U.S.A. Discography
Jim
Golden started the U.S.A. label as part of Chicago's Allstate Distributors in 1960. The first single, "And
the Angels Sang" [USA 711], a group vocal by a Chicago quartet known as the Del Tones (or Deltones,
pictured, right),
was listed on the "New Records to Watch" section of the WJJD local chart in January 1961. The group,
who had recorded several singles for Vee-Jay as early as 1958, were Sammy Basile (lead), Ron
Buonaro (first tenor), Ronnie Howard (baritone), and Tommy Burton (bass). Later in 1961, they changed
their name to the Parlaments and recorded another (unsuccessful) single for U.S.A. [719]. Of the
remaining ten or so singles that year, none of the others even registered a blip. Three of these were by
Tobin Matthews, who had had a hit in late 1960 with "Ruby Duby Du" (#1 WJJD, #1 WLS, #30 Billboard)
on Chicago's Chief label [7022], but even a recent local #1 hit couldn't get his U.S.A. records played.
U.S.A. did most of their recording in the Chess studios. Aside from the fact that they were located across the street, Allstate was also the regional distributor for Chess, so this relationship resulted in Chess pressing many of the early U.S.A. records. In fact, the first U.S.A. album, a various artists disc called Silver Dollar Specials [U.S.A. LP 100], produced for a radio station in Arkansas, was an exact reissue of Chess LP-1458, Golden Gassers.
Starting in 1962, the album side and the singles side at U.S.A. took decidedly different turns. Four of the next six albums were polka albums and another was a comedy album, while the singles concentrated on pop and blues. The lone rock album was Let's Have a Party by the Rivieras in 1964 [U.S.A. LP 102], a great album that actually reached #115 on the national LP charts. The odd part about this was that the Rivieras weren't even on U.S.A.! Their singles were on their own label, Riviera, which was distributed by U.S.A. When it came time to collect all the singles for an album, it was much easier for U.S.A. to work out all the details than for Riviera to try to do it themselves.
1962 brought about another dozen singles, mostly pop and rock. Don Bailey's "Wedding Day" [U.S.A.
723] also made the "Up'N'Coming" mention on the TUNES list in January, 1962.
In November, Cory Wade's "Day Dreamin' (With You)" [U.S.A. 732] reached #36 on the WLS chart. Both
of these were straight ahead pop vocals.
Starting in 1963, however, singles took a sharp turn towards blues and R&B, with Willie Mabon (pictured, left), Junior Wells, Koko Taylor, J.B. Lenoir, and others, all Chess artists, undoubtedly another benefit of the relationship with Chess. Willie Mabon had had hits as far back as 1952, and tended towards records with lyrics that made one smile, like the line in "Poison Ivy" [Chess 1580] that said a guy last night was messing with his niece, now he's wearin' a sign that says "rest in peace." In late 1962, Mabon had a minor hit with "Got To Have Some" on Formal 1016 (a Chess subsidiary), with a song about needing money. As a followup, his first U.S.A. single was "Just Got Some" [U.S.A. 735], which had every high school boy in the Chicago area singing the line "I just got a taste of her meat and bread" which sounded for all the world like, "I just got a taste of her meat in bed." Although the song didn't chart, seems like everyone heard it on the r&b stations and was singing it despite the pop radio stations avoiding it. The U.S.A. blues records were compiled on a 2002 CD listed in the discography below.
From 1963 to 1966, things continued with blues and pop records on the singles side, with more and
more of the local garage bands working their way into the mix. The only local chart side during that time
was "Liverpool" by the Chicago-based Viceroys [U.S.A. 761] which made #24 on the WLS charts in the
heady days of Beatlemania in February, 1964. Among the other names on singles were Elmore James,
G.L. Crockett, longtime Chicago singer/songwriter Bobby Whiteside, the legendary Chicago club band
Baby Huey and the Babysitters, and Gary & the Knight Lites (later to become the American Breed).
