Full Cyrkle: Interview with Don Dannemann – Founding member of The Cyrkle

The 60s had a lot of rock bands with purposefully misspelled names that would annoy a lot of English teachers: The Beatles, The Byrds, The Monkees, The Human Beinz, Led Zeppelin, and of course The Cyrkle. Something you might not have known is that the the first and last bands I listed here have a few connections. Like The Beatles, The Cyrkle were managed by Brian Epstein, got their name from John Lennon, and they opened for The Beatles on their very last tour in 1966 with The Remains, The Ronettes, and Bobby Hebb.

The Cyrkle were best known for their 1966 hits “Red Rubber Ball” – a Paul Simon composition and “Turn-Down Day” – considered a hippie, feel good anthem – the epitome of the sound of 60s optimism. The former peaked at #2 in the US, topped the charts in Canada, and did very well in South Africa and New Zealand. The latter was a top 20 hit in the US and Canada and famously featured the sitar.

The Cyrkle broke up in 1968 with some members moving onto day jobs while others stayed in the music industry but worked in it in other capacities, like writing jingles. Drummer Marty Fried moved to Detroit, attended law school, and worked as a bankruptcy attorney; keyboard player Earl Pickens worked as a surgeon in Gainesville, Florida; vocalist and lead guitarist Tom Dawes worked as a music producer, producing Foghat’s Rock & Roll and Energized, and as a jingle composer – his most famous work being the “plop-plop, fizz-fizz, oh what a relief it is!” jingle for Alka-Seltzer; and Don Dannemann worked as a jingle writer too, writing jingles for big brands like Continental Airlines, Swanson TV dinners, and 7 Up.

In most recent news, The Cyrkle recently released a new album called Revival, which essentially was made to be the album that they would have released next had they not broken up in 1968. Some must-listens from the album include a new cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”, their re-recordings of “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn-Down Day”, and the autobiographical “We Thought We Could Fly”.

We’re incredibly lucky to have Don Dannemann of The Cyrkle with us to talk about his story as a musician and tell The Cyrkle’s story from their beginnings in the early 60s to the present day, an album release and a performance on the Flower Power Cruise. This interview will be a bit different from other interviews, but I think you’ll like it. Instead of the usual format where I ask a bunch of questions, I’ll organise it into different headings since the interview was pretty much a linear telling of the Cyrkle’s story in Don’s own words. Keep reading, you’re in for a treat!

On the latest album, Revival:

Don Dannemann: We were approached at one of our concerts by a fella named Daniel Coston and he came up to us and we didn’t know him and he said, “My name is Daniel Coston. I’m a photographer and I think you guys are really great. Here are all the pictures I’ve taken,” He took really good pictures and we used them and he lets us use them and then over time as we got to know him he suggested, “I think you guys need to do an album and I think the album should be kind of along the lines of, what if you didn’t break up, what would the next album be.” And we thought about it and I actually was not keen on doing it, but the other guys all wanted to do it so I went along with it, okay.

Alright, so what should we record? Well, the first thing that we thought to record was, let’s do a new recording of “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn-Down Day” and this was kinda interesting for me because I thought, easy enough, we know how to play it. So I live in Middletown, Delaware but the rest of the band lives in the Columbus, Ohio area and so I flew in and we spent some time in the studio and “Red Rubber Ball”, if you know it, it’s fairly simple to play. So we played and we thought, fine we played it, we sang it, we gave it to the engineer, who’s a very good engineer and we let him mix it. And when he sent it to me, I have a studio in my basement at home, he sent it to me and it was like, ‘Oh my god, this is not good!’ And it wasn’t like it was anybody’s fault it wasn’t good, it’s just, if you’re gonna try and replicate a song that’s already been recorded, because what we wanted was make it sound like the original, but a modern recording. This basically wasn’t good. And I thought, ‘Oh my god, what do we have to do?’ And I realised there are so many little nitpicky things that if you want to reproduce the sound of something that already exists, just an example, the lead guitar, it was played correctly, I played it. (Goes into the guitar riff) And it just didn’t sound right. It was just wrong. I went back and forth trying to play with the sound, replaying it with a different amplifier, replaying it with a different guitar, just trying to get the sound. And we went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And we did the same thing with the organ. (Goes into the organ riff) Didn’t sound right. Played around with the organ, get the sound right. There were a couple of guitars missing that I hadn’t thought about in a while. There was something about the tambourine that wasn’t right. Our drummer Scott Langley, he realised, you know what, the tambourine probably was a tambourine that had a drum, it was almost like a drum, it had a skin on it. And so we fixed that. That’s kind of the example of recording that.

Then we did “Turn-Down Day”. Similar, we had to fine-tune the sounds and I take great pride in that we just got off the Flower Power Cruise, it’s a cruise with a whole bunch of 60s artists and everybody there, all the passengers are there for the music. One of the things we did is we held an album release party. There must have been 400 people in the room and we’re basically playing cuts of the album and discussing it. And when we played and discussed the “Red Rubber Ball” recording of it, we mentioned we wanted it to sound close to the original and so we played it and I am so thrilled and honoured to tell you that it came on and everybody applauded, especially when the vocal came on because knock on wood, I’m blessed to still sound pretty much like I sounded when I was 23 years old and I’m now 80, still hanging in there. Wow!

