“Good Time Singers Win Instant Fame” ran the headline in the Los Angeles Times on May 4th, 1964. “If you’ve heard those Good Time Singers on Andy Williams’ show, you’ll have a fair idea of what went on in my office when they walked in with their instruments and gave me a concert,” wrote Hedda Hopper, doyenne of the old-school Hollywood gossip columnists. “People in surrounding offices stood outside the door to listen, and right in the middle of the swingin’ affair, Shirley Jones came in for an interview. They did an encore for her.”
The group’s first major concert tour, as part of a variety revue, began later that month, after the TV show had wrapped up filming. On the very eve of the tour, though, Alexandra Brown made an emotional exit from the group. “We were about to leave on the plane for the first trip,” remembers Storm, “and Alexandra got to the airport and said, ‘I’m not going.’ It was that final, and we had no recourse but to say, ‘I’m sorry, goodbye.’ So we flew off as a group of nine and it stayed that way.”
“She just wouldn’t get on the plane,” confirms Brookins. “She broke down and cried. Tom said, ‘Well, what can I say?’ I think there was mutual understanding. There was some frustration beyond her just getting on the plane, but I didn’t concern myself with that. I was very careful to keep myself free from any political shenanigans. I felt it dangerous.”
Being the only black woman in an all-white cast had not been easy for Brown, and Williams and his producers had taken some heat from viewers and sponsors, who apparently weren’t comfortable with her presence. “Andy was horrendously plagued that year by the fans,” remembers Sally Drake. “They didn’t want her. She was the first black woman on television in a singing group in an all-white world. They didn’t want that.”
Behind the scenes, the show’s producers had begun to pressure Drake to get rid of her, something that would’ve been relatively easy for him to do as she was clearly unhappy. But for Drake it was a matter of principle. “Tom would’ve yanked the group rather than fire her,” insists Sally Drake. “He would’ve gone the right route and said, ‘Well, then get yourself another group’ if she would’ve wanted to stay.”
Doug Brookins, though, rejects that notion. “Tom Drake would have never given up that money for anybody. That’s just nonsense.”
“Alexandra was not happy,” continues Sally Drake. “She was young and she’d never had any kind of hate mail or anything like that before. She just didn’t like being with the group. They all liked her, but she was young and she was hurt.”
Alexandra’s departure came as a relief to some of the group. “She turned out to be very uncomfortable to work with,” says Jackson. “She was very demanding and sang flat. She had a great voice, but she was kind of a church soloist, and was not good in an ensemble.”
There may have been another, more personal component to Brown’s decision to leave. Rumor has it that although she had a steady boyfriend, she and Craig had secretly been having an affair. “Oh, Craig had a thing for her!” remembers Doug. “Oh boy! He really liked her a lot—and she liked him. They liked each other a lot, but she had a boyfriend.”
Taking that covert, mixed-race relationship out on the road may have been one complication too many for Alexandra, who soon afterwards found a more suitable showcase for her talents as a member of Ray Charles’ backing singers, the Raelettes.
Prior to the unexpected departure of Brown, there had been another lineup change. Drake had dismissed Bob Flesher before the season’s final episode, so the now nine-piece group also began the tour with a new banjo player, Johnny Horton (not to be confused with the famous country singer).
The Good Time Singers were a part of a concert tour put together by Edward T. Sherman, who had been a hugely successful vaudeville promoter back in the 1930s. Billed as The Beverly Hillbillies Revue, the show harked back to that old-time tradition. Irene Ryan (Granny), Donna Douglas (Elly Mae) and Max Baer Jr. (Jethro) from the cast of the popular television show topped the bill with some musical and comedy shtick, highlighted by a bit where Elly Mae and Jethro taught Granny how to do the twist. The Good Time Singers opened Act II of a bill that also included musical anarchists Spike Jones and His City Slickers, novelty country duo Homer & Jethro, the juggling Rudenko Brothers, musical humorist Yonely, and the Maldonado Dancers. The tour opened at the Long Beach Arena before criss-crossing the country to hit 17 cities in 15 days, playing in venues of 10,000 seats or more.
The entire cast traveled city to city in a huge old Lockheed Constellation. “God only knows if it would still fly!” laughs Michael Storm. “But we had this whole plane to ourselves—Homer & Jethro, Spike Jones and his orchestra. Sometimes John Yonely was on the plane but sometimes you looked out the window and he’d be flying his own plane next to us. Homer would open his banjo case and one side would be his banjo and the other side was a fifth of bourbon. So there was always drinking. Spike Jones and his band were off the rails! Some guy would come in suspended by a wire playing a bass fiddle upside down. We performed every night and toured in between. We did nightclubs, college concerts, and fair dates. Fair dates were a hoot. It was all a hoot. We had the material down pat and everyone loved us. We’d sing, and then go off and spend the rest of the night at the fair or at the venue. Then when the show was over, we’d go back to the airport, get in this old Constellation airplane and fly to the next date.”
After returning from the Beverly Hillbillies tour, the Good Time Singers went into Capitol studios to complete work on their second album, One Step More. Curly Walter was again in the producer’s chair, while David Gates—later to find fame with Bread—was one of the arrangers. Gates also contributed one song, “Hoo How, What Now,” as did Storm and Drake (“One Step More”) and Jackson and Montgomery (“Li’l Ole Road”). Craig’s contribution was, again, minimal—just another voice in the chorus. Capitol held off until October to release the LP, by which time the group would be back on the nation’s TV screens with The Andy Williams Show. The group had been signed for another season with the show, a deal which included a significant pay raise. Also, the show would now be broadcast weekly rather than biweekly.
Days after finishing the album, the group flew to Washington, D.C. to begin another concert tour, this one with singing star Mitzi Gaynor. Their busy live schedule continued through the summer and fall, highlighted by a prestigious guest spot with the Burbank Symphony Orchestra at the Starlight Bowl in August. On July 8th, 1964, the Hollywood Reporter ran a piece lauding the group’s “instant” success, and revealing that they had grossed an estimated $250,000 in less than a year (close to $2,000,000 in today’s money). The article went on to state that: “Rough estimates of their gross income in the next year, starting in September, range from a half-million dollars to the magical one million mark.”
Indiana State Fair program, 1965.
The Good Time Singers visiting NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in May 1965. Craig in striped T-shirt.
Although it’s highly unlikely they ever hit that “magical one million mark,” the group worked hard during 1964 and 1965. When they weren’t rehearsing or shooting the television show, they were traveling and performing live across the country, especially during the summer months.
“It was fun,” recalls Storm. “Jesus, it was fun! We had fun, saw places, went places... I must say that the underlying description of the group was nine really nice people. There were very few arguments or disagreements. I don’t recall any friction or any blowouts. Craig was right for it. He was absolutely a dynamite guy to have on your team.”
Eight or nine years older than most of the others, Drake was the leader, organizer, and disciplinarian of the group, with Storm as his dependable right-hand man. The rest of the group, most of them still teenagers, could often be rambunctious—especially Craig. “In those days, if we all went into a restaurant, the likelihood is we could break out into some song, sitting around the booths, you know?” recalls Jackson. “If four or five of us from the group were on the road or on the bus or on the airplane, we’d hit on all the girls, we’d roam the aisles and smoke and offer cigarettes to people... I mean, it was a lot looser then!”
“Craig almost got us thrown out of Canada one time,” laughs Lee Montgomery, “because he was joking around. We were going across the border and the immigration people were not too friendly and Craig was making a joke about something, I don’t remember what, and the immigration guy said, ‘I don’t wanna let you people into the country!’ So Craig cooled it.”
It was Lee Montgomery and David Jackson who Craig tended to hang out with most while out on the road. “I think that we just liked each other and just kind of palled around,” says David. “We saw the world from our particular vantage points, and we happened to be standing next to each other. We were young—18, 19, 20—and trying to experiment with every possible female we could possibly experiment with. I remember that being the goal: to go out and have as much fun as possible and hope we never had to go back to the hotel.”
One of the strongest memories Jackson has of this period is an encounter he and Craig had with jazz legend Duke Ellington and his collaborator Billy Strayhorn in New York. “It was the winter. It was very cold outside and we went to the Brasserie on East 53rd in midtown. We probably arrived at about 2 a.m. We’d probably been out carousing, which he and I did quite a bit. We got something to eat, sat down, and started listening to a conversation at the table next to us. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn were sitting there in their coats, and they sat for two hours—and I remember it being two hours because we’d got there at 2:00 and we left right at 4:00. Craig and I didn’t say a word, we just listened to them talk, and we played freeform chess. We’d move the salt shaker and then, ‘OK, your move.’ We sat there and did that for two hours and listened to Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. We were young, but knew that we were in the presence of greatness.”
The Clinger Sisters were a youthful vocal group who were signed to the same agency as the Good Time Singers, G.A.C. (General Artists Corporation), and worked the same state and county fair circuit during the summer and early fall months. The four eldest sisters, Melody, Peggy, Patsy and Debra, were aged between 15 and 18 when they first met Craig Smith at the Allentown Fair in Pennsylvania in August 1965. Craig’s natural charisma made an immediate impression on the girls. “That smile and that pizzazz and that personality!” beams Patsy Clinger. “He was so darling and so fun and so effervescent, and just…” She searches for the right word… “Unaffected. Totally unaffected. Even at the time, he was that kind of guy that when he smiled—gliss!— he had one of those million-dollar smiles. And he was a great performer, wonderful onstage.
“Sometimes we’d play two shows depending on if it was a weekend,” she continues, “and in between we’d just hang out, play music, play guitars. We always had our guitars; we played these little banjo ukuleles as well. We would just sit around and talk and have so much fun. Craig was just in it for the party, for the fun. I remember my sister Peggy had such a mad crush on him. Nothing happened—maybe there was a hug or something. I assume he had probably ten girlfriends at the time—I don’t know that, but he was older and she was just 16. But she was just, ‘Ah! He’s so darling!’ She wouldn’t quit talking about how this Craig Smith had just definitely wooed her.”
The Clinger Sisters. Left to right: Debra, Melody, Peggy, Patsy.
Peggy Clinger wasn’t the only girl being wooed by Craig during this period. “Craig was a ladies’ man. Truly,” recalls Brookins. “He’d smile at them and they would be drooling at his feet. He always had a girl. Different ones. To show you the kind of fellow he was: Hayley Mills came on the show. She was doing a tune called ‘A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’ and Craig got enthralled with her, and before you know it they were driving off together on his motorcycle.” The one-time Disney child star was 19 years old when she appeared on The Andy Williams Show during the Good Time Singers’ third and, as it turned out, final season.
In September they performed alongside one of the biggest stars to ever appear on the show, Judy Garland. Maybe Craig would have had the opportunity to tell Garland she’d once sang a song written by his great uncle, Charles Gabriel Jr. But probably not. As David Jackson recalls, “She walked in at 10 a.m. on Monday morning in the rehearsal hall where we were standing around and rehearsing the tune, and she had a tall Dixie cup and she said it was Coca-Cola. But as soon as she walked in the door, from about 20 feet away we could smell the bourbon. She looked very unhappy and I felt very sorry for her the whole week.” “It wasn’t a Dixie cup, OK?” recalls Lee Montgomery. “It was more like a Big Gulp.”
Craig clowning around in Allentown, Pennsylvania, August 1965. (Photo: Michael Storm)
“The first thing I remember about Judy Garland was, because I was curious, I looked at her wrists and saw the scars,” recalls Storm. “And that brought it real to me that this was a delicate, sick, fragile person. She couldn’t walk by herself. We had to walk her, one of us on either side, down these stairs. She was singing ‘Clang, clang, clang goes the trolley’—one of her songs from one of her movies. So she would walk down and we would hold her—she weighed nothing, she was paper. I remember walking her down and smiling benignly, and she would sing her song and we would ooh and aah. And we did that, and after the first rehearsal, the producer came to the Good Time Singers and said, ‘OK, we’re going to tape this next dress rehearsal just in case, because she’s frail.’ And so we taped that rehearsal show and it was good. And then it was time to do the final show….
“BANG!” he exclaims. “She gave it everything! She now weighed 150 pounds—she was struttin’ she was divin’—she didn’t need us! It was a transition that you could only imagine, and she nailed it! Nailed every step, every move, every note—she was great! It was a great experience. She was a pathetic individual, but it was showbiz. ‘When the lights are on, stand back, watch me work!’ Marlene Dietrich was another frail one who, when the lights went on: BANG! Nailed it to the wall. The pros are pros for a reason. They can limp along and throw their fits and have their problems, but when the light comes on, they’d give it all.”
Garland and Williams also sang a medley together of some of her best-known songs with the Good Time Singers seated around them in black evening wear crooning their wallpaper backups. The emotion in Garland’s performance radiates out in concentric circles, and watching Craig’s rapt, smiling face you can sense he is completely caught up in these never-to-be-repeated moments, consciously absorbing some of Garland’s flickering, doomed magic.
Happy. Smiling. Fun. These are the words people used most frequently when talking to me about Craig Smith. Nothing seemed to bother Craig. He never lost his temper, never blew his cool. That ten-thousand-kilowatt smile was an almost permanent fixture on his face.
“Craig was just a delight,” remembers David Jackson. “Happy all the time. That smile you see in the pictures is what he wore almost at all times, with very few exceptions. But when there were exceptions we knew something was amiss because he would get quite dour. But it wouldn’t last very long. I lost track of him. I understand that he became homeless for a while, and somebody said that he didn’t have that smile any longer, and I wonder if it was depression or something like that. Maybe there was some inkling of it previously.”
Jackson doesn’t remember any particular trigger for these rare dour moods of Craig’s. Were they symptoms of a bipolar personality or something deeper? “From my vantage point there was no trigger,” says Jackson. “Nothing I saw that could have caused that. It would happen, but it was so stark in relation to his normal countenance.”
Doug Brookins also recalls that Craig would occasionally become withdrawn and uncommunicative, as if a dark veil had been drawn across his face. “I never saw him outright lose his temper,” recalls Doug, “but as time progressed there were personality clashes between us. So essentially, even while we were in the same group, we went totally different directions because I just didn’t want to associate with him—and I didn’t know why. It was just a sense. There’s an old saying about intuition, and I’ve always followed my intuition, even when I was a little boy I understood it. I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I would try to promote conversation and there was just some dark screen that came in front of him. He wouldn’t even respond to friendly conversation. I’d just go, Wow. He must be focused on something really more important than what I have to say. And that seemed to just increase over time. So when that dark screen came up in front of him, I just walked away.”
That dark screen can be discerned fleetingly on an episode of the show broadcast in September 1965. The Good Time Singers are seated around Williams as he sings one of his soporific classics, “That Old Feeling.” Dressed in a bright pink sports jacket and matching silk tie, Craig appears uncharacteristically uncomfortable as he croons his backing harmonies along with the rest of the group. His affable smile flashes and flickers, like a short-circuiting light bulb. Then, for a few seconds, it slips completely, his expression blackens and he’s miles away—“a century of distance,” as he would later sing, from the people around him. Just as quickly the smile reappears, he glances around reassuringly, and he’s back in the moment.
Judy Garland performing with Andy Williams and the Good Time Singers in September 1965 on The Andy Williams Show. Craig Smith (face obscured) is fourth from right.
“That’s the Craig that evolved from 1963 to 1966,” Brookins says. “As those years passed he did become more and more distant. So he was into his own thing, which was essentially his writing, I guess, and his self-promotion and hopes for success. And he was very secretive; everything he did was close to the vest. If you approached him on a personal level, even as a friend, literally a screen would just—like pulling down a shade—when you go to your window to pull down a shade, that’s what I would see, just this screen—with little tiny holes in it. You could see his face through it, but the screen was black. I just... I just... It just so spooked me. I just said, ‘Who needs this?’ And I’d walk away. I thought, Well, I have to work with him, but I don’t have to associate with him.”
In retrospect, reflects Heather MacRae, the luminosity of Craig’s smile was almost too intense. “The thing about Craig was, he didn’t seem crazy, but he was always smiling, and you know when somebody smiles all the time it’s a little suspicious, I think. He definitely was the golden boy—he was popular, everybody loved him, he was funny—but he had almost like a maniacal smile sometimes. So when I think about him in my mind’s eye there’s something a little bit manic about him.”
In social situations Craig was outgoing, happy-go-lucky, and gregarious, but he also had a private, secretive side. He didn’t broadcast his creative ambitions to those around him, not even his closest friends. In 1965 he had began to write songs in earnest, but he did so behind closed doors, and seldom discussed them with anyone. It was something that he kept to himself. Few of his acquaintances during this period were even aware that he had ambitions in that direction.
“I knew he was an artist,” reflects David Jackson. “I knew that he was a good songwriter and a good singer, and he was going to be successful. I remember knowing that. He had all of the prerequisites necessary. He was aware he had the talent, much as anyone else would, but it wasn’t any big deal to him.”
“He was the kind of person that felt like if he talked about what he was doing that he would lose control of it and someone else would come in and take advantage of it,” reckons Brookins. “So he kept pretty quiet. Kept things close to the vest.”
Craig’s taciturn attitude toward his songwriting did not, apparently, mask any insecurity about the quality of his work. After penning a light, seasonal ditty called “Christmas Holiday,” he took it straight to Andy Williams. Williams liked the song enough to record it, and in late 1965 it was released on his Columbia Records album Merry Christmas, right alongside a range of holiday evergreens that included “Winter Wonderland,” “Silver Bells” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The album went on to become one of the biggest-selling Christmas albums of the era, appearing in the Billboard Top Five Christmas Albums charts five years in a row, and eventually selling over a million copies, presumably netting Craig a jackpot in songwriting royalties.
While most people would have taken some pride in this accomplishment, Craig never even mentioned it to the other Good Time Singers or to any of his friends subsequently. None of them had any idea Andy had recorded any of Craig’s songs. This apparent modesty or secrecy was a pattern that would continue in the years ahead. While he had the confidence to put his songs into the hands of major artists, Craig never boasted of his achievements, he would just move on to the next song.
The Good Time Singers had provided Craig a secure foothold in the industry, but as he found confidence as a songwriter he began to envision a new, more rock-based musical direction. He and Lee Montgomery began rehearsing some of Craig’s new songs together with the view to launching themselves as a folk-rock duo: Craig & Lee. According to Lee’s recollection, after recording a couple of demos, they were flown out to New York for a meeting at Columbia Records. “We were gonna cut a deal,” remembers Lee, “and I got aced out. It came as a shock to me because Craig and I were getting along fine. It left a very bad taste in my mouth.”
In the autumn of 1965, Craig had successfully auditioned for one of the lead roles in a new ABC television series. This meant he would be leaving The Andy Williams Show, the Good Time Singers, and Craig & Lee, before the end of the year.
Lee Montgomery didn’t take the breakup of the duo well. “I remember it was on the set of The Andy Williams Show I found out about it, and I flipped out, man. I was very upset. I mean, I didn’t get violent or nothing, but I said, ‘Why? Why? Why? Why?’ I was very shocked and very disappointed for quite a while. But I got over it. It turned out for the best. I had a great, long career in jingles. I did a lot of well-known commercials: Stater Brothers ran for about 20 years, on and off, there was Chevy trucks, ‘Welcome to Miller Time’—I did a lot of great things. I traveled around the country. I was on trains most of the time in the 1980s between New York, California and Chicago, and I finally settled in Chicago in 1984.”
Montgomery bristled when pressed for more details about the Craig & Lee project. “My feelings are it was a great duo and too bad it didn’t happen, and I quickly got over it. OK? I moved on with my life.”
Lee and I make plans to talk again, but a few days later he leaves me a voicemail: “Mike: it’s Lee Montgomery in Chicago. I can’t answer any more questions about Craig. That was 50 years ago or better and left a very bad taste in my mouth. I’m sorry Craig had a tragic life, I wish you well, but I can’t help you any further, OK? So, that’s it.”
While the Craig & Lee duo had ended acrimoniously in October of 1965, Smith and Montgomery worked together again, a few months later, on a Good Time Singers recording session for Columbia Records. The January 10th, 1966 recording date, produced by Larry Marks and arranged by David Gates, yielded four songs: “I Care Babe,” written by Craig, “I Can’t Stay” (which may also have been one of Craig’s songs), and two songs penned by Michael Storm, “So Glad” and “Raindrops.” Smith, Storm, David Jackson and John Horton are listed on the musicians’ union session contracts, along with Gates and a small team of session musicians that included Glen Campbell, Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, and Neil LeVang. A single pairing “So Glad” and “I Care Babe” was given limited release by Columbia on March 21st. Highlighted by a catchy 12-string guitar figure, “So Glad” is a jaunty folk-rock tune showcasing Storm’s lead vocal. On “I Care Babe,” though, it’s Craig and Lee in the vocal spotlight for a masterful exercise in big production L.A. folk-rock. It’s the Turtles’ “It Ain’t Me Babe” meets the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” with a dash of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” Spector-drama on the bridge, Montgomery’s sonorous baritone taking the Bill Medley role while Craig soars up top Bobby Hatfield-style.
The single would be the last release to bear the Good Time Singers’ name. By the time it was released, the group was already winding down. The Williams show had elected not to renew their contract, and the ensemble had shed many of its original members, including Craig, Margaret Patton, Marilyn Miller, and even Michael Storm. “Over the period of those years, people left, girls were replaced, and finally it was just no longer any fun,” recalls Brookins. “The contract not being renewed in 1966 was the impetus for me to offer my resignation. I said to Tom Drake, ‘I don’t know what your view is on things. Nobody listens. Nobody wants to do anything new. We play the same songs day in and day out that we played back in 1963, and music has changed. You either change or you die. None of you really want to experiment in anything and I don’t understand why.’” Drake himself had long since lost interest in the group, and stepped down soon afterwards to pursue a writing career, handing over the leadership reins to Johnny Horton. The Good Time Singers name still had a certain marquee value, and various editions of the group continued to play for several more years throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Meanwhile, a new confluence of currents was sweeping Craig Smith in another direction altogether.