Graham Reid | | 2 min read
I Wonder
In the years immediately following the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, literally scores of American bands adopted the Mersey Beat style (or what they thought it was) and many went further than just copying the Beatles' hairstyle but took on British-sounding names: the Buckinghams, Beau Brummels, Beefeaters, . . .
Quite what effect the Kingsmen out of Mississippi – not the Louie Louie hitmakers – were going for when they changed their name to the Gants we'll have to guess.
But there they were in the mid-Sixties firing off close-harmony, Beatles influenced pop. Sometimes not just appropriating the Beatles style but sometimes just lifting their melodies wholesale.
If they'd been more successful and the Beatles had vigilant copyright lawyers then the Gants' I Don't Want to See Her Again might have been played in a courtroom back-to-back with From Me To You, their My Baby Don't Care with Ticket to Ride, I Wonder with In My Life . . .
I Wonder
The fact singer/songwriter Sid Herring – who looked a bit like Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits – could do a very passable Lennon (and a bit of Gerry Marsden on Never Go Right) brought them even closer to them being in the advance guard of the Bootleg Beatles and other later replicants.
But there was something else going on alongside their Fab For pastiches.
They also erred towards garageband r'n'b like the young Stones/Downliners Sect/Pretty Things on (You Can't Blow) Smoke Rings and their first single was an impressive cover of Bo Diddley's Road Runner and – like any self-respecting garageband of the day – also covered Gloria with appropriate salaciousness.
Their original I'm a Snake sounds like a minor rejigging of Road Runner. Oh Yeah is the similarly repurposed I'm a Man.
They also got away a good if faithful version of Summertime Blues.
And on Little Boy Blue they briefly used that talk box thing made famous by Peter Frampton.
A 2000 Gants compilation brought together 20 of their songs and while we can admire their gall with the Beatle rewrites and decent r'n'b we can also acknowledge they did a neat line in mainstream pop: the 12-string ballad Six Days in May; the light jangle of their version of Stormy Weather (think Merseybeats with Marsden); Diddley riffing on Try Too Hard; a nod towards baroque pop with strings on Greener Days . . .
And you can see the problem with the Gants.
Who were they?
Were they a British-copyist band? An earthy r'n'b outfit steeped in Southern blues? A straightahead pop group?
They were in fact in possession of all of these facets.
They only lasted a couple of years – toured with the Yardbirds, Dave Clark Five and Animals though and recorded at FAME Studios – but mostly for their own amusement and for a few hardcore fans re-formed a few years after the 2000 compilation came out.
The Gants aren't a great ignored band deserving of reconsideration, but if you want to hear something of the competing musical forms which floated about in 1964-1966 the compilation is your go-to collection of styles, and all by four guys out of Mississippi.
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You can hear the album Road Runner! The Best of the Gants at Spotify here
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