greatest celebrity, the band's influence on aspiring R & B-flavored white acts was without equal, especially in the northeastern U.S. Notable bands that incorporated (sometimes to the point of parody) the Rascals' full-on stage demeanor and energy as well as the intense, hyper-dramatic vocalizing, drumstick-spinning gyrations and heavy bottom-end rhythm also achieved some prominence: the Vagrants (featuring Leslie West, later of Mountain), and the epitome of over-the-top funky psychedelia, the Vanilla Fudge, all owed their styles to the Rascals' synthesis of show-biz and soul.

 Brigati left the group in 1970, followed by Cornish in 1971. Their last Rascals album was Search and Nearness (#198 U.S.), which featured Brigati's lead vocals on the Cornish-penned "You Don't Know" and a cover of The Box Tops' hit "The Letter", and drummer Danelli's composition "Fortunes". The only single release from the album was the spiritually themed "Glory, Glory" (#58 U.S., #40 Canada), with backing vocals by The Sweet Inspirations. Search and Nearness would be the Rascals' last album for Atlantic Records, with Cavaliere and Danelli taking the band to Columbia Records in mid-1971.

Cavaliere shifted towards more jazz- and gospel-influenced writing for the Rascals' next two albums, Peaceful World (U.S. #122) and The Island Of Real (U.S. #180), using Robert Popwell and Buzzy Feiten on bass and guitar respectively, and new singers Annie Sutton and Molly Holt. These albums didn't sell as well as their earlier work, with none of their associated singles reaching higher than #95 on the U.S. chart. Towards the end of 1970 Danny Weis (previously with Rhinoceros and Iron Butterfly) then joined as a replacement for Feiten on guitar and Feiten then again replaced Weis before the group disbanded.