Spooky Tooth were one of Island Records' finest acts, yet never quite scaled the upper echelons of the late 60's/early 70's rock hierarchy. Always a band much loved by writers and fellow musicians, they lacked the commercial sucker punch that would've catapulted them to the toppermost of the poppermost. It didn't stop them making some corking records, however.
The Spooky Tooth story (for those of us who are into this sort of thing), if you want to wax analytical about it, provides the perfect paradigm of how various members of disparate 60's British Beat bands pooled their musical resources and mutated into a psychedelic/progressive outfit.
The story begins in the Summer of 1963, in Carlisle, Cumbria, in the far North-West of England. Jimmy Henshaw (guitar, keyboards), Walter Johnstone (drums), Frank Kenyan (guitar) and former export clerk Mike Harrison (vocals) formed a beat combo, and dubbed themselves The VIPs. Johnstone and Kenyan had previously been in The Teenagers; not long after forming the band, The VIPs added Greg Ridley on bass, who had previously lined up with Dino & The Danubes, The Dakotas and The Ramrods, together with Harrison. They scored a record deal with RCA, who put out their debut single, "She's So Good"/"Don't Keep Shouting At Me" in 1964, both sides being penned by Henshaw. The single is a great slice of sneery Brit R&B, and is now an ultra-rare collectors' favourite. From 1965 to 1966 the band were a top club attraction in London, and gigged regularly at the Star Club in Hamburg, garnering a sizeable cult following.
The original VIPs' line-up recorded three more singles ("Wintertime" as The Vipps for CBS, plus "I Wanna Be Free"/"Don't Let It Go" and "Straight Down To The Bottom"/"In A Dream" for Island, produced by Island stalwart Guy Stevens) before disbanding. Henshaw, Johnstone and Kenyan were replaced by Luther Grosvenor (guitar), Mike Kellie (drums), and Keith Emerson (keyboards). Emerson had previously been a member of Gary Farr & The T-Bones; this variant of The VIPs gigged for only three months, before Emerson upped and formed The Nice, with Brian "Blinky" Davidson, Lee Jackson and Davy O'List. The remaining quartet changed their name from the by then somewhat anachronistic VIPs, to simply Art.
Worcester-born Grosvenor had played guitar for The Hellians, whose 1964 single, "Daydreaming Of You", released on Pye subsidiary Piccadilly, was produced by maverick West Coast genius/madman/charlatan Kim Fowley. The Hellians, if I may digress still further, boasted the nascent talents of both Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi, who would, of course, go on to form Island mainstays Traffic with Steve Winwood, and a young Poli Palmer, who latterly rattled the joanna for Family. The Hellians, in turn, mutated into Deep Feeling.
Mike Kellie, originally from Birmingham, had drummed for second city band Locomotive, who also featured sax and flute player Chris Wood, who joined Traffic in 1967. There. See how incestuous this little scene was? Anyway, Locomotive would go on to enjoy a UK Top 30 hit with the ska-rhythmed "Rudi's In Love" (unusually enough, the band were very heavily ska and bluebeat-driven), and in 1969 put out the awesome latter-day psychedelic gem, "Mr. Armageddon".
Back to Art. Art cut one album, "Supernatural Fairy Tales", also produced by Guy Stevens (and also available on Edsel), released in 1967. Beautifully housed in a Hapshash And The Coloured Coat-designed sleeve, its original Island Records catalogue number was, ironically enough, ILP 967. Hapshash And The Coloured Coat released an album on Liberty, in which Art featured as backing band on several tracks.
Art's line-up was swelled by the addition of American Gary Wright in October 1967, which initiated a name change - Art became Spooky Tooth.
Wright was born in New Jersey, and had been a child actor, before studying psychology. It was these studies which brought him to Europe initially. The vocal and keyboard interplay between Wright and Harrison is what characterised the Spooky Tooth sound. The debut album, "It's All About", originally released in May 1968 on Island ILPS 9080, featured the band's blistering reading of the John D. Loudermilk classic, "Tobacco Road", always a live showstopper, and their debut single, "Sunshine Help Me". The latter so enamoured Brummie poppers The Move that they cut their own version on the live "Somethin' Else" EP. It's inevitable that the band's heavily Hammond organ-saturated sound drew comparisons with Island stablemates Traffic; after all, the various band members had worked together in other outfits, but Winwood & Co. had the head start in terms of record releases and chart success. Moreover, both Traffic and Spooky Tooth shared producers in the shape of Jimmy Miller, so such sonic similarities are perhaps less of a surprise. If anything, Spooky Tooth were darker and doomier, although their strongly melodic rock set them apart from their contemporaries.
The band's penchant for road work ensured that they built up a loyal club following in the UK, but it was in the USA that the band enjoyed greater commercial success. "It's All About" was renamed "Tobacco Road" for the US, and belatedly made No.152 in the US album charts in August 1970. ~Alan Robinson
