Phil Gernhard had an idea.
Clearly, a song titled “Snoopy for President” would gain similar attention. Gernhard, Dick Holler and Arnold Shapiro dashed off a clever tune that added a patriotic, banjo-hued flavor to the military cadence of the previous “Snoopy” efforts, along with the ubiquitous mid-point key change. The track opened with a German radio broadcast that announced the candidates: “President, United States: Kennedy, Nixon, McCarthy und Rockefeller, Schnoopy, Humphrey ... Schnoopy? Ach du Lieber meinet...” The chorus was quite catchy:
Some wear the sign of the elephant,
And some wear the sign of the mule;
But we’ll hold the sign of the beagle high,
And love will shine right through.
The single was rushed out at the end of May.
On June 5, Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Los Angeles Ambassador hotel, and pronounced dead the following day.
The June 15 issue of Cashbox tagged the single a “Pick of the Week,” bravely insisting that it “...should hit the sales impact of their three previous Snoopy ventures. Bouncing beat and cute commentary add up to breakout power.”
Alas.
Laurie Records hastily recalled the singles; a revised version — absent the initial recitation of the candidates’ names — was re-released. Unfortunately, this turn of events cut off the minimal momentum that the single achieved on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It entered at No. 89 on July 13, rose four slots the following week, then disappeared.
Meanwhile, Gernhard produced the companion album ... which proved to be a Royal Guardsmen endeavor in name only. The actual Royal Guardsmen were too busy touring, so Gernhard brought in studio musicians, who laid down all the backing instrumentals; Winslow later added his vocals. The result, then, is more correctly a Winslow solo album.
Irritated by the tepid sales of the Snoopy’s Christmas LP, Laurie Records’ Robert and Gene Schwartz insisted that the new album’s remaining tracks be well-established pop hits. As a result, Winslow soulfully warbled Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey”; charged through a trio of rockers — The Fireballs’ “Bottle of Wine,” Every Mother’s Son’s “Come on Down to My Boat” and a medley of The Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby” and “The Letter” — and goofed his way through inane novelty tunes “Simon Says” and “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” Gernhard also added an eyebrow-lifting outlier — the Irish Rovers’ “Biplane Evermore” — solely because of the title’s vague connection to Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel.
All of which must’ve prompted devoted Guardsmen fans to wonder, What the hell?
Cashbox nonetheless granted the album a “Pop Pick” on July 13, insisting that “The Royal Guardsmen are at their best when they deal with this sort of whimsy, and with the light-hearted ‘Simon Says’ and ‘Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,’ the group is in its element.”
Except, of course, the “group” wasn’t anywhere near this particular element.
The LP entered the Billboard Top Albums chart on August 31, at a barely-there No. 190. It dropped to No. 189 the following week, then vanished.
Holler, meanwhile, was well on his way to becoming a hit songwriter who’d soon be known for penning tunes for Bob Dylan, Garth Brooks, Ray Charles, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye, Kenny Rogers, Andy Williams and many, many others. In the immediate wake of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, Holler sat down and wrote the song “Abraham, Martin and John.” He promised it to the Guardsmen, which the band knew could be a game-changer; everybody thought the tune would become a smash hit. Literally at the last minute, Laurie exec Gene Schwartz told Gernhard to give the song to Dion — then a recovering heroin addict and born-again Christian — who’d been with the label since the late 1950s. Gernhard had no choice, and Dion took the song to No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
The Guardsmen were crushed.
Holler, feeling terrible, gave them another new song, “Mother, Where’s Your Daughter.” Laurie Records paired it with a Guardsmen original titled “Magic Window,” and the single was released in March 1969. It went no higher than No. 112.
That concluded the band’s recording career.
They continued to tour, although Bill Balogh and Winslow quit in May 1969, and were replaced by Dave Shannon and John Curtis. That configuration got the band through its summer bookings, at which point Gernhard, Laurie Records and the Guardsmen parted company.
Ironically, on May 24 CBS-TV debuted the documentary Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz, which resurrected the Royal Guardsmen sequence from The Fabulous Funnies. That must’ve been a bitter pill, with the band in the process of breaking up.
In July, Laurie Records released Winslow’s solo vocal performance of “The Smallest Astronaut,” backed by “Quality Woman.” Holler wrote the latter, and shared writing credit with Gernhard on the former, which had the eyebrow-lifting subtitle “A Race to the Moon with the Red Baron.” It therefore was obvious who the “smallest astronaut” was, in the American rocket, although he never was named. (Several Guardsmen believe that Schulz had said “no more Snoopy songs,” which prompted a last-minute rewrite.) The single never charted.
Time passed.
Some of the band members reunited in the late 1970s, along with a few new faces, and toured for two years. In March 1979, Tom Richards learned that he had an inoperable brain tumor; he died that September.
More time passed.
That prompted Burdett and Winslow to write a new parody song, and “Snoopy vs. Osama” was unleashed in early 2006. The single was a picture disc that bore a suspicious resemblance to the cover of Snoopy and His Friends The Royal Guardsmen, with a few artistic “modifications” by Burdett. The tune had the same infectious rolling beat, and the lyrics initially seemed promising:
Now Snoopy’s in the motor pool,
And wants to fight;
He wants to keep his friends
All safe at night.
Unfortunately, some listeners may find the song’s conclusion in questionable taste.
 |
| The band members look back on their 15 minutew of fame. |
The original Guardsmen are mostly retired today; a 2019 50th anniversary performance in St. Petersburg, Florida, appears to have been their last hurrah.
Is that the end of the story?
You’d certainly think so ... but that has been said before, concerning Snoopy’s link to Ocala’s Royal Guardsmen.
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