The Royal Guardsmen and the World-Famous Beagle: Part 2 of 3

Producer Phil Gernhard rushed The Royal Guardsmen back into Fuller Studios in January 1967, to record “The Return of the Red Baron,” which he co-wrote with brothers John Yates and James Lee McCullough. Although not quite an identical clone, this sequel had the same military cadence and delivery, and the same mid-point key change. But the “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more” refrain gave way to a more amusing four bars that opened with “Hey, watch out, little Snoopy!” Perhaps wanting to tweak the Australian bluenoses, the last refrain concluded with:

Hey, watch out, Red Baron,

Snoopy is on your tail!

One of these days, he’s gonna make you pay,

And you’ll go straight to... 

 

...but the final word was cut off, as the refrain repeated and faded out.

 

“Return” was paired with the first album’s “Sweetmeats Slide,” and the resulting single was released in early February. It entered Billboard’s Hot 100 chart at No. 79, on February 25 ... so, for two consecutive weeks, The Royal Guardsmen had two singles and an album charting simultaneously.

 

Gernhard and the band took their time working on material to fill a second album. It was more accomplished; the band members’ performance chops clearly had improved, and Laurie Records’ execs gave Gernhard permission to bring the tracks to New York, where they were embellished with light strings, additional percussion and backing vocals.

 

But the finished product suffered from a serious identity crisis. Tasteful folk ballads — “Any Wednesday” and “I’m Not Gonna Stay” — shared space with hard rock covers of “I’m a Man” (made famous by Bo Diddly) and “Gimme Some Lovin’” (the Spencer Davis Group). Other tracks leaned toward the rising trend in acid rock, and the album also featured two instrumental tracks — “Om” and “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star” — which were pointless filler. The latter, a recent hit by The Byrds, emerged as a last-minute “mistake” prompted by the tight production schedule; the Guardsmen never had a chance to add their vocals!

Worse yet, this new album’s second single, released in June to coincide with the LP’s debut, opened with another goofy novelty tune — “Airplane Song (My Airplane)” — paired with the weird instrumental “Om.” 

 

The first single from Return, fronted by the title song, stayed on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for seven weeks, peaking at No. 15 on March 25. The album never charted.

 

Meanwhile, the first album remained on its respective chart for an impressive 22 weeks, peaking at No. 44 on April 15. The “Airplane Song”/“Om” single charted for six weeks, peaking at No. 46 in mid-July, for its final two weeks.

 

On June 5, a massive cocktail party for roughly 300 members of the music industry and press took place at New York’s Gaslight Club, in order to celebrate the launch of Lenny Stogel’s Heroic Publicity Firm. During the party, clients Sam the Sham, Tommy James, and the Royal Guardsmen each received a gold record for (respectively) “Li’l Red Riding Hood,” “I Think We’re Alone Now” and “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”

 

One week later, when the youngest Guardsman graduated high school, Gernhard sent the band on a cross-country “Summer Shower of Stars” tour: 70 shows in 60 days. They were paired with the Sam the Sham Revue, and Tommy James and the Shondells. 

On July 29, the Guardsmen paused long enough to appear on New York City’s Clay Cole Show, an enormously popular pop/rock music show famous for first-time television guest appearances of — among many others — the Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond, Dionne Warwick and Blood, Sweat & Tears.

 

During this tour, the Guardsmen often began with one or both “Snoopy” tunes — to get them out of the way — and then focused on solid, crowd-pleasing covers of hits by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Animals, the Zombies, Procol Harum, Cream and Jimi Hendrix, among others. The band’s performance image increasingly clashed with its studio image, but that didn’t seem to bother audiences.

 

“We were a rock ’n’ roll band, doing vocals and harmonies!” Barry Winslow groused, decades later.

 

In late August, Laurie Records released a single of “Any Wednesday” with “So Right (To Be in Love)” on the flip side, in an effort to see if the Guardsmen could produce a hit that didn’t involve Snoopy. It withered at the bottom of Billboard’s Hot 100, entering at No. 98 on September 9, and rising a meager one slot the following week, after which it vanished.

 

Shortly after the tour concluded, the band returned to Fuller Studios, hoping to write and record some “serious music” ... but Laurie Records execs Robert and Gene Schwartz insisted they produce more of the world-famous beagle. More precisely, they wanted a tune that would make a good release during the upcoming holiday season. The result: “Snoopy’s Christmas,” which took the ongoing saga in an unexpected direction. The song’s style, military cadence and vocal once again were the same, but this time — inspired by the extraordinary 1914 Christmas truce between British and German soldiers along the Western front — The Red Baron forced Snoopy to land behind enemy lines, then surprised him with a toast and a cheery “Merry Christmas, mein friend!”

