60s Spectacular at Proctors on Saturday, April 29th 

It’s been almost 60 years since The British Invasion’s Herman’s Hermits topped the pop music charts with “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter.” Andrew Loog Oldham, regarded as the architect of the Rolling Stones’ image, called Herman’s Hermits “the nice guys,” the mirror opposite of the naughty Stones. While The Stones were singing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” They were singing hits of the day like “I’m Into Something Good” and “I’m Henry VIII, I Am.” 

“It was easy for us to play the parts of nice guys,” says lead singer Peter Noone who co-headlines Saturday’s 60s Spectacular at Proctor’sTheatre in Schenectady, “because it wasn’t acting. The best part of Herman’s Hermits was that they were a good bunch of guys. We were a close-knit operation. We had that sort of boy energy at the beginning.” 

The band rehearsed in a club whose owner thought Peter Noone looked like Sherman, “a little kid with glasses and a dog that’s smarter than him” on the Bullwinkle cartoon show. The band looked like Hermits, so the club owner renamed The Heartbeats. Sherman became Herman. The Hermits went on to record 14 singles and seven gold albums. The Kinks’ Dave Davies wrote “Dandy” for the band. The Hermits recorded “For Your Love” before The Yardbirds did and “Bus Stop” before the Hollies hit with it. Noone’s production credits include records by David Bowie and Debby Harry. In the 1970s, Noone composed songs and produced records for David Bowie and Debby Boone. 

A frequent performer at these Proctor’s oldies shows Noone is still an engaging performer more than 60 years into his career. 

 “Only in America can a kid without a cent get a break and maybe grow up to be President.” It’s probably the most famous line of any of the iconic songs to be performed by 60s Spectacular co-headliners Jay and The Americans Saturday.  “Only in America” is a patriotic homage to “a land of opportunity” that in 1963 was the last gasp of flag waving before the British Invasion, the last blowing of our own horn before racial unrest became TV’s first reality show and threatened to plunge the United States into a second civil war nearly 100 years after we thought the first one was “Gone With The Wind.” 

The group scored one hit in 1962 with “She Cried.” Two subsequent singles failed to chart, and the first of three lead singers named Jay – the late Jay Traynor, a Capital Region native – had quit the group. These street corner doo-woppers liked to refer to themselves as The Bowery Boys of Brooklyn. They had found a new Jay in Jay Black and convinced the hottest songwriters in New York, Jerry Leiber, and Mike Stoller, to take them on. 

“We were just teenage kids dying to make a hit record,” explained the second Jay (Jay Black) in 2014. They opened for the Beatles in Washington D.C., where the marque read “The Beatles and others.” They did a set punctuated by screaming teens chanting “We want the Beatles,” did three songs, and ran for the dressing room. 

“All of a sudden, we heard this shriek. It was so loud, went for so long, and kept reverberating. We were standing in the dressing room with all of us holding our ears to protect them from the sound like the needle pinged everywhere. The Beatles had walked out on the stage. We just looked at each other and said, ‘Man, something just happened.’ They hadn’t even done (The Ed) Sullivan (TV show).” We knew somebody had flipped the switch on the music. I never heard a sound like that again. It was obvious something miraculous had happened.” 

Saturday night, Jay and The Americans with a third Jay – Jay Reincke – perform their hits: “She Cried,” “Come A Little Bit Closer,” “Cara Mia,” and “Only in America.” 

Also joining the show is Dennis Tufano, the original singer on all The Buckinghams’ hits: “Kind of a Drag,” “Don’t You Care,” “Hey Baby, They’re Playing Our Song,” “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Susan.” 

“When I go up on stage and sing, it’s some energy going through me and coming out to the audience, and I enjoy it while it’s happening,” Tufano told me in 2018. “That’s the feeling right thereof being in the channel and performing. Like I tell people, I say, ‘I get this energy on stage that I can’t believe I have when I grab that microphone. I’m 19 years old again.’  

“So, the universe has a way of taking care of us as long as we pull ourselves up to it, and I think that’s why I’m a survivor because I enjoy what I do, and I love the response that people give me. I love the interaction of the audience. I love the stories they have connected to the songs we did, and it’s quite moving sometimes. We end up in these love circles hugging each other, and it’s just great.”  

Tufano has toured with Olivia Newton-John and Cheech and Chong, appeared in several movies, and went on the road with a Bobby Darin tribute show. But almost a decade ago, he started singing Buckingham songs on the oldies circuit again. 

“I do the hits exactly as they were made. That’s part of the charm of it. I’m so grateful that the songs hold up today ’cause a man in his 70s who can sing the same sentiments and ideas that came out of those songs and the music was very sophisticated for that time, and it holds up today.” 

Opening the show will be the 1910 Fruitgum Company. They defined “bubble gum pop” in the ‘60s. Their hits included “Simon Says,” “1,2,3 Red Light,” and “Indian Giver.” All three gold records sold over a million copies, with “Simon Says” selling almost five million. 

Tickets are available through the Box Office at Proctors in-person, via phone at (518) 346-6204 Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., or online at proctors.org. Groups of 10 or more can get their tickets by calling (518) 382-3884 ext. 139.