Don Dannemann’s childhood, influences, and life pre-Cyrkle

Don Dannemann: When I was 10 months old, my mom told me when she was diapering me, she hummed the song “Little Brown Jug” and I hummed it back to her. So obviously, I was kinda musical.

Anyway, fast forward to, let’s call it late grade school/early junior high, I had some piano lessons, but when rock and roll came about I was blown away. Up until that point my mom used to listen to classical radio all the time. I listened to it, I kinda got it. We listened to pop radio in the car sometimes when we were on a family trip and I still remember the song Rosemary Clooney’s “This Ole House”. It was kinda before rock and roll where it came on and I was able to harmonise to it, out of the blue I started singing the harmony to it, I was so thrilled to do that.

But the thing that really started me off into, wow I think I wanna do music and I want to be music something was in 1955, I’m playing around with my new transistor radio that I got for my birthday and I’m listening to Alan Freed’s Rock and Roll show. For those of you who don’t know, Alan Freed was the original rock and roll DJ that actually coined the term “rock and roll”. I’m in New York on our back porch in Brooklyn listening to Alan Freed starting to play rock and roll. The first song that came on was a doo-wop song called “A Story Untold” by The Nutmegs and I heard this and if you hadn’t heard rock and roll, which of course nobody had at that point, it blew me away. It’s like oh my god that’s me. I wanna do that. So that started me out. I had some piano lessons, I could play (goes into a basic song people learn when playing the piano).

In junior high, I got a guitar and it was very influenced of course by Elvis, it just seemed so cool to hold a guitar and play it. At a certain point, I think it might have been in eighth grade, I got my second tape recorder and at that time, of course, there’s no computers, no music studio at home. What I did is I recorded the song “In the Still of the Night” (goes into the song). I did the first harmony part into the first tape recorder, I put my mouth next to the speakers of that first tape recorder and then I put the mic in front of me in front of the second take recorder and sang along the harmony part. I did it back and forth a couple of times and basically I was correctly doing what we call overdubbing and I had basically a full overdubbed recording of “In the Still of the Night”. It sounded awful because it was very noisy and hissy and all, but it was correct. And that got me started in singing and wanting to record and all of that.

I played a bit in high school, I had a guitar, I had an amp. And a friend of mine next door who was in a band asked me one day. He said, ‘Hey, the guitar player in our band, his amp broke. Would you mind if we borrowed your amp?’ And my mom said, ‘Hey Don, tell them they can borrow the amp, but you want to play when they take a break.’ Okay, so I did that and they took a break and I started playing when they took a break, it was a high school dance and I was amazed at the reaction because I was playing like current rock and roll stuff: Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, some doo-wop songs. And I remember the look on people’s faces when they heard this and they all got up and started to dance. It was like this huge success. So I knew I could do that.

Now moving on, so I played in a small band in high school and when I got to college, I remember thinking, ‘I guess rock and roll is over’ because I am now a college man and this would have been Lafayette College, 1961. I had to learn jazz, I thought I would need to know jazz, and I learnt a little bit of jazz and started listening to it. Lafayette was a big fraternity school and I still remember as a freshman where we were not allowed to be in touch with fraternities as freshmen first semester, but walking around campus on party weekends, they all had rock bands. And I thought, ‘Ahh! Rock and roll is okay, I can still do this!’ Alright, big event now. At a freshman mixer, we had a band and during the breaks of the band, a couple of guys started playing. They picked up instruments and started playing and I’m now with a new freshman friend. He said, ‘Don, you play guitar, you should play with them.’ I had my guitar. I lugged the amp down the stairs, he helped me carry the guitar. I go up [and say] ‘Hey guys, can I play with you?’ And they said yeah. By the way, that’s the lyric for one of the songs on the album that we can discuss a little later. Anyway, I started to play with them and we all knew the same songs. So we started playing, the same thing, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, doo-wop, rock and roll, that kind of thing and these guys all said, ‘We should start a band.’

Now, I was totally enthusiastic to start a band, but I had a girlfriend who was still in high school and I didn’t want to be playing in a band at party weekends, I wanted to have her up and be with her and I told them, ‘Well, I think I don’t really want to be in a band, but let’s practise for fun.’ So we did. Christmas vacation, I go home and she tells me, ‘Hey Don, I got a new boyfriend. We’re breaking up.’ I was heartbroken, but at the same time, when we got back after Christmas vacation, I told the guys, ‘Hey, if you want to really do a band now, I’m free. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore. Let’s do it!’ And so we did, we practised. Our first job, funnily enough was not at Lafayette, which is a big fraternity school with bands on party weekends. It was at Lehigh University, which is right down the road, also big fraternity school. And that started off the Rhondells, not The Cyrkle yet. The Rhondells at Lafayette College being a fraternity band.

