Today’s classic song of the day is “Smile a Little Smile for Me” by the Flying Machine. Released in April of 1969 (in the UK; June in the U.S.), this single went all the way to #5 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100, and #6 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
“Smile a Little Smile for Me” was written by professional and prolific songwriters Tony Macaulay and Geoff Stephens. Mr. Macaulay was also responsible for writing or co-writing such hits as “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” for Edison Lighthouse, “Baby, Take Me in Your Arms” for Jefferson, “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” and “Build Me Up Buttercup” for the Foundations, “Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again” for the Fortunes, “Don’t Give Up on Us” for David Soul, and “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep at All” for the 5th Dimension. Mr. Stephens wrote or co-wrote “Winchester Cathedral” for the New Vaudeville Band, “There’s a Kind of Hush” for Herman’s Hermits, “Daughter of Darkness” for Tom Jones, and “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” for Wayne Newton. A couple of pros, those guys were.
The Flying Machine was essentially a one-hit wonder, at least in the U.S. The group evolved, in 1969, from an earlier British group called Pinkerton’s Assorted Colors. They broke up in 1971.
That’s about all you need to know, other than this Flying Machine is NOT the Flying Machine mentioned by James Taylor in his song “Fire and Rain” (“Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground”); that was another, less successful, group with the same name that Taylor was briefly a member of.
So now you know.
