Bobby Hebb

That song was from 1963.

Believe it or not, Bobby Hebb and Sonny.

That song is 63 years old.

It's hard to believe.

I think they had one local hit.

Then we had Bobby Hebb come on.

He did the big record called Sunny.

And then we had The Circle, the Red Rubber Ball.

First performers that were up were The Remains, who were a garage rock band from Boston who served as the primary opening group for the entirety of the 1966 US tour.

Bobby Hebb was next.

He was an R&B singer-songwriter who was riding a wave of success at that point with his hit Sunny.

Then came The Cyrkle, which were an American pop rock band that were managed by Brian Epstein, and they had their big hit Red Rubber Ball at that point.

Yeah, and one of the things that I really didn't realize until I started looking into this was the supporting acts that they had.

The Remains, Bobby Hebb, you know, remember the song Sunny by Bobby Hebb? The Circle, that was one of their opening acts, and the Ronettes, Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes.

And if you've ever read her book, her memoir,

which

This is a show sort of tangentially connected to that last tour in that I have on the show as my guest today Don Danneman, who was in the band The Circle, who was part of the tour that year in North America.

One of the opening acts besides The Ronettes and The Remains and Bobby Hebb was The Circle, who had the distinction of being the only American act managed by Brian Epstein.

This will be the second straight show following the one with Merle Freymark, who had worked for The Beatles fan club in New York City, where Nat Weiss, Brian Epstein's business partner, who worked for Nempier Artists in New York.

He ran that show there.

Real quick, same thing, "Tommy Dawes, meet Paul McCartney." And anyway, that was it.

He goes back, "See you guys," disappears behind the wall, and then Tommy and I spent the rest of the trip analyzing every word that we, you know, why couldn't we have been cooler, you know, get a m- a, a bigger conversation? So that was-

Was your part of the plane, were you guys with The Remains and The Ronettes and Bobby Hebb? Were the opening acts situated completely apart from The Beatles?

Yes.

Right? Some of these songs are absolute classics.

I mean, how could "Sunny" by Bobby Hebb not reach the top spot?

Exactly.

And then there's that fascinating twist where some number two hits actually topped other charts.