“Sunday Will Never Be the Same” (Spanky and Our Gang)

Your Sunday song of the day is “Sunday Will Never Be the Same” by Spanky and Our Gang. This classic bit of sunshine pop went all the way to #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967 and helped to define the more hippy sounds of the Summer of Love.

“Sunday Will Never Be the Same” was written by Terry Cashman and Gene Pistilli. Cashman was half of the duo Cashman & West, who released the former Classic Song of the Day “American City Suite.” Prior to Cashman & West, Terry Cashman, Gene Pistilli, and Tommy West played together in a band imaginatively named Cashman, Pistilli, and West. This song was on that group’s first album (titled Bound to Happen), released earlier in 1967.

The song itself had a slightly unusual chord structure, courtesy of Gene Pistilli. Cashman, in a later interview, explained it like this:

“One day [Gene] came into the office, and he had this chord progression he came up with. Most simple rock and roll chord progressions in the key of G would be G to E minor to A minor to D. And Gene came in with a change which was instead of going from G to E minor, he went to E major, and instead of going to an A minor – the typical rock and roll kind of thing – he went to an A major, so it made it sound different. And when he played it for me, I started singing this melody to it. And you know, it made me think of a girlfriend that I had a few years before. We used to walk in the park on Sundays, and that whole story became the idea for the song because she left him, and the love affair was over, that Sunday, that special day would never be the same. We wrote the song very quickly.”

Cashman, who was also head of a music publishing company, decided to shop the song around for other artists to record, as that’s the way things worked back then. Lou Adler of Dunhill Records liked it and thought it might be a fit for his latest discovery, The Mamas and The Papas, but John Phillips of that group decided to pass on it as they were focusing on his original songs. Cashman also shopped it to the Left Banke, of “Don’t Walk Away Renee” fame, but they also passed. Producer Jerry Ross (who had produced “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” for Jay and the Techniques and “98.6” for Keith) finally heard it and latched onto it for a relatively new group he was producing. That group was Spanky and Our Gang.

Spanky and Our Gang was named after lead singer Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane and the old Our Gang comedies of the 1930s. The group was known for its intricate vocal harmonies, as witnessed on the middle “ba ba ba” section of this song, which borrows its melody from an old French carol. The much-experienced Jimmy Wisner did the vocal arrangement.

The other members of Spanky and Our Gang at the time included Nigel Pickering on rhythm guitar; Malcom Hale on lead guitar; Paul “Oz” Bach on bass; and John “The Chief” Seiter on drums. They all sang vocals.

“Sunday Will Never Be the Same” was featured on the group’s self-named debut album. It was the first and the biggest of their several hits, which included “Lazy Day” (#14 in 1967), “Sunday Mornin'” (#30 in 1968), and “Like to Get to Know You” (#17 in 1968).

The group broke up in early 1969 following the accidental death of guitarist Malcom Hale, aged 27, the previous year. (Hale was the core of the group, doing most of the arrangements.) Spanky McFarlane struck out as a solo artist, to little success, then later joined up with The New Mamas and The Papas, singing the late Cass Elliott’s parts. She’s still alive today, aged 80, although she hasn’t performed in over a decade.

For a final treat, here’s Spanky and Our Gang performing live on the The Mike Douglas Show in 1967. (No lip synching here!) The band could really sing—and Spanky had some remarkable pipes. It’s a joy to watch.