Young Or Not, The Rascals Had Lots Of Fans

It’s pretty easy to get a little confused about the particulars of a certain ‘blue-eyed soul’ group — especially its name. But even if the group started out as the Rascals, then changed to the Young Rascals for a while before eventually changing back to the original, it entertained a lot of fans in the late 1960s with best-sellers like “Good Lovin’,” “Groovin’,” and “People Got to Be Free.”

The Rascals came to life in the New York area in the mid-1960s. Felix Cavaliere, who’d had some experience as a keyboardist and singer in other groups, joined forces with a couple of fellow New Yorkers — singer Eddie Brigati and drummer Dino Danelli — and a Canadian, guitarist Gene Cornish.

The guys initially called themselves the Rascals but soon became the Young Rascals to avoid confusion with another group, the Harmonica Rascals. Adding to the confusion, ‘Young’ was later dropped from the group’s name, but it didn’t seem to bother fans of the group’s sound, which included precision harmonizing backed by solid instrumentation.

In addition to the top tunes named above, the Rascals also had good sellers with songs like “How Can I Be Sure,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and several others. However,within a few years things began to slow a little and by the early 1970s the group’s members begin to drift away to mostly separate careers. Soon the original Rascals — and Young Rascals — became a part of music history.