We speak of The Royal Guardsmen, of course, and nobody reading this blog needs to be reminded of their connection to Peanuts. Indeed, the very first 45 single purchased by blog co-author Derrick Bang was “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.” (And yes, he still has it.)
No doubt most of you also are aware of the two subsequent efforts, “Return of the Red Baron” and “Snoopy’s Christmas.”
But did you know that they were followed by two more?
The wildly unlikely, head-shaking saga of how all that came about is the stuff of pop music legend.
We start by rolling the clock back to 1964, when Lake Weir High School students Bill Balogh and Jay Mayer saw The Beatles’ film debut in director Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night. Balogh and Mayer were so inspired that — on the spot — they formed a band with mutual friend John Burdett. Mayer played guitar, Balogh played bass, and Burdett played drums ... despite never before having picked up a drum stick. Balogh’s father was a postman, so they dropped a letter and called themselves The Posmen. (It probably sounded clever at the time.) They began with the intention of becoming an accomplished local cover band, and their first performance was in May 1965.
Two months after adopting this new name, Barry Winslow — then 17 — auditioned and joined the band as lead vocalist/guitarist. He soon brought in Chris Nunley — then 19 — as supplemental vocalist; by this time, keyboardist Larry Rich also had joined. Mayer’s guitar chops weren’t progressing as rapidly as the other guys, so in March 1966 he stepped down and became the band’s manager; he was replaced by Tom Richards. Then Rich got his draft notice, opted to serve in the Navy, and was replaced by Billy Taylor. As of June 1966, the final lineup was complete: Bill Balogh, John Burdett, Chris Nunley, Tom Richards, Billy Taylor and Barry Winslow.
Meanwhile...
In 1959, while a student at the University of South Carolina, 19-year-old Phil Gernhard co-founded a record label (Cole) and production company (Briarwood). He began recording local groups and producing demos the following year, and worked with several artists; one was songwriter Dick Holler. Gernhard produced a recording session with Holler in 1962, at New Orleans’ J&M Studios. One of the songs was called “The Red Baron,” in the style of earlier historical, military-style “story song” hits such as “Battle of New Orleans” and “Sink the Bismarck.”
(Holler’s lyrics, at that time, had only two verses but were identical to what we’d recognize today, without any reference to Snoopy.)
Nothing came of this session, as had been the case with other Briarwood efforts. Gernhard abandoned his label and production company, moved to St. Petersburg with his new bride, and resumed law school studies at the University of Tampa.
A few years passed.
Gernhard hated his law school studies; he ached to return to the music biz. He began repping local bands in 1966, one of which was The Royal Guardsmen. In late spring, he brought them to Tampa’s Fuller Studios, where they recorded an emotion-laden cover of “Baby Let’s Wait,” a recent hit for The Young Rascals, along with a Winslow original titled “Leaving Me.” The resulting single, which hit stores that spring, was The Royal Guardsmen’s first release on Laurie Records, a New York-based label founded in 1958 by brothers Robert and Gene Schwartz.
“Baby Let’s Wait” became a No. 1 hit in the band’s home town of Ocala, made a little noise in Tampa Bay, then went no further.
At home, Gernhard avidly read Peanuts in the newspaper every day, and got a particular kick out of Snoopy’s expanding fantasy adventures involving ... the Red Baron.
That tweaked a memory.
One otherwise average July morning, Gernhard noodled some additional lyrics to Holler’s song, working Snoopy into the storyline. He first took it to The Tropics, then the hottest band in the Tampa area; they turned it down flat, calling it “too bubblegum-ish.”
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| An early photo of The Royal Guardsmen, circa summer 1966 |
Focused instead on rehearsing their own stuff, the Guardsmen forgot about Snoopy until Gernhard called one morning, saying he was driving up to hear their take on the song.
What came next is lifted from Bill DeYoung’s 2018 biography, Record Man: The Story of Phil Gernhard:
“That’s when we all got inspired,” Taylor recalled. “It was like, thank God the interstate isn’t done yet; it was a three-hour trip from St. Pete to Ocala.”
“We didn’t much like the song,” Nunley added. “We said, ‘Let’s just do it real corny, and real hokey, and he won’t like it.’ ”
[Once Gernhard arrived], they played it with a straight march cadence, hup two three four, with Winslow singing lead. They considered it a joke, and laughed all the way through it.
“Gernhard was over by the P.A. speaker, listening,” Nunley recalled. “A&R guys will get right in the speaker to hear everything. And he said ‘Hmmm ... play that again.’ So we played it again, and he said ‘You know, I think we can do something with this. Maybe a couple little changes.’”
“When he turned around after we played it again,” Taylor added, “he was flushed.”
“We were surprised,” Burdett said, “and within 10 minutes, Phil had contracts on the dining table at Tom’s house.”
“At first they couldn’t believe I was serious,” Gernhard reflected. “But when I finally convinced them I was serious, they got serious. It took me two weeks to loosen them up enough to have fun with it, the way they did at the audition.”
Four of the six band members still were in high school; Nunley, at 20, was the oldest.
The band was hustled into Tampa’s Fuller Studios, where the song was laid down pretty much as the band had played it that first time for Gernhard; sound effects were added during post-production. But the song still needed something to kick it off. Nunley, taking German as his foreign language credit at the University of Florida, proposed the shouted bit of “propaganda” with which the song subsequently opened.
Which, in case you’re wondering, translates to, “Attention! We will now sing together the story of that pig-headed dog and the beloved Red Baron!”
Holler gave his blessing to the revised lyrics. He and Gernhard shared the credit: a collaboration three years apart.
On October 27, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown debuted on national television. The holiday-themed special included a lengthy sequence with Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace, battling the Red Baron.
Two weeks later, Gernhard and Laurie Records rolled the dice and released “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” as a single, backed by a tear-jerking Winslow/Nunley lament titled “I Needed You.”
To everybody’s surprise, the A-side song “caught” almost immediately; the band members recall hearing it within weeks on Chicago’s WLS 890 AM. Laurie Records had shipped 300,000 copies as of December 1, and was forced to contract with six pressing plants to keep up with demand. On December 10, the trade magazine Cashbox reported that the song had hit the airwaves eight days earlier in Tampa and Abilene, Texas; it quickly spread to Pittsburgh, Albany, Providence and then across the rest of the country. Elsewhere in the same issue, Cashbox cited the single as a “Newcomer Pick” and noted that “...it seems to be building to monster proportions. Reports becoming overwhelming.”
That same day, December 10, the song “bubbled under Billboard’s Hot 100,” at No. 122.
Wanting to strike while the iron was hot, Gernhard rushed the band back into the studio, to lay down tracks for a companion LP during several whirlwind sessions. To the band’s mild annoyance, they had no input; Gernhard selected a collection of undemanding earlier hits, including several that hewed toward a comic strip vibe:
• “Alley Oop,” based on the newspaper strip of the same name, which had been a No. 1 hit for the Hollywood Argyles in 1960;
• “Jolly Green Giant,” a No. 4 hit for The Kingsmen, granted a droll Get Smart into and outro;
• “Li’l Red Riding Hood,” made famous by Sam the Sham, which gave the fairy tale a decidedly sexy spin;
• “Road Runner,” a Bo Diddly hit that had nothing to do with the Warner Bros. cartoon character; and
• “Peanut Butter,” a hilarious hit for Chubby Checker.
The album was titled after its hit single, but the jacket cover — clearly a rush job, by an uncredited artist — was atrocious.
Because male high school students still were forbidden to have long hair in 1966, those four band members wore women’s wigs for the group’s first official publicity photo, taken at Ocala’s Western-themed amusement park, Six Gun Territory.
Gernhard and Laurie Records rushed the album out just in time for the Christmas shopping season.
On December 17, “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” (the single) rose an astonishing almost 100 slots, to hit No. 30. The following week, it jumped to No. 7.
Schulz noticed.
Or, rather — as legend suggests — learned about it when a friend casually remarked something along the lines of, “I really like that song you wrote.”
The cartoonist got in touch with lawyers at United Feature Syndicate; Gernhard immediately flew to Northern California. A deal was reached, perhaps because Schulz found the original letter, and recognized it as a good-faith effort to do the right thing, or perhaps because — as Gernhard suggested, during their meeting — Schulz could make a lot of money without doing anything. The final deal — at a time when a 45 single usually cost 89 cents — gave Schulz 3 cents for every copy sold. Holler, as half the songwriting team, earned half a cent per sale. Gernhard, as the other half — and as producer and band manager — earned 1.5 cents. The band’s cut was 3 percent of 90 percent of sales, which came to 2.7 cents.
Split six ways.
Laurie Records got the rest. (Honestly, that’s worse than the degree to which Vince Guaraldi was fleeced by Fantasy Records.)
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| The band's first official publicity photo, complete with wigs. |
The hit single rose to No. 2 on December 31, and held that spot for four consecutive weeks. The Guardsmen simply couldn’t crack the No. 1 spot held by The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.”
That resulted in the band’s biggest career disappointment.
“We were never on The Ed Sullivan Show,” Nunley recalled, during a 2024 interview with Goldmine magazine. “We were in contract to be on the show and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, The Monkees appeared. ‘Snoopy’ was climbing and was at No. 2, and The Monkees TV show came out with ‘I’m a Believer,’ which shot to No. 1 and kept us out of the top position.”
Failing to hit No. 1 apparently torpedoed the Sullivan show appearance.
(For what it’s worth, The Monkees also never got to shake hands with Ed. At least, not while TV viewers watched.)
Cashbox revealed — also on January 28 — that on the other side of the world, “the Australian Federation of Commercial Broadcasting Stations has slapped an air-play ban on the screaming-hot American hit ‘Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,’ due to the inclusion of the word ‘bloody’ in the lyrics.”
The single held at No. 3 the following week, and Cashbox reported that the tune had been re-released for Australian radio with an electronic bleep placed over the offending word each time it appeared. That said, Australian stores carried the original version, complete with all the “bloodies.”
The single dropped to No. 8 on February 1. That same day, the LP charted on Billboard’s Hot Albums chart, debuting at No. 110. Both shared chart space for four consecutive weeks, as the single fell — to No. 15, then No. 28, and finally No. 49, concluding a run of 13 weeks — while the album rose to No. 100, then No. 93, and then No. 87. (Decades later, Holler recalled being paid in regular installments for sales of six million singles.)
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