Cruising with the Grass Roots

Circa 1967 All rights reserved.

I have many a fond memory of my teenage years cruising listening to the "Grass Roots". Memorable songs like, "Midnight Confession", "Let's Live For Today", and "Temptation Eyes". So naturally they came to mind when I had the opportunity to play some "oldies" in a couple of bands. The bonus was that these songs are in my "range" and I could sing them as well as play drums. What a rush!

But, I didn't count on them being a problem for the instrumentalists to figure out the chord progressions. They had proved anything but easy for the band to do. Maybe it was because there were horn parts and they (guitarist and keyboardist) had no experience with charts for those instruments. Thus, they could not "cop" the riffs. At least not in any way that sounded right!
Just goes to show you that musicianship was pretty high "back in the day" and that we shouldn't assume because it's an "oldie", that it's a piece of cake to fake.