In early 1966, U.S.A. signed a contract with another local group, the Buckinghams. The group had started in 1965 with four high school boys from uptown Chicago calling themselves the Centuries. They were Dennis Tufano (lead vocal and guitar), Carl Giammarese (lead guitar), Nick Fortuna (bass), and Jon Poulos (drums). After getting better and gaining some local notoriety, they added keyboardist Dennis Miccols and changed their name to the Pulsations. It was as the Pulsations that they played enough gigs to become quite proficient, winning a large battle of the bands in Chicago and landing as the "house band" on Channel 9's "All Time Hits" television show. The show's producers were less enthusiastic about the group's name, and suggested something more "modern" = "British sounding." They chose the Buckinghams, and sold it to Chicagoans by saying the name came from the Buckingham Fountain downtown.
Meanwhile, another longtime Chicago music figure was Dan Belloc, who had grown up with big band
music and recorded several records with his orchestra. Belloc was the owner of the Holiday Ballroom on
Milwaukee Avenue in Northwest Chicago, a popular venue for appearances of big bands for the adults
as well as being a popular dance scene for teenagers. The Centuries/Pulsations/Buckinghams, as did
many other local groups, played the Holiday Ballroom and Belloc liked what he heard. Belloc and the
Buckinghams' manager, Carl Bonafede, another Chicago musician-turned-disc-jockey who regularly
deejayed at the Holiday Ballroom, decided to record the group for Belloc's Spectra-Sound label. The
result was "Sweets for My Sweet", the Searchers' song, backed with "Beginners Love," co-written by
Belloc [Spectra Sound 003]. Although the record didn't chart, it did get some airplay, and Bonafede
played it on his show on WVOI ("The Voice of Italy"). Bonafede and Belloc took the record to Jim
Golden at U.S.A. and Golden agreed to give them a 12-song contract, with Belloc and Bonafede as
co-producers.
Golden brought the group to Chess Studios across the street from U.S.A.'s offices, and recorded all of the songs in a marathon 4-day session. As the boys were trying their sound on R&B songs (James Brown's "I'll Go Crazy;" Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy") or British covers ("I've Been Wrong" by the Hollies, "Summertime" by the Zombies, "I'm A Man" by the Yardbirds, "I Call Your Name" by the Beatles), their manager, Carl Bonafede, was frantically out searching for some original material. He knew Jimmy Holvay of the group the Mob to be a good songwriter from previous use of his songs (see Bonafede single at left), and already had a couple of his songs for the Buckinghams ("Makin' Up & Breakin' Up" and "Love Ain't Enough"), but needed another one to fill out the album. Bonafede grabbed Holvay while the Mob was at a gig and said, "Quick! I've got to have another song for the Buckinghams." Holvay grabbed a guitar and sang "Kind of a Drag" into a small tape recorder.
When Bonafede returned to the studio, the group didn't particularly like the song at first, but added some
horn parts and did some vocal arranging until they liked it well enough to think it should be their first
U.S.A. single. The U.S.A. management disagreed, and didn't think much of the song at that point even
when it was finished, considering it not fast enough. Belloc contributed the masters for "Sweets for My
Sweet" and "Beginners Love," and the Buckinghams (pictured, right) recorded eleven other songs at the
session in late February or early March.
First single released from the session was "I'll Go Crazy" [U.S.A. 844], which began being played on WLS the week of March 18, 1966. The next week, March 25, it entered the WLS top 40 at #39 and eventually reached #19 on both the WLS and WCFL charts. In May, it made it to the Billboard Bubbling Under chart, mostly on the strength of its Chicago sales, topping out at #112. Next came "I Call Your Name" [U.S.A. 848], released in late May and entering the WLS top 40 on June 3. It was a fast, danceable rendition of the Beatles tune, and it eventually reached #14 on WLS and #17 on WCFL, but it didn't catch on elsewhere. A third single was released in August, the Hollies cover "I've Been Wrong" [U.S.A. 853], which reached #13 on WLS and #15 on WCFL, but again, it failed nationally.