So we became one of the hot bands on campus and in 1964 at Spring Interfraternity Weekend, where the whole school comes to a dance, we bought long hair Beatle wigs and we did a Beatles show and we were the rock band alternating with a legit orchestra that was hired. Warren Covington, the leader of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, that was the big band that was hired, he was so impressed by our Beatles show, he asked us, ‘Hey do you think you guys could join the band and play the regular stuff that we play and step out and do your rock and roll stuff?’ And we thought, well we could give it a try. So he brought us to Atlantic City, which was spring break coming up, and we tried it and it really didn’t work. It was not our style of music. So we all agreed, it was on the Steel Pier by the way in Atlantic City, for those who know that. Anyway, it didn’t work, but there we were in Atlantic City and we thought, hey let’s see if we can get a summer job at a bar. Something in Atlantic City and we ended up at the Alibi Bar on South Carolina Avenue, right off the boardwalk, I doubt it exists now, but there we were.

The big break: Meeting Brian Epstein

Don Dannemann: So we came back, school’s over, we come back for the summer. It was Tom [Dawes], Marty [Fried], and I as a trio. We played at the Alibi Bar, we played again the next year and it was the four of us. This time it was Earl [Pickens] as well, keyboard player and right at the end of the summer, when we would have broken up and gone our separate ways, a gentleman walked in and he introduces himself, ‘My name is Nat Weiss, I’m friend and partner of Beatles manager Brian Epstein and we’re forming a management company here in this country and if you want, maybe we could get something going. I think you’re very good.’ Well, we didn’t believe him, but I took a business card. Anyway, end of summer everybody’s off. I am now living in Eastchester, which is suburban New York, living at my parents’ and I’m working at my dad’s sheet metal factory. He had a small company that made products of sheet metal. Tom and Marty were still at Lafayette. Tom had a semester, Marty had a year, Earl is off in medical school – University of Chicago. We were playing still as a trio at Lafayette, I would drive out occasionally. Anyway, I’m thinking one day, ‘Why don’t I give this Nat Weiss a call?’ I mean he says he knows Brian Epstein, alright let’s try. So I give Nat a call and he remembers me, son of a gun, he immediately, ‘Oh Don! Yeah! Thank you for calling. Hey, why don’t you come into the city?’ And he gave me an address and a date and a time. ‘Come into the city and I’ll introduce you to Brian.’ ‘Really?’ I say to myself. Okay, so I drive into the city, I took a buddy of mine and it was one of those small buildings on a side street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Parked the car, we go one flight up, there’s a party, we’re standing there, he’s not there, we’re kinda shy, we’re basically, we’re just standing in the corner. Nat shows up, I go up to him. ‘Oh Don! Follow me.” I follow him downstairs and there’s a limo parked right out on the street. Now Nat, very graciously opens the door and beckons me into the limo and he sits me down and son of a gun, I’m sitting right across from Beatle manager Brian Epstein. Now, it was no doubt who I was sitting in front of, we all know, we’re huge Beatle fans and we know who he is. I have to back up for one second before I finish this moment, I have to tell you what I think of myself, the talent level of what I think of myself. What I think of myself is I think I have a pretty good light rock voice and when used properly it’s pretty good, I also think I’m a pretty decent guitar player, but I’m not Eric Clapton or some of these amazing major guitar players. I’m pretty good. Now, so I’m sitting next to Brian Epstein and I’m looking right at him and Nat introduces me as follows, ‘Brian Epstein, I’d like you to meet Don Dannemann, one of the finest musicians I know.’ So which is why I had to tell you what I think of myself, because it would sound like I’m really bragging. Alright, I’m not the finest, alright yeah I’m good but I’m not the finest. Anyway so we had a few comments back and forth and Brian who was a total gentleman, he was a nice man and I still remember him saying (imitates Brian’s accent) ‘Oh Don, Nat has spoken very highly of you and perhaps we can get something going and you stay in touch and it’s lovely to meet you.’ Anyway, so a few little comments back and forth and then Nat basically beckoned me out of the limo as nicely as he beckoned me in. Limo pulls off down the side street, disappears. And I’m standing there with my mouth open, ‘Oh my god, I just met Brian Epstein!’

So I called Tom and Marty, who are back at Lafayette and this inspired us to set up a moderate recording studio. We each had a tape recorder. We pooled our band stuff with our tape recorders and we recorded a couple of demos, which I was able to play for Nat Weiss and just as a quick aside for those of you who might remember, I suspect looking at you and your age, most of your audience maybe won’t remember this, but on November 11, 1965, the entire East Coast had a blackout [note: it appears the blackout happened on November 9] and we thought it was the Russians invading. It was like a major deal and that was the night I had the appointment with Nat Weiss. Anyway, obviously we didn’t go, we made it a few nights later. So I went up, I brought my tape recorder, I lugged it up. I was trying to wire into his stereo system when I realised, ‘Nat, I have stereo headphones. Put on the headphones. You’ll hear it better.’ And the demos were actually pretty good and Nat had never heard stereo headphones before, so if you could imagine at that time nobody heard stereo headphones, it was kind of new. So he’s hearing good demos with stereo headphones and I still remember when the music first came on, his eyes lit up and he looked up at the ceiling and I thought, ‘I think he likes it.’ So that really inspired him and that got him to get us into New York and started the whole ball rolling of we get into New York, he got us some club dates, he got us auditions, and so we ended up basically with a Columbia record contract, we signed management company with Nat and Brian with their management company Nemperor Artists is what it was called.