That song was as delightful as its two predecessors, and the album it generated — Snoopy and His Friends The Royal Guardsmen — boasted stronger production values and a much richer sound. Instead of Fuller Studios, the band members were flown to New York City’s Allegro Recording Studios, where they worked with a full orchestra and backing chorus. The boys delighted in augmenting each song with exotic instruments; Burdette added kettle drums, more cymbals and tubular bells, while Taylor got to play a celesta.

 

“Snoopy’s Christmas,” backed by “It Kinda Looks Like Christmas,” was rushed out in late October, and the album followed a few weeks later. Both boasted a surprise. As reported in the November 4 issue of Cashbox, Schulz supplied the album cover with a classic pose of the WWI Flying Ace leaning against his doghouse, with little caricatures of the six band members, in goggles and flying scarves, peering out from the other side. Better still, the cartoonist drew a detachable, suitable-for-framing, Christmas-themed sketch of the world-famous beagle that was included with the album; that second sketch also became the 45 single’s cover. 

A month later, Cashbox dubbed the album a “pop pick” likely to “fly up the charts as fast as Snoopy’s plane.” And, indeed, sales were respectable; it spent 11 weeks on Billboard’s Top Albums Chart, peaking at No. 46 in late January 1968.

 

The band hit the publicity circuit, singing “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” on the Mike Douglas Show (November 24) and “Snoopy’s Christmas” on the Joey Bishop Show (December 20).

The Christmas single charted three times in the United States, but only tangentially — No. 1 (1967), No. 15 (1968) and No. 11 (1969) — on Billboard’s lesser-known Best Bets for Christmas chart. But the song was a monster hit Down Under, landing in the primary singles chart’s No. 1 spot in both Australia and New Zealand, and is estimated to be the best-selling overseas 20th century single sold in the latter country. The song frequently re-entered the New Zealand singles chart, in December 1987, ’88, ’89 and 2013.

 

The Santa Parade in Dunedin, New Zealand, still features a Red Baron float every year.

 

The companion album’s strong production values notwithstanding, its contents were disappointing. And lazy. 

 

Including the title track, it featured only six new songs. Side A contained all three of the “Snoopy” singles, each introduced by faux (and quite stupid) radio news bulletins — voice actor Larry Foster handled British, French, Australian and German accents — that supposedly detailed the minute-by-minute action in German skies, as Baron von Richthofen’s dreaded Flying Circus battled the British RAF. 

 

Side B was a vast improvement. Original “Red Baron” co-writer Dick Holler returned to pen a pair of tunes themed to the ongoing saga: “Down Behind the Lines,” a solemn story-song about an unidentified Sopwith Camel pilot trying to escape enemy territory (“Can he make it back?” intones the refrain); while “It’s Sopwith Camel Time” was a larkish wad of bubble gum pop. Holler collaborated with Guardsmen Barry Winslow on two up-tempo romantic ballads: the flute-inflected “I Say Love” and Caribbean-hued “So Right (To Be in Love).” Holler also penned a sweet contribution to the Christmas canon, with the aforementioned “It Kinda Looks Like Christmas.”

Side B’s final track, quite oddly, was “Airplane Song (My Airplane),” which had debuted on the band’s second album only months earlier. (Did they run out of time — or inspiration — for another original song?)

 

Starting December 10, the Royal Guardsmen embarked on a 10-city tour. Stops included Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Atlanta, where the band gave benefit performances for children’s fund-raising organizations, while also visiting hospitals and orphanages. 20,000 Snoopy dolls were passed out to kids along the way.

 

On February 3, 1968, Cashbox reported that Gernhard had been rejecting plans for further “Snoopy” releases. The Guardsmen’s recently released single — “I Say Love,” backed by “It Kinda Looks Like Christmas” — marked the end of the so-called “Snoopy era.” Future releases by the band, Gernhard insisted, would be straight rock or “ballad rock.”

 

(As Sean Connery’s James Bond famously quipped, “Never say never again.”)

 

New Zealand's Dunedin Christmas Parada, 2023

A week later, The Guardsmen appeared on the Peter Martin Show, but that didn’t help sales of the new single. Nor did their appearance, the following evening, during the Peanuts segment of the NBC-TV special The Fabulous Funnies, an hour-long salute to American comic strips produced by Lee Mendelson. The Guardsmen were granted just shy of a minute to perform their song during a cute sequence that blended live action with animation.

“I Say Love” spent only four weeks in the bottom quarter of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, getting no higher than No. 72 during the first two weeks of March. It then vanished. After the similarly disappointing chart results of the previous year’s “Any Wednesday,” the band members were mortified.

 

No matter how well received they were during live performances, the message was clear: Royal Guardsmen albums sold respectably, but when it came to singles, people wanted only Snoopy.

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Coming up in Part 3: Election year follies and foibles