(You Can’t Blow) Smoke Rings

A-Side: Little Boy Sad
B-Side: (You Can’t Blow) Smoke Rings

Label: Liberty F-55853
Producer: Hurshel Wiginton
Released: 12/65

The Gants leader and principal songwriter Sid Herring died this month meaning that all original Gants members are now deceased. Posting records with this kind of news is always a little sad to me. More and more sixties musicians are no longer here to enjoy fan acknowledgements and the reasons why their old records mean so much to us.

I first became aware of The Gants some time in the late eighties when I bought their compilation “I Wonder” on Bam Caruso. This LP contained notable cuts such as “You Better Run”, “Six Days In May”, “My Baby Don’t Care” and of course “I Wonder”. Strangely the single under my radar today wasn’t used on this collection, I’m not sure why as both are terrific beat rockers.

Newly signed to Liberty Records, they chose Johnny Burnette’s “Little Boy Sad” as their follow-up to the local hit “Roadrunner” coupled with a Sid Herring original, the powerful garage rocker “(You Can’t Blow) Smoke Rings”. Tipped as a likely hit, it nonetheless floundered under insufficient promotion. But its here on my blog as a tribute to Sid. In a perfect world this would have been the hit it deserved to be and The Gants would have become as big as their heroes, The Beatles.

“Little Boy Sad”, includes an early use of the talk box later made famous by Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton.

Sid Herring talking about ‘Smoke Rings’ . . . .
“Me and a friend of mine were riding on a motorcycle, he was smokin’ a cigarette and tryin’ to blow smoke rings, and he said ‘I bet you can’t write a song about smoke rings in a wind tunnel!’ So I went ahead and wrote it (laughter) it was really a joke. The Rolling Stones inspired me on that one.”

Line-up:
Sid Herring (vocals / guitar)
Vince Montgomery (bass)
Don Wood (drums)
Johnny Sanders (guitar)