#2: Strawberry Shortcake by Jay & the Techniques

City: New Glasgow, NS
Radio Station: CKEC
Peak Month: February-March 1968
Peak Position in New Glasgow ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #27
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #39
YouTube: “Strawberry Shortcake”
Lyrics: “Strawberry Shortcake”

Jay & The Techniques was a pop group from Allentown (PA) formed in 1965. The group Jay & The Techniques was born when lead vocalist Jay Proctor (born in October 1940) and vocalist George “Lucky” Lloyd teamed with an all-white band. The white members of the newly formed inter-racial band were lead guitar player Dante Dancho, bass guitar player Chuck Crowl, drummer Karl Landis (born Karl Lippowitsch), saxophone player Ronnie Goosley, and trumpeter Jon Walsh. Along with Sly and the Family Stone, Jay & The Techniques were among the first inter-racial bands to break into Top 40 radio. Jay Proctor had his stage debut singing acapella in 1958 in a group called Hambone. In 1960 and ’61, Proctor had cut a few unsuccessful singles. George Lloyd was born in 1941, and by 1956 was an aspiring singer who made his first recording at the age of 15 with a group called the Jaylarks. Initially, Jay & The Techniques were called the Floridians.

In 1966, the first big break for Jay Proctor came when he won a regional “battle of the bands” contest and landed a recording contract from Philadelphia producer Jerry Ross of Mercury Records. Jay told Soul Music Archives in 2009 “The name ‘the Techniques’ came about one day when we were looking for a name and the girl who was in the group saw it in the dictionary and laughing said, “How about the Techniques?” We said, “Yeah that sounds good.”

In 1967, Maurice Irby, Jr. wrote “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” and the song reached #6 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, #8 in the Billboard Hot 100, and number-one in St. Thomas (ON). Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson provided backing vocals for the song in the recording studio. The pair wrote many songs including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

Ed Sullivan presented Jay & The Techniques with a gold record
for “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” on a December 1967 broadcast

A followup hit for Jay & The Techniques was “Keep The Ball Rollin'”. It reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. After their debut album, Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie, the group released their second album titled Love, Lost & Found. The debut single from the album was titled “Strawberry Shortcake”.

Drawing on his dessert-themed song titles after the success of “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”, Maurice Irby penned “Strawberry Shortcake”. Other songs Irby wrote were recorded by Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs, Mary Wells, and Lou Reed. Irby was born in 1941 in Freeport, Nassau County (NY), and died in 1998 at age 56.

Irby began “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” with these lines about the ancