The Rascals

The Rascals (initially known as The Young Rascals) were an American rock band, formed in Garfield in 1965. Between 1966 and 1968 the New Jersey act reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 with nine singles, including the #1s "Good Lovin'" (1966), "Groovin'" (1967), and "People Got to Be Free" (1968), as well as big radio hits such as the much-covered "How Can I Be Sure?" (#4 1967) and "A Beautiful Morning" (#3 1968), plus another critical favorite "A Girl Like You" (#10 1967). The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

The Rascals were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2010 and also reunited in 2012 for a series of shows in New York and New Jersey. The reunion continued on in 2013 with shows on Broadway.

History

Eddie Brigati (vocals), Felix Cavaliere (keyboard, vocals), Gene Cornish (guitar) and Dino Danelli (drums) started the band in Brigati and Danelli's hometown of Garfield, New Jersey. Brigati, Cavaliere, and Cornish had previously been members of Joey Dee and the Starliters. Eddie's brother, David Brigati, an original Starliter, helped arrange the vocal harmonies and sang backgrounds on many of the group's recordings (informally earning the designation as the "fifth Rascal"). When Atlantic Records signed them, they discovered that another group, Borrah Minnevitch's and Johnny Puleo's 'Harmonica Rascals', objected to their release of records under the name 'The Rascals'. To avoid conflict, manager Sid Bernstein decided to rename the group 'The Young Rascals'.

Rascal

Rascal or rascals may refer to:

Music

Other entertainment

Military uses

Other uses

Beautiful Morning

"Beautiful Morning" was the lead single for Ace of Base's 2002 record Da Capo. "Beautiful Morning" was released in September 2002 in Scandinavia and in Germany. It did very well in Germany where the song was the fastest climbing song on the radio during that year. On the charts the song was a minor hit. The song was written by the three Berggren siblings (Jonas, Jenny and Malin) in dedication to the passing of their father.

Music video

A music video was produced to promote the single. The video was directed by Daniel Borjesson.

Track listing

Scandinavia/Germany

Maxi CD

CD single

Official versions/remixes

Charts

External links

A Beautiful Morning

"A Beautiful Morning" is a song written by Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati and recorded by The Rascals. Coming out in early 1968, it was the group's first single released under that name rather than The Young Rascals. The first album on which the song appeared was Time Peace: The Rascals' Greatest Hits. It continued the theme of carefree optimism that had distinguished the previous year's "Groovin'". The song was a big hit in the United States, reaching number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and also reaching number 36 on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart. It was RIAA-certified as a Million Seller on June 28, 1968. The song had an introductory sound of mystical wind chimes and bells.

A Beautiful Morning was used in advertisements for the drug Vioxx produced by Merck & Co., for Bounce fabric softener, and in the early 1990s for the Days Inn hotel chain. The song also featured in a Scrubs episode, at the start of a season 6 episode with Zach Braff who plays J.D. dancing to it. It was also featured at the end of a second season episode of The Greatest American Hero in which Ralph had to disarm a nuclear missile. It was also featured in the movie Kingpin immediately following the scene that shows how Roy got his rubber hand. The song was featured during the 1969 college graduation scene in The First Wives Club. The song was also used in the 1993 movie A Bronx Tale opening the racetrack scene.

Our Gang

Our Gang (also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals) is a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series was produced between 1922 and 1944 and is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way, as Roach and original director Robert F. McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw nuances apparent in regular children rather than have them imitate adult acting styles.

In addition, Our Gang notably put boys, girls, whites and blacks together as equals, something that broke new ground, according to film historian Leonard Maltin. That had never been done before in cinema, but has since been repeated after the success of Our Gang.

The franchise began in 1922 as a series of silent short subjects produced by the Roach studio and released by Pathé Exchange. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, and the series entered its most popular period after converting to sound in 1929. Production continued at the Roach studio until 1938, when the series was sold to MGM, which produced the comedies itself until 1944. In total, the Our Gang series includes 220 shorts and one feature film, General Spanky, featuring over 41 child actors. As MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark following their purchase of the production rights, the 80 Roach-produced "talkies" were syndicated for television under the title The Little Rascals beginning in 1955. Both Roach's The Little Rascals package (now owned by CBS Television Distribution) and MGM's Our Gang package (now owned by Turner Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros. Television) have since remained in syndication. New productions based on the shorts have surfaced periodically over the years, including a 1994 Little Rascals feature film released by Universal Pictures.