Fantastic Baggys
BOB MYMAN - P.F. SLOAN - STEVE BARRI - JERRY CARGMAN
THE STORY
The Fantastic Baggys' story begins with two underpaid Los Angeles songwriters and ends with some of the most vibrant surf recordings ever.
In late 1963, Phil (P.F.) Sloan (just out of high school) and Steve Barri (twentysomething and married) spent sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, writing together at their Screen Gems office. Although they'd had some success between them, their big break as a duo came when they were invited to write for one of Screen Gems' recording acts, Jan & Dean.
Sloan and Barri responded to the call with a slew of self-produced demos. When Jan & Dean heard them, they liked both the songs and the singers. Sloan and Barri soon became Jan & Dean's favored backing vocalists. They can be heard on dozens of the duo's recordings, including "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena", which prominently features Sloan's falsetto.
Lou Adler, Jan & Dean's manager, recognized Sloan and Barri's talent and took them under his wing, securing them a contract with Liberty Records' Imperial off shoot. The new duo was originally named simply the Baggys, after the shorts favored by surfers. Their name was completed by none other than Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones connection came via Adler, who was friends with manager Andrew Loog Oldham.
Adler played some Baggys demos for Oldham and Jagger. Upon hearing them, Oldham asked Jagger, "What do you think of the Baggys?" Jagger responded with facetious wit: "Fantastic."
In the spring of 1964, the Fantastic Baggys began recording their album, "Tell ‘em I’m surfin’". Sloan recalls today that he and Barri were by that point successful enough as songwriters that they viewed the Baggys as more of a side project. While that lack of seriousness meant that the songs sometimes didn't get the full production treatment they deserved, it had a positive effect as well. The lack of outside pressures made their music sound refreshingly natural, allowing the Baggys' creative sensibilities and campy sense of humor to shine through.
Since the Fantastic Baggys were an untested quantity, Sloan and Barri did not always reserve their best songs for themselves. Songs like "Summer Means Fun" were first offered to Jan & Dean, Bruce and Terry, and other acts whose records had a better chance of selling. Since Jan & Dean were the Baggys' labelmates, the two groups often shared backing tracks, with the Baggys laying their own vocals over a track originally recorded by Jan & Dean, and vice versa. The Baggys also continued to sing backup for Jan & Dean while pursuing their own career. Phil Sloan usually handled the Fantastic Baggys' falsetto, alto, and bass parts, while Steve Barri sang tenor harmony. Their vocals were double-tracked even when they were backing Jan & Dean, as anyone who's heard their barbershop harmonies on "The Anaheim, Azusa, & Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review, and Timing Association" will attest.
While Steve Barri' loved the water, and Phil Sloan owned a Boogie board, neither of them was part of the surf culture. How, then, did they learn the terminology enabling them to write songs like "Big Gun Board" and "This Little Woody"? Sloan credits one of his former classmates, a wave-hungry drummer, with providing spiritual and lyrical inspiration: "Bob Myman was one of the founding fathers of the Fantastic Baggys. In high school, while I took two years of Spanish, he took two years of surfer lingo." Similar experiences inspired "When Surfers Rule". "There were a few surfers in my high school," Sloan recalls, "I used to hang out a little with them and they used to say, 'This is what it's gonna be like when everyone becomes a surfer.' The sign of the times in the boys' bathroom was 'Surfers Rule'."
As Sloan explains it, the Fantastic Baggys were an attitude more than they were a group. Anyone, he says, can be a spiritual Baggy. Although Sloan hasn't waxed up his board in a while, when discussing the Baggys he magically timewarps back to his younger and zanier years. When confronted with the lyrics of "Alone On The Beach" ("I couldn't wait for summer / To go surfin' with the guys every day / But I never knew until I met you / All the fun I could have when the guys go away"), he responds with tongue firmly in cheek: "The group was basically homosexual. When Imperial told us that we were falling short in the female market, then, just to help get our songs out there, we started experimenting with girls. It was purely mercenary, just to boost our sales."
Also in the humor department was the surprise tacked on the end of "Surfin's Back Again" - "Surf Impersonations". Sloan and Barri improvised them on the spot, doing both well-known personalities and music-biz insiders. Who's doing which is anyone's guess, but Sloan admits that the on-spot Elvis and Lou Adler impressions were his truly.
Shortly after the Fantastic Baggys' version of "Surfin' Craze” appeared, a soundalike group called Willie And The Wheels appeared on Lou Adler's Dunhill label with virtually the same song, only rewritten as "Skateboard Craze". As followers of the Fantastic Baggys can guess, Willie And The Wheels were really the Baggys in disguise. Sloan laughingly recalls how Adler was so fond of that particular song that he endlessly urged them to re-record it. "If Lou Adler had his way, the world would only have one record, and it would be "Surfin' Craze", and it would be re-recorded endlessly by different groups under different names."
While the exact reasons for the commercial failure of "Tell ‘em I’m Surfin'" are a mystery, there is no doubt that July of 1964 was more than a little late for a surf album. By then, with the British Invasion in full force, even the biggest surf groups were struggling for ways to change and update their sound.