John Lennon dubs them The Cyrkle

Don Dannemann: Bandmate Tommy Dawes found “Red Rubber Ball” on a demo by Paul Simon. He became friendly with a fella named Barry Kornfeld who had a publishing company with Paul Simon. So we’re looking for material to record and Tommy brought in this 45 and we hear Paul Simon singing “Red Rubber Ball” just with a guitar and we thought, ‘Yeah, cute song. Let’s try that.’ And we did obviously, we recorded it and it became a huge hit. So we record “Red Rubber Ball”, we have our Columbia record contract. Oh, we were still The Rhondells from Lafayette College, we didn’t have our name yet and we all agreed we needed a new name. Nobody was coming up with anything. Brian, now we’re in the studio, and Brian comes up to me (imitates Brian Epstein’s accent) ‘Oh Don, take a look at this,’ and he hands me, it looks like a business card. I look at the business card and I see it, it says Brian Epstein on the business card. (imitates Brian Epstein’s accent) ‘No, no, no Don, turn it over,’ he says. I turn it over and I see scribbling (reads out Cyrkle slowly). Well, (imitates Brian Epstein’s accent) ‘No, no, Don,’ What am I reading? (imitates Brian Epstein’s accent) ‘Oh Don, and that’s your new name and it is The Cyrkle and notice the funny spelling: C-Y-R-K-L-E.’ And wouldn’t you know, it was John that came with up with the funny spelling. You know how John thinks, so I do this at our show when we play, ‘So ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce John Lennon gave us our name.’ And we always get an applause, it’s kinda neat to do that.

Double Life: Don enlists in the Coast Guard while The Cyrkle are at their peak

Don Dannemann: Anyway, so we recorded “Red Rubber Ball” and now we’re moving on and in February of ’66, I went into the Coast Guard Reserve and frankly it was my way of staying out of Vietnam. It was a time period, nobody wanted to go, everybody was ughh. And I had six months active duty and I was in boot camp in the Coast Guard Reserve and while in boot camp, Nat called me and we were able to like at night to occasionally get phone calls. Nat called me, ‘Hey Don, if you can get out, if you can get a pass, we have a chance to introduce “Red Rubber Ball” at a TV show called Hullaballoo,’ Which was one of the big rock and roll TV shows of the time.

Anyway, the Coast Guard was really nice to me, they actually gave me a three day pass and I went up to New York, it was actually in Brooklyn that the show was being recorded and it was kinda neat. Paul Anka was the host, Lesley Gore was on the show, and Peter and Gordon. And it was interesting that we met Peter and Gordon. Peter Asher was on this Flower Power Cruise we were just on and it was really fun seeing him after all these years. We have seen him a couple of times over the course of the years, but we had met back then.

Anyway, so we did “Red Rubber Ball”, now here’s what pilled me. We recorded “Red Rubber Ball”, I’m back at boot camp and the show is coming on the following week. It was taped and it was coming on the following week and I am praying that it comes on. The entire camp knows that one of their guys is gonna be on this show, as in me, and the whole dining room is full. The whole camp is full watching this little black and white TV and Hullabaloo comes on and I pray, ‘Oh please I hope we don’t get cut. I hope we’re on.’ And it was one of those most surreal experiences to see myself on this little black and white TV singing “Red Rubber Ball” with Tom and Marty and the whole cafeteria is erupting, ‘Yay! Wow!’ It was just an amazing, awesome experience. It was, wow!

Okay, moving on, boot camp ended and also the Coast Guard was really nice to me and allowed me to be stationed on Staten Island on a buoy tender and you wanna talk about dichotomy of life. During the day, I was a mess cook on the buoy tender scrubbing pots and pans and at night I would walk right around because we were right by the Staten Island ferry. I can walk over, take the ferry to Manhattan, go to Columbia Studios, and we would be recording at night. So I was a rocker at night, mess cook during the day. Very weird!

I constantly heard because I was in touch with Nat, “Red Rubber Ball”, which had been released and we had introduced it on Hullabaloo. He would just tell me, ‘Oh by the way, “Red Rubber Ball” just sold 25,000 copies in Atlanta.’ Another week went by ‘”Red Rubber Ball” just sold 25,000 copies in Boston.’ And I was able to get most weekends off where I would get off the buoy tender, get with the group, and we would go and we’d play and I still remember we played at a Long Island beach club and it was us and Wilson Pickett. How cool was that to play with Wilson Pickett? That was awesome because you gotta keep in mind, we were new at this so any of these rock stars that we’re meeting while doing this, we were meeting them and it’s like, ‘Oh my god we’re meeting Wilson Picket, holy cow!’

The Beatles 1966 US tour

Don Dannemann: Everybody was on the tour, all the acts, managers, press. The Beatles were behind a wall on a plane. We just had a brief meeting with Paul, but now we’re at the first show and it’s in Chicago and it was a hockey arena and so it’s long, narrow, and the stage was on one of the ends of the stadium. So the first thing is we were nervous, not about playing, but about how will they receive us. And basically when we went on they received us wonderfully, we had big cheers and it was fun and we did it. We did our show and we went off. Now, I am standing backstage and backstage in this case is open to the audience and it’s just a little bit above the stage in the stands just above the stage. I’m a little bit stage left and The Beatles now enter stage right. Now this is my perception: they come down and they look very elegant. It looked to me in that light, maybe not exactly, that they were wearing dark green velvet kinda jackets. They looked like royalty coming down. And they’re on stage, the audience is whooping and hollering and they’re playing, you can hardly hear a thing.

Just a couple of perceptions: one is I looked next to me, there was a woman, I didn’t know her and she was just crying, tears coming down her eyes, it was such an emotional moment that this intense audience, The Beatles playing were looking right down at them, and another thing is I want you to picture the backstage as The Wizard of Oz, behind the little curtain and he’s backstage and he has a big console in front of him with little buttons and each button sends a shockwave to one of the seats in the audience and he’s pushing the buttons, and what I saw were little girls just jumping out of their seats, wherever I looked: Bop! Bop! Bop! Jump! Jump! Jump! Going crazy. That was kind of what it was like.

So anyway just to continue how it was on the tour, the first actual meeting that we had with them was in Cleveland, it was a couple of concerts down and we hadn’t met them yet, but here we are. They call us in and they’re just sitting sprawled out on a couple of couches. So Don Dannemann, meet Paul McCartney, meet Ringo Starr, meet John Lennon. I ended up sort of crouching on the floor in front of George who was sitting comfortably on a couch with a little cocktail table. I had a beautiful conversation with George who turned out to be a very warm, sweet guy and he asked us, ‘Hey, tell me how did you guys get together, how did you guys get on the tour with us, he wanted to know some of our history.’ And he even shared with me, ‘You know, I gotta tell you it was only a few years ago we were a bar band from Liverpool and here we are doing this. I’m still amazed at that.’ So he was really a warm, caring, sweet guy.

Every once in a while John would come up to us and as you know, John gave us our name with the funny spelling, and he’d come up to us (imitates John) ‘So guys, have you ever learnt to spell yet?’ That was John’s comment. I still remember playing cards with Paul and Ringo and it was basically in a hotel room, hey let’s play cards. I think it was me and bandmate Tommy Dawes. We played cards and they were basically at that moment in time, they were two regular guys sitting around with a couple of other guys playing cards. They were not huge rock stars, they were just nice guys playing cards. General chit-chat. Bottom line is The Beatles were really good guys. It was really neat to tour with them.

So here’s another thing, in St Louis it was threatening rain and we were about to go on and all of a sudden they pull us, ‘Guys you can’t go on, we gotta put The Beatles on before it rains.’ Well, we understood that, it was a bummer but we understood. The Beatles went on and they finished and so we’re getting ready to get on the bus and go back to the hotel, done. ‘Hey guys, no no no, it’s not raining yet, you’re going on.’ And we look at them, you’ve got to be kidding me, you’re gonna put us on following The Beatles? Yes! So I can tell you definitively right now here in the year 2024 I can let you know that The Beatles opened for us in St Louis in 1966. And it was interesting because we were so well-rehearsed and if you’re well-rehearsed you can do your performance and pay attention to other things so I was really paying attention to the audience and what I saw was, now this was a full stadium so I don’t know if it’s 50 or 60,000 people or whatever it was. Much of the audience was slowly filing out but a really good percentage stayed and cheered and so it’s kinda interesting to me that, you know, we actually on our own, we held the attention of 15-20,000 people who stayed and cheered and that was very cool.

One more thing I can share, in the last concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, we’re backstage and we see George is walking around with a camera and we asked him, ‘George, why are you taking pictures? You don’t think there’s thousands of photos being taken here?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure if we’re gonna ever do this again. We’re getting to the point where we’re sort of tired of playing and nobody can hear us. Bad PA systems. We’re thinking to do stuff that maybe we won’t be able to reproduce in person anymore. So I just want to have some personal memories of this.’ And sure enough, Candlestick Park was their last concert. Only the rooftop thing several years later was not [an] actual regular commercial concert. They went up on the roof and played. We actually were witnessing the last concert and George was essentially sharing with us, hey, this might be the last concert. There’s a little bit of my perception of the experience on The Beatles tour.

Turn-Down Day

Don Dannemann: “Turn-Down Day” was our second recording. It was a big hit and it was written by a fella named Jerry Keller who was a rock singer actually and jazz pianist David Blume. Jerry Keller had a hit record in the 50s called “Here Comes Summer” (goes into the song), and I actually really liked that. So it was kinda cool to find this song by Jerry Keller. We heard it on a demo. Our producer John Simon in his office had stacks and stacks and stacks of 45 demo records and we would listen to them looking for material to record and he would put it on and we would give it 10 or 15 seconds. Most of those 45 went right in the trash can. And we would laugh, who’s gonna shoot to get it in the trash can?

