The Young Rascals are available on iTunes.

by Walter Price

Hey man, in the year 1966 you were knee-deep into the righteous sounds of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Tommy James and the Shondells, The Supremes, and the Mamas and the Papas. But you and your tripped-out mind fell in love, hard, for one song in particular. A song by a band you thought was made up of the hippest black musicians of the day, that song was called “Good Lovin'” and the band was The Young Rascals.  Who turned out to be white guys. Weird-ish to you at the time but groovy just the same.

Honey, please squeeze me tight
Don’t you want your baby to be all right?
I said baby, “Now it’s for sure”

But as your Ford Falcon’s speaker was blasting this ode to feverish love, you hadn’t a clue that Felix Cavaliere and crew were not the first ones to record this song. And they wouldn’t be the last. As history has it, Cavaliere heard this track on a New York radio station and loved it. And since clubs of the day loved bands that did covers songs, Cavaliere thought this song was an obscure inroad into the club scene and the rest is legendary.

The band who first recorded the Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick song was called The Olympics. Who would become known for moderate chart hits like “Western Movies”, “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”, and “I Wanna Dance With the Teacher”. But it was their 1965 version of “Good Lovin'” that changed the way we grooved for all eternity. So, let’s take a hip trip through three ways this song has impacted popular culture throughout the ages.

THE YOUNG RASCALS

website

The Olympics

The Who

Mary Wells

RASCALS

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