The one place where "Tell 'em I’m Surfin'" did extremely well was in South Africa, where it was one of the hottest sellers. Upon the album's success, the South African heads of Imperial were so eager to issue new Baggys albums that, when none were forthcoming, they created their own. Two additional "Fantastic Baggys" albums came out in South Africa, consisting mostly of songs by a like-named South African group, with a few leftover cuts by the real Baggys.
"Save Your Sundays For Surfin"' was recorded at the same time as the "Tell ‘em I’m Surfin'" album. Why it was not included on the LP is unknown.
The single "Anywhere The Girls Are" b/w "Debbie Be True” came out in the autumn of 1964, when the Fantastic Baggys were beginning to venture away from surf. "Anywhere The Girls Are" sported a daring, pre-garage guitar sound, of which Sloan is justifiably proud: "That was a Fender Jazzmaster going through a broken Gibson amp. That wasn't an actual fuzztone 'cause there wasn't any at that time." Twenty-five years later, New York surf-rockers the Dragsters unearthed the song and gave it a Sloan-approved treatment on their album, "Stoked".
“Move Out Little Mustang" was originally issued on Imperial as a single by the Rally-Packs, who were actually the Fantastic Baggys in disguise again. During the two years that Sloan and Barri recorded together, they masqueraded as countless different studio groups on as many different labels. They were the Streetcleaners, the Lifeguards, Philip & Stephen, and many others. Their final incarnation was as the Grass Roots, when they scored their only hit as recording artists with "Where Were You When I Needed You". After that, they decided to stick to producing and songwriting, recruiting the now-famous Grass Roots lineup to carry on the group's name. Both "Move Out Little Mustang" and its B-side, "Bucket Seats", appeared on Jan & Dean's album "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena", although "Bucket Seats" was retitled "Old Ladies Seldom Power Shift". Oddly, Jan & Dean didn't lay their own vocals onto "Move Out Little Mustang", leaving the song as it was. Although Sloan doesn't recall getting paid for the use of the Baggys recording on Jan & Dean's album, he says he didn't mind. Reverting to Baggy mode, he explains, "The Baggys' creed was: no lawyers, no money, just music. So if brother surfers wanted to use our tracks or our songs or our music, that was fine."
"Hot Rod USA" (written by Bobby Darin, along with Terry Melcher of Bruce & Terry) and "(Goes To Show) Just How Wrong You Can Be" both appeared on the second South African "Fantastic Baggys" album, "Ride The Wild Surf".
Although the Fantastic Baggys never added their vocals to "Horace The Swingin' School-Bus Driver", Jan & Dean sang it on "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" LP.
"My Heart Is An Open Book" is the only song the Baggys covered that wasn't written by someone in their own circle. Co-written by Hal David before he connected with Burt Bacharach, it was originally a hit by Carl Dobkins, Jr. in 1959.
The Fantastic Baggys' last A-side was “It was I”, a cover of the Skip and Flip hit, written by Gary "Flip" Paxton. Steve Barri knew Paxton and suggested the song to P. F. Sloan. While Sloan doesn't dislike the recording, he wasn't entirely satisfied with it. "That was Steve's production," he says. "I wanted it to have more punch, but he wanted it to be sweeter."
Sloan recalls why the duo made the unusual choice of re-recording "This Little Woody" in late-April of 1965, long after the popularity of surf and hot rod songs had peaked. Although it is a funny story, this time Sloan swears he's serious: "There was a Liberty board meeting, and (Iabel president) Philip Kaff said, 'l think it's time for a new Baggys single.' And everybody said, 'Who is the Baggys?'...Then, right after we went in and re-did "This Little Woody", Kaff resigned and the single was shelved."
Phil Sloan later re-did "(Goes To Show) Just How Wrong You Can Be" on his first solo album, "Songs Of Our Times" on Dunhill Records. That song in particular, never before released in the U.S., marks the "missing link” between the light pop-rock of the Fantastic Baggys and the emotional folk-rock of the Grass Roots. lt was written at a time when Sloan's lyrics were getting deeper into both the national psyche and his own. While some critics found it hard to believe that the same man who co-wrote "Tell ‘em I’m Surfin"' could write "Eve Of Destruction" and mean it, anyone following Sloan's music could see his progression from style to substance.
Putting "Tell ‘em I’m Surfin'" in perspective, Sloan says, "Every song was a joy to write. Playing all the guitars on it was one of the best experiences I ever had in my young life, and I put everything I had into it. It's obviously inspired by some of our brother surf groups, but it wasn't done just to rip off someone else's music. lt was done with a lot of care and affection."
Before we leave our erstwhile Fantastic Baggy to surf off into the sunset, one more question remains. Considering the post-Baggy success of Barri (who is still a successful producer) and Sloan, why didn't they pool their talents for a while longer? Sloan dons his Fantastic thinking cap and concocts his reply without missing a beat: "The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Tradewinds, Ronny And The Daytonas, and a couple of other groups all got together and wrote a petition asking if the Baggys wouldn't mind retiring. It was when the rumor got out that the Baggys were doing their Picasso Blue Period; basically, the Baggys were now going to go into the essence of surfing. They said, 'We're not ready for this. Can you hold off?' So I've been holding off for about twenty years."
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Dawn Eden
