THE LEMON PIPERS

The members of this five-piece psychedelic band were Ivan Browne on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Bill Bartlett on lead guitar, R.G. Nave on keyboards, Steve Walmsley on bass, and Bill Albaugh on drums. Browne had been involved in music for some time before the Lemon Pipers came to be, starting his first band Ivan & the Sabers in 1961.

  By 1964, the group had become regionally popular in Ohio, and opened for some of the well-known recording artists of the day. In 1966, Browne left the Sabers and replaced Tony in Tony & the Bandits. In time, their name would be changed to the Lemon Pipers.

  Their debut release was "Quiet Please/Monaural 78" on the independent Carol label. “Quiet Please” was a heavy garage recording that bore obvious similarities to the Eddie Cochran classic “Summertime Blues,” but was nevertheless entertaining, featuring smoldering Bill Bartlett guitar. In 1967, producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz were looking to augment their Super K Productions stable with talent. They decided to look in central Ohio, where they had previously found commercial success on Laurie Records with The Music Explosion and "Little Bit O' Soul." (The song peaked nationally at #2 in 1967.) In Oxford, OH they discovered the Lemon Pipers, who were willing to follow the producers back to New York.

In the beginning, the Pipers were given complete artistic control on the condition that they made hits. The band released their first Buddha single, a Bartlett penned original called "Turn Around and Take a Look." The song did not have the right commercial formula, and barely cracked the charts, reaching only #132. This did not sit well with the protuberant record company, who expected hits at all costs. Next, bigwigs Bob Reno and Neil Bogart heard a demo called "Green Tambourine" that caught their attention. Songwriter Shelly Pinz had written the lyrics after reading an article about a one-man band that performed outside a bank in England. Producer and composer Paul Leka set the lyrics to music, and created the demo tape. Bogart and Reno then sent Leka to play the tape for the Lemon Pipers. They said that if the Pipers refused to record it, the band would be dropped by Buddha. Initially, when he played the song, the Lemon Pipers refused to record it, but they would accept when Leka reluctantly revealed the label's intentions. With solid promotion and production, "Green Tambourine" reached #1 on the national charts by February of 1968.

Despite the strong sales of "Green Tambourine," further significant chart success was not to be. The follow up single "Rice is Nice" was certainly the most saccharine of the Leka/Pinz compositions crafted for the group, and only made #46. The Green Tambourine album showed the Pipers in a few different styles. While around half of the songs were in the psychedelic pop style of "Green Tambourine," the group also covered folk-rock with “Ask Me If I Care,” explored heavy blues-rock with “Fifty Year Void,” and probed the dimensions of space rock in “Through With You.” This latter category of psychedelic improvisation was to be explored further on the group’s subsequent album Jungle Marmalade, which would wind up as the band's strongest album.