There was something special about “Turn-Down Day” and it was very cool because I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but in recent years I went actually online to pull out other versions of “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn-Down Day” for another interview that I was doing, thinking it would be fun to play other people doing these songs. And I actually heard Jerry Keller’s demo of it and I was very proud with what we did to the demo that kinda straightened it out and really made it singable and commercial and a fun, wonderful summer song.

And I’m also remembering John Simon playing the piano (goes into the piano part of “Turn-Down Day”), that was the key instrumental signature. Bandmate Tommy Dawes, very influenced by The Beatles’ George Harrison’s sitar at the time and he actually rented a sitar, a real one, and I still remember him sitting on the floor at Columbia Studios playing around with it and what can I do and da-da-da-da. If you listen to “Turn-Down Day” the sitar part is really orchestrated nicely. It wasn’t like random sitar notes, it was actually a part that went in there. And one more thing that I’m gonna give Tommy credit for, when The Rhondells back at Lafayette, we started out no one had a bass guitar. Tommy bought a double neck guitar. It was a guitar on one neck and a bass on the other and when he was playing bass, I still remember him not playing the real bass part to songs that we would do because he fooled around and liked to play notes almost like solo bass. At first it was annoying to me, but when he played that wonderful bass part of “Turn-Down Day”, it was like oh my god, all of Tommy’s fooling around has paid off in this bass to “Turn-Down Day”. It was really cool. I feel really good. I start the song, ‘It’s much too groovy a summer’s day to waste runnin’ ’round in the city.’ And then Tommy joins me and we do the harmony and my voice with Tommy’s harmony is basically the sound of The Cyrkle and I’m very proud of that and still being able to do it.

Brian Epstein’s death in 1967: hearing about it and where do we go from here?

Don Dannemann: Well, at the time we were on the road and I remember it was of course devastating, oh my god! Brian died! But we were on the road and we were debating do we continue playing or do we have to leave and go back to the city? And we decided we can’t play, we have to stop and pay homage to Brian so we went back to the city. Of course, Nat Weiss continued managing us and he was a really nice man and he did work it, but in retrospect I think there were a few issues why we broke up in 1968. One of which, we didn’t have that wonderful influence of Brian to keep it going and the other was there was just some, if you listen to “Red Rubber Ball” and you listen to “Turn-Down Day”, they come on and you get an immediate magic to them and what happened was even though we got better in the studio, we got more knowledgeable, we did really good work. And if you listen to the Neon album, there’s some really interesting, neat stuff in that, but somehow or other that little bit of magic that is the thing that can take an otherwise really good song/recording/everything else that’s really good and take it from that to an actual hit record, that extra little bit of magic. It never quite came together that way and so the album and record sales kinda dropped off and we basically thought, okay maybe it’s time to end.

We did end though with, Nat got us this, there was a movie that a friend of Nat’s was producing, Herb Jaffey was his name, it was called Squeeze Play and Nat suggested, ‘Hey guys why don’t you do the music for this movie?’ And we did and I’ll just tell you a couple of things about it. One is the movie was, it was basically, after it got finished, everybody realised, hey this is not a good movie, and they went in and shot a couple of semi-pornographic scenes to kinda spice up the movie and they changed the name from the original name Squeeze Play to The Minx. It’s available, you can get it, and a couple of things I’ll tell you about it is that the theme song “Squeeze Play” is still the theme song, they never changed anything. It’s The Minx, but it’s “Squeeze Play”, the theme song comes on, good song. Also in the movie, we are actually in the movie as in, there are two scenes in the disco where this takes place. One is the main characters are in this disco in the afternoon and they’re chatting with each other and we’re the band just warming up in the background and there’s the night scene where everybody is dancing, all the main characters, but we’re the band so you see us and I only found this out way later that it turns out The Minx has kind of become this cult favourite. So there are people who really listen to it and it gets play and it’s kinda neat that that is still happening.

Life after The Cyrkle, writing jingles

Don Dannemann: When the band broke up, Tommy is the first one who did this and I followed him, he started a music production company and started doing jingles and I followed and we both had really nice careers and we have actually a bit in our show that I’ll do for you. I’ll kinda sing it live. We talk about how when the band broke up we both got into doing commercials and the first commercial we ever did was for a product called Great Shakes, which is the first thing I’ll sing for you. We didn’t write it or produce it. We came in and we recorded it and like many many rock bands did this [note: there are versions of the Great Shakes advert sang by The Who (talk about The Who Sell Out!), The Yardbirds (to the tune of “Over Under Sideways Down”) The Blues Magoos (to the tune of “We Ain’t Got Nothin’ Yet”), and Dusty Springfield]. So what I’m gonna sing for you now is a smattering of commercials that we were both involved in in varying ways and I’ll finish it up in a way that you’ll get a kick out of and maybe you’ll recognise some: (sings)

‘Anyplace can be a soda fountain now with Great Shakes, new Great Shakes! Shake it up with milk and make a real thick shake with Great Shakes, new Great Shakes!’