By November, U.S.A. was running out of Buckinghams material, and there weren't any options for
renewal. They decided to release "Kind of a Drag" as the group's swan song single on U.S.A., not
expecting much and not doing much promotion. To almost everyone's surprise (except maybe the
group's), the song started getting heavy radio play, first on WLS and then WCFL, and shot up to #2 on
both stations; by late December it had entered the Billboard Hot 100. Possibly the most surprised
was Jimmy Holvay. A friend who had been there when he sang "Kind of a Drag" into Carl Bonafede's
tape recorder came in that November and said, "Hey! Remember that song you sang last winter for
Carl? I just heard it on the radio!" Kept out of the #1 spot in Chicago by the New Vaudeville Band's
"Winchester Cathedral," there was no such hindrance nationally two months later as the song went to #1
on Billboard's Hot 100 in February.
Since their contract was up with U.S.A., the Buckinghams signed with Columbia. Golden opted to release "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (one of the only songs he had left that hadn't been on a single already) as a follow up, but it only reached #41 nationally in the face of the slick new Columbia single "Don't You Care" [Columbia 44053], which made #6. Shortly thereafter, Golden sold the Buckinghams masters to Columbia. The Buckinghams racked up several top 10 Columbia hits, most written by Jimmy Holvay and his bandmate Gary Beisbier, and put three albums and a greatest hits package out on Columbia. After the group disbanded in 1970, Dennis Tufano and Carl Giammarese formed a duo, Tufano-Giammarese, who had an additional two albums on Ode. In 1980, the group reformed with some new members, and have been performing and putting out new material since then.
During their 1966-67 heydays on Chicago radio, the Buckinghams could also be heard doing commercials. One memorable one was for Mr. Norm's Grand-Spaulding Dodge ("Get with the go group, the in-the-know group...") putting them squarely in the hip drag racing scene. A very cool group indeed to the Midwest teenagers of the time.
Just after the Buckinghams left the label, U.S.A. found a band from Minnesota — then in
Milwaukee — called
the Messengers, and released their remake of "Midnight Hour" on U.S.A. 866. It was a Midwest hit,
making #5 on both WLS and WCFL, and getting to #116 on Billboard. Almost immediately on
release of the record, however, the band signed with Motown for their new Rare Earth subsidiary,
leaving U.S.A. with a hit but no band. To fix this, U.S.A. changed the name of the group on the single to
"Michael & the Messengers," misspelling the name as "Mesengers." They then imported the Del-Mars, a
group from Leominster, Massachusetts, that sounded reasonably like the Messengers, and renamed
them as Michael & the Messengers. Followup singles by Michael & the Messengers were by the new
group (Jack DeCarolis, Paul Cosenza, Ron Cagnon, Tom Fini, and Wayne Beckner), who from night to
night would pick a member to be "Michael" at gigs. The followup to "Midnight Hour", a remake of the
Reflections' "(Just Like) Romeo & Juliet" [U.S.A. 874], reached #12 on WLS and #14 on WCFL (#129
Billboard) in the summer of 1967, but that was their last chart hit in Chicago, although "Gotta
Take It Easy" [U.S.A. 897] did scrape the bottom of the Milwaukee radio charts the next year.
The final Chicago chart hit for U.S.A. was an interesting medium-tempo rocker written and produced by Bobby Whiteside called "Face the Autumn" by The Family. The vocal harmonies were nice, with the "sound of Chicago" horns backing the voices. It reached #12 on WLS in the Autumn of 1967.
By the end of 1967, ABC-New York basically told WLS that they couldn't play local records like they had been doing. To avoid suspicion of payola, they had to henceforth pretty much stick to the national hits. This was a blow to U.S.A. and the other independents, and was the death knell to the excitement of local Chicago bands on the radio, essentially putting an end to the Chicago local band era. But from those bands came the Chicago horn sound that James Guercio, the Buckinghams' producer, made extensive use of with his other bands, and spawned the sound of groups like Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, and the Ides of March.
Looking back on the U.S.A. recordings, there is a wealth of material that represents the sound of the Chicago bands in the mid-1960s, the sound that could be heard at dances and at the Holiday Ballroom and other venues any night of the week. Bob Irwin of Sundazed Music has put out a 2-CD set called 2131 South Michigan Avenue which provides a great cross section of the songs rarely heard outside Chicago in the 1960s.
