Tommy James and The Shondells – Crimson And Clover

I grew up with this single…I’ll never forget the orange Roulette Label going round and round. It’s a mystical and magical song to me. I fell in love with the tremolo effect that is throughout the entire song.

The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, and #1 in New Zealand, in 1968. I still am shocked that it either wasn’t released in the UK or it just failed to chart there. Joan Jett’s version peaked at only #60 in the UK. My friend at the UK Number Ones blog and I talked about it. Their song Mony Mony peaked at #1 in the UK earlier…maybe that was enough for them.

On this song…Tommy James is playing all the instruments except drums and they were played by Pete Lucia. James and Lucia wrote the song.

Bo Gentry was writing most of their hits until this point. He didn’t feel like he was getting paid enough from Roulette Records (which was partly run by the mob) so he quit. Tommy James was told that he better get someone to write songs for him or his career would sink since Bo Gentry refused. The record executives told him that he could not write a hit song and to find someone. Tommy James showed them all… he and his drummer wrote this massive hit song.

Around this time James got involved with politician Hubert Humphrey and they were trying to turn from a singles band to an album band. This song helped them. Below is a very long quote by Tommy James about that time. It does say a lot about the business in the late sixties.

Tommy James: “They were just two of my favorite words that came together. Actually, it was one morning as I was getting up out of bed, and it just came to me, those two words. And it sounded so poetic. I had no idea what it meant, or if it meant anything. They were just two of my favorite words. And Mike Vale and I – bass player – actually wrote another song called ‘Crimson and Clover.’ And it just wasn’t quite there. And I ended up writing ‘Crimson and Clover’ with my drummer, Pete Lucia, who has since passed away.”

Tommy James: ‘Crimson and Clover’ was so very important to us because it allowed us to make that move from AM Top 40 to album rock. I don’t think there’s any other song that we’ve ever worked on, any other record that we made, that would have done that for us quite that way. And it came out at such a perfect moment because we had been out with Hubert Humphrey on the presidential campaign for several months in 1968. And we met up with him right after the convention. The convention where all the kids got beat up. And we met up with him the following week in Wheeling, West Virginia, and of course we didn’t know where all the rallies were gonna be, like the convention. What have we gotten ourselves into? We had been asked to join him. And this really was the first time, I think, a rock act and a politician ever teamed up. But it was an incredible experience.

But when we left in August, all the big acts were singles acts. It was the Association, it was Gary Puckett, it was the Buckinghams, the Rascals, us, I’m leaving several people out. But the point was that it was almost all singles. In 90 days, when we got back, it was all albums. It was Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Joe Cocker, Neil Young. And there was this mass extinction of all of these other acts.

It was just incredible. Most people don’t realize that that was sort of the dividing line where so many of these acts never had hit records again. And we realized while we were out on the campaign that if our career was gonna continue, we had to make a move. We had to sell albums, which is something Roulette had never really done. The album, up to that point, had been whatever wasn’t the single. And then it was usually named the single, which I thought was a great idea. Morris (Levy) usually would name the album the same title as the single, so it would get kind of a head start. But the point was we knew we had to sell albums. Also that year the industry went from 4-track to 24-track in about the same period of time. So if we were gonna sell albums, we had to completely reinvent ourselves. And so it was a very dramatic moment. And the record we just happened to be working on at that moment, at the end of the campaign, was ‘Crimson and Clover.'”

Crimson and Clover

Ah, now I don’t hardly know her
But I think I could love her
Crimson and clover

Ah when she comes walking over
Now I’ve been waitin’ to show her
Crimson and clover over and over

Yeah, my, my such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover over and over

Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

41 thoughts on “Tommy James and The Shondells – Crimson And Clover”

  1. Great song & a good post. Interesting what he was saying about the dividing line in radio even back then and how this bridged that span. Joan Jett’s version is my favorite song of hers, but doesn’t quite top the original to me.

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  4. “allowed us to make that move from AM Top 40 to album rock.” I beg to differ. I was around then and I’d say they were a slightly more sophisticated flavor of bubblegum. Maybe like Blackjack or Teaberry instead of Fruit Stripe. (I know, none of those were bubblegum, just regular gum.) I never thought of them as “album rock”. Maybe like the “1910 Fruitgum Company” which thought if they had a long name it would make them sound psychedelic. Put little fuzz or a lot of tremolo on the guitar and you sound far out. Or not.

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    1. I only knew them after they were gone but yea…I’ve only known them as a singles band. They are a band I would get a greatest hits from…not explore their albums.

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  5. A great song I agree, that overly repetitive ending really makes it hard to listen too, so it’s fast forward to the next song to skip that part. I’ve listened to his Sirius XM show and he’s played a couple of his album tracks and I thought they were pretty good.

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    2. It is somewhat yes I agree…it is hard to describe because it is a little more sophsticated than normal bubblegum…no it’s not Stairway to Heaven but it’s not Sugar Sugar either. Now Mony Mony IS…no doubt…Crystal Blue Persuasion is just a good pop song.

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      2. lol… you must post around midnight or so…I have a bad habit of starting off in the morning of opening reader to my blog and then going forward.

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      2. No but I’ve played it before on guitar…just to use the tremolo… the one with tremolo that I’ve played with a band is the incredible Born on the Bayou…that song is so powerful.

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  12. In all our talking about the song, I realised I’d never properly heard their version. I knew the Joan Jett cover. It’s a pop song, but it’s also quite trippy, especially the vocal effect at the end…

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  13. This is another of those songs that marks the 1960s for me. I loved the sound effects, and the way the song opened. I enjoyed Joan Jett’s cover a lot, but it was so close to the original, it seemed more like a copy. Regardless, it was great hearing the song on the radio for another time in the charts.

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    1. Something about it makes me never get tired of it. I can’t put my finger on it but it’s something so different about it not counting the effects. Anyway high up on my list of songs.

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  15. Pingback: Tommy James and The Shondells – Crimson And Clover – Human Trafficking Survivor; God and Country, Without God There is No Country/ Judeo-Christian / America Belongs to God

  16. I beg to differ. Tommy James and the Shondells were a singles band. They made some great singles, such as Hanky Panky and Mony Mony. I have never liked the tremelo on this recording.

    Interesting comment about one moment it was all about singles and the next moment it was all albums. Not entirely accurate, but it wraps up the moments with the perfect clarity hindsight allows. Before there was bubblegum there were pop songs on the radio, and James made some classics.

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