‘Standin’ up, 7up! 7up, the uncola, 7up the uncola! Standin’ up is the one on its own… boom boom boom’

‘It’s the next best thing to your good cookin’, Swanson makes it good da da da da…’

‘We’re gonna move our tail for you to make your every wish come true on Continental Airlines, we really move our tail for you! da da da da ba ba’

‘Who can you call on for better insurance, who can you call, Nationwide. Who can you count on for blanket protection and know that you’ll find peace of mind? Nationwide is on your side. Nationwide is on your side. bop ba bop ba”

(to the tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back” by The Angels) ‘The Hess truck’s back and it’s better than ever. For Christmas this year, the Hess truck’s here! Got headlights, got tail lights, it’s better than ever, for Christmas this year, the Hess truck’s here!’

(to the tune of “The Twist” by Chubby Checker) ‘Come on baby, let’s do the rim twist! Come on baby, let’s do the rim twist! How come decaffeinated coffee got great ground flavour like this, that’s the rim twist!’

So now we get an applause and then I make this announcement where I say, ‘So I just want to tell you a little bit of some of the things that go on in the advertising world and that is that very often music companies will have to actually compete with each other to write for a certain product. Like for instance they want to do a Coppertone commercial and they say you write something, you write something, you write something and the winner gets the gig and it gets on the air. So we actually beat bandmate Tommy Dawes three years in a row on Coppertone commercials and here’s one of them:’

‘Flash ’em a dark tan, flash ’em a fast tan, flash ’em a Coppertone tan. Flash ’em a Coppertone tan!’

Okay, everybody applauds. But, ladies and gentlemen, now I have to tell you, Tommy is up there in rock and roll heaven and he is laughing at us right now because he wrote the one jingle that everybody in this room knows, no holds barred. Are you ready? 1-2-3:

‘Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is! Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is!’

And that’s our commercial bit!

Being a pop singer versus writing jingles

Don Dannemann: It’s a whole different thing. When you write a jingle, you have a real assignment. You have a product and you have a particular message that you’re trying to convey and it has to take place usually in 30 seconds. So it is different. If you’re writing a pop song, I’ll give you an example, and actually this will relate to our album, this was an interesting challenge for me, I was presented with a song and I was told after listening to it, I didn’t know anything about it, it was recorded by a man named Andrew Sandoval, who was a good friend of bandmate Tommy Dawes and it was recorded in 2002. Turns out Tommy, as a good friend of Andrew, he sang all the background vocals in this song. So when I heard this I thought, ‘Wow, if I could get those background vocals I would love to take a shot at writing a new song using Tommy’s vocals.’ Now, Tommy’s the one that sang “Red Rubber Ball” with me. He does the harmony on “Red Rubber Ball”. It would be a thrill for me to write a song that honours our history and where Tommy is singing the harmony parts, like I’ll sing a lead over it, but Tommy will sing the harmony parts. And I was able with permission to get his vocals and manipulate them such that I could actually write a new song and honour him and sing along with him. Now he died in 2007 at a time when we actually had talked about reforming the band. We’re both retired and he went and died on me! I’ll just sing you the beginning lyrics of this thing, which is the history [of the band]:

‘Carry that heavy amp down the stairs, 1961. Couple of guys were singing and playing, looked like they were having fun. I asked and they said I could join them so I plugged in and started to strum. Now we were ready to give it a try. We really thought we could fly. Yeah, we thought we could fly!’

[from “We Thought We Could Fly” on Revival (2024)]

So that’s the first verse. That is exactly how The Rhondells got started, at that freshman mixer which I think I told you about earlier. I went down and started to play with them and that’s part of the song and the song ends up actually, so here’s the last verse:

‘Couple of grizzled old senior guys, 2007. You said you want to start a band but you left me for Rock and Roll Heaven, so from up there, can you give me a hand? ‘Cause I still want to sing and strum. Remembering those days when we gave it a try. We really thought we could fly. Yeah, we thought we could fly.’

And then it goes on and it fades out. In a nutshell, with some verses in between, it was honouring our history and gave me a chance to sing with him and as I wrote it, I found myself, I would choke up, I would tear up. Like oh my god, I’m writing our history and he’s gone.’ So that’s kind of an example of writing a song. Yeah, very cool.

