Don and the Argus

Their sole release was on Capital Toshiba in Japan during the Group Sounds era of the late 1960s.

History[edit | edit source]

"Don" was Don Gant later of The Neon Philharmonic. Prior to this group, Don Gant had released several singles in the early '60s as a successful singer-songwriter, including 7 singles on Colpix records and Hickory Records, which was a local independent record label started by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose of the Acuff-Rose publishing firm. Don worked for years at Acuff Rose as a songwriter and executive and The Neon Philharmonic would later use the Acuff Rose studio for their recordings.

Regarding the context of this release, "Group sounds (Japanese: グループ・サウンズ, Hepburn: Gurūpu Saunzu), often abbreviated as GS, is a genre of Japanese rock music which became popular in the mid to late 1960s and initiated the fusion of Japanese kayōkyoku music and Western rock music. Their music production techniques were regarded as playing a pioneering role in modern Japanese popular music," according to the wikipedia entry. GS built on the foundation of rock'n'roll, rockabilly, R&B, and occasionally also psych and would later provide the foundation for J-pop. The Beatles' performance at the Budokan in 1966 helped introduce a new generation of Japanese youth to a new style, that would later be termed Group Sounds, which obviously was strongly influenced by British beat music of the 1960s.

On the sole release, the A-side is a cover of the song "The Wild Roses" (originally done in a pop style called Kayōkyoku) which had been composed by Somegoro Ichikawa, a Japanese kabuki actor and singer. The B-side was a GS song covered in beat garage style, originally performed by the Japanese band The Jaguars.