Rant #2,369: Hi Hi Hazel

Today's Rant is sort of a part two of yesterday's entry, when I told you about the relatively-obscure-in-the-U.S. band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

As I explained yesterday, for my birthday, my wife and my parents gave me a few eBay gift cards, which I have devoted to filling in my record collection, but only to be used to buy things that I would never buy if I was using my own cash.

And today, I am going to relate to you what I know about an even more obscure act from the 1960s--one that had its 15 minutes of fame and faded off the face of the earth--but one that I remember fondly, and one that became one of my record purchases from those cards.

Being nine years old in 1966, I was a student of TV even at that age. I simply loved it, and watched plenty of television, and no, I don't think it hurt me as much as some pundits thought it did--kids my age were not supposed to watch so much TV.

But in between running around outside, going to school, and reading comic books and collecting baseball cards, my passion was television.

One of the great shows that was designed just for kids like me, when they came home from school and sat down with their cookies and milk--no, I don't think that hurt our generation either--was "Where the Action Is," one of the first nationwide rock and roll TV shows featuring acts lip-syncing their hits in a variety of locations, including fun places like the beach and a ski lodge.

The show--produced by Dick Clark of "American Bandstand"--made Paul Revere and the Raiders national stars, but it featured a number of other acts that used the exposure to help their songs move up the charts.

Among the real hitmakers that appeared on the show, such as the Turtles, the Four Seasons, the Four Tops and the Supremes--were acts that were basically one shots, performers that had maybe one song on the charts and that was pretty much it.

There were plenty of those acts--Don and the Goodtimes and the Razor's Edge among them--that were featured with the real hitmakers each week.

But one stood out to me, because these guys were my age.

Gary and the Hornets came out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and they were one of the first all-kid bands to make a dent in the music scene during the mid 1960s. The trio were actually real-life brothers--the Calverts: Gary on vocals and guitar, Greg on bass, and Steve on drums.

In 1966, Greg was 14 years of age, Gary was 11, and Steve was seven ... yes, I could relate to this act.

They had one national "hit," if you want to call it that. "Hi Hi Hazel," the cover of a Troggs' song, which hit No. 96 in 1966, and they promoted that song with at least two appearances on "Where the Action Is."

Being such a young band, they were something of a novelty act, and they promoted this record, and their prowess on their instruments on several other shows, but programs that appealed more to adults than kids of my age.

They actually appeared on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson twice, and they were also on "The Mike Douglas Show," but not when Douglas was on the show--he was on vacation, I presume, and Cesar Romero, red hot again at the time on "Batman" as the Joker, was the guest host.

After "Hi Hi Hazel" faded, they put out a few more singles--notably, they were the first act to release "There's a Kind of Hush (All Over the World)" in America (releasing it as "Kind of Hush"), but it only got up to No. 127 on the charts, and the novelty of this kid act quickly wore off, and they completely faded from view.

Well, I guess they are always in the back of my mind, because not only did I always like "Hi Hi Hazel," when they were on these shows, it was like a representative of my generation was up there, plugging away with the big boys and girls.

Yes, the kids table had melded with the grown-ups table, led by Gary and the Hornets.

Anyway, I saw the single with a picture sleeve on eBay at a good price, and gobbled it up! I could not resist.

I then purchased two more of their singles at cheap prices, which I have not received yet in the mail, so I guess I am all Gary and the Hornets'd-out.

If I can find their other tunes on the Internet, I might just be able to make a proper MP3 album of their songs, as they never had a proper album when they were a nationally known act.

Look, Gary and the Hornets were but a footnote to the entire rise of rock and roll into our consciousness in the 1960s. But they opened the door for other such acts to make it even bigger, from the Cowsills to the Osmonds to even the Jackson Five.

And yes, TV exposure helped all of these acts to get to the next level, so Gary and the Hornets can be looked at as maybe the template that all the other acts built upon, whether they realized it or not.

Now, you know more about Gary and the Hornets than you ever thought you would know, but what I would like to know is what happened to the trio after the act was no more.

I cannot find much of anything about them on the Internet. The one grain of sand that I found was that one of the boys, I believe it was Gary, had a sone who was in a punk rock act in the early 2000s who, at the age of 25 years old, died while performing on stage.

That is it. Nothing else.

So my question is this--now that I will have three records in my collection from Gary and the Hornets, what happened to them when the act was no more?

Can anyone fill me in?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZvR6Fw-ET0