Reunion

Don Dannemann: I played once in a while with a friend of mine, we’d just play at restaurants and cutesy stuff. There’s a band in Columbus, Ohio called The Gas Pump Jockeys and one of the bandmates of the Gas Pump Jockeys was Mike Losekamp, our keyboard player from 1966, who was on the Neon album, so he was there, he came in after “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn-Down Day” and The Beatles tour, but he was there. He came in in the fall of 1966. So he was in The Cyrkle from 1966 and one of the other band members Pat McLoughlin, who I call the architect of the revival, he had this dream, why can’t we revive The Cyrkle? So he was told by an agent friend of his, ‘Get one of the other guys and sure, you can become The Cyrkle and revive.’ And as you know many of the current 60s groups, a lot of them don’t have any original members, maybe some of them have one or two or something like that, as long as you have [the rights to] the name. Anyway, Pat tried to find me and the funny thing about it is he had all these programmes to try and locate people, Pat couldn’t locate me and yet I would get fanmail from as far away as Russia and Poland and they got to my house, these other people found me. Anyway, finally he found me and we got together and they asked me if I would be willing to do this. And I thought, yeah sure my wife said, ‘Don, yeah you should do this.’ I live in Middletown, Delaware and they’re in Columbus, Ohio so they flew me out, I had a meeting with Pat and his wife Sandy and they were lovely, wonderful people. We went to Don White’s house. So all the guys and their wives were there and finally I walked through this group at the front door and there’s Mike and I give him a hug, wow how are you? We have pizza, we have a good time, we go downstairs and we play and “Red Rubber Ball and Turn-Down Day” were really easy. They certainly knew the songs. That was fine. In talking about other things to play, one of the things that I thought, which we do in the show was the song that we had an opportunity to do and we actually didn’t. The [Simon and Garfunkel] song “Feelin’ Groovy (59th Street Bridge Song)” We came into the studio when Simon and Garfunkel are finishing up and we were coming in and Paul offered the song to us. And we do this as part of a bit about how we didn’t do it. Anyway, so let’s do it as if we had done it, here’s what it would sound like. I remember drummer Scott Langley, he put his head down on the drums and said, ‘You know, if we don’t do anything more, I’m happy. We just became The Cyrkle’

Anyway, but basically then Pat booked a theatre, a video company, a sound company, and we actually did a show and they edited a video, I actually mixed the sound myself because I have a studio in my basement and that was our demo tape. This was in the fall of 2016. It wasn’t until the fall of 2017 that we actually got our first real job and it was cool, it was in Lakewood, New Jersey and I don’t remember everybody who was on it, but I do know Gary Puckett and the Union Gap who were the headliners, I remember The Vogues were on it, maybe somebody else, I don’t quite remember [note: I found a great writeup of this concert, Dennis Tufano of Chicago rock band The Buckinghams was also there]. We opened the show and when we finished “Red Rubber Ball” we got a standing ovation so we got a good start and Joe Mirioni, the promoter loved us from that performance and that got us started. So we don’t ever wanna go on the road, but we want to be occasionally booked and that’s essentially what has happened. And so we play around, we just recorded this album, and we’ve had a really wonderful experience and I think maybe this is the last thing I can tell you, we open the show with, we call it, ‘The Red Rubber Ball Opus’ and it’s literallt 18 seconds of the organ melody of “Red Rubber Ball” done in a very loud bravado fashion (goes into the organ riff). It’s just 18 seconds, fade out, and the announcer usually says, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, The Cyrkle!’ And we go right into “Turn-Down Day” and “Turn-Down Day” ends and I introduce myself as the founding member, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, hi, I’m Don Dannemann, originaly founding member of The Cyrkle.’ Always gets an applause and then I continue and ‘I just want to let you know it’s so cool that you guys come out here, it allows me at 80 years old to be a rocker onstage.’ Whoa yeah! Another applause. And one more thing that I say, which we only recently added, ‘And just to let you know I think I’m gonna be able to do this for a couple of more years. I think there’s longevity because I’m about to visit my mom here in Florida who’s gonna be 102 in June.’ And everybody goes yeah! And that’s a big applause. And that’s actually true, I am here in Florida visiting my mom. It’s an awesome thing to do that.

What he’s most proud of in his music career

Don Dannemann: I think I’m gonna keep it simple. When we recorded “Red Rubber Ball” I thought it was a cute song and I was thrilled that it was a hit, but that was it. And I only found out in the revival of The Cyrkle where we meet people, we play and we meet people and they get to share with us what “Red Rubber Ball” meant to them and just a simple example, people will come up, ‘Wow, this was my first 45! I still have it, can you sign it? Played it to death! We loved it!’ A guy came up to me once, he shook my hand and said ‘Thank you.’ And I look back and I said, ‘You’re welcome. Why are you thanking me?’ ‘I just want you to know that “Red Rubber Ball” got me through my divorce. It’s so uplifting, it made me feel good. I would get up in the morning, it was great.’

One of the most poignant ones that we teared up, a gentleman, he was a Vietnam vet and he came up to me and he said, ‘We had “Red Rubber Ball” on a little battery operated tape recorder in ‘Nam and I can’t tell you how many battles that song got us through.’ And we teared up and hugged. And what I realised is that two things, “Red Rubber Ball” actually is one of the premier feel-good anthems of the 1960s, that’s the first thing, and the other is I’m so honoured to have sung that thing and have been a part of it and have actually had some influence on thousands and thousands and thousands of people, some of whom I now get to meet when we play and we talk. So I’m just blown away by this whole experience. It’s really an amazing experience.

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