[Cover photo courtesy of The Cyrkle]

The Cyrkle are celebrating the 60th anniversary of their pair of 1966 Top 20 hits, “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn-Down Day.” The Cyrkle’s ‘60s lineup, comprised of Don Dannemann on vocals and guitar, Tom Dawes on vocals and bass, Marty Fried on drums, and keyboardist Mike Losekamp charted four more times in the Top 100 through the summer of 1967, unable to achieve the Top 40 success of the prior year.

In 1967, as the band was about to break up, they were presented with a unique opportunity to create songs for an upcoming film, initially titled Squeeze Play. They composed and performed primarily instrumental selections, plus four songs with lyrics. The 1967 film Squeeze Play was reworked and finally released in November of 1969 as The Minx. By that time The Cyrkle had disbanded and the soundtrack has become a sought-after rarity from record collectors and fans of The Cyrkle for many years. Now Sundazed Music has remastered and reissued the soundtrack to The Minx on white vinyl/DVD and CD/DVD packages. Wildfire spoke with Dannemann about the album’s four main songs.

Warren Kurtz: It has been a long time coming for the soundtrack to The Minx to be affordably available instead of having to pay scalper prices for it. There are some wonderful instrumental tracks, including one that sounds like Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, but let’s focus on the four vocal tracks performed and sung by the band, beginning with the opening number “Squeeze Play.”

Don Dannemann: The band was in the process of breaking up. Our manager Nat Weiss said, “A friend of mine is producing a movie and if you guys would like to do the music for it, you can have at it.” Herb Jaffe was Nat’s friend, and Herb, along with Herb’s partner Raymond Jacobs worked on the original film, which was called Squeeze Play, so we wrote a song named “Squeeze Play” to be the movie’s theme song. We all wrote the music for the film together. On “Squeeze Play,” we did our typical harmonies. I was quite pleased with it. I thought it was a good song, and it was used in the film. Somewhere down the road, the film’s producers realized that the movie was not too good, and they said that they would try to do something to make it more marketable. They reshot some scenes, making them risqué, and retitled the spiced-up film as The Minx. I don’t know why they decided to change the film’s name, but that explains why the opening song is not called “The Minx.” They went with what we originally provided, which was “Squeeze Play.”

WK: When the film was finally released in November of 1969, an independent record label was created and “Squeeze Play” was released as a single with “It’s a Lovely Game Louise” on the flip side, which is a beautiful song. How did that song come to be?

DD: We watched the movie and tried to determine what possible songs we could write. Other than writing the theme song, there weren’t specific assignments given to us. “It’s a Lovely Game, Louise” was a commentary on what was going on in the movie.

WK: You poked fun at the self-proclaimed “5th Beatle,” DJ Murray the K, with “Murray the Why.” I love the tongue in cheek couplet, “How do I know he’s hip? Because he tells me so.”

DD: They needed a regular rock song for the discotheque scene where we are in the film as the band and we had fun creating “Murray the Why.” There are shots of the cast dancing. We were in the process of breaking up, and Tom was already moving on to a career in commercials. I was talking with Nat about keeping The Cyrkle going, so if you watch the discotheque scene, they focus more on me.

WK: I want to highlight the last vocal song. “Something Special” is wonderfully bouncy.

DD: I sang lead on that song, intended to reflect on a special moment in time. Let me end by sharing a story. We visited the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City with friends of ours. The museum’s curator was a good friend of the couple we were with. He said something that I had no idea about at that time, “You’re Minx album is a cult favorite,” which was awesome to hear. Back in the ‘60s, we did it and didn’t think about it afterward. It is neat to learn of its cult favorite status. It is fun that the people at Sundazed Music have reissued this soundtrack. We’ll see what happens with it. Thank you always for your interest and support of The Cyrkle’s music.

For decades, Don Dannemann and the late Tom Dawes had successful careers writing music for commercials. This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Cyrkle’s revival. In 2016, guitarist and vocalist Pat McLoughlin was playing with The Cyrkle’s keyboardist Mike Losekamp. McLoughlin contacted Dannemann and The Cyrkle was reborn. The Ohio Express’ Dean Kastran joined, along with Don White and Scott Langley. The sextet record and perform throughout the U.S., often as part of an oldies package with other acts from the ‘60s. Their fun stage shows are filled with historic stories of the ‘60s, including traveling with The Beatles and rejecting Paul Simon’s composition “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” which ended up becoming a Top 40 hit for another band, Harpers Bizarre in 1967, one that they have recently recorded and now perform in their shows.

Warren Kurtz, a long-time music journalist and author, can be contacted at fabulousflipsides@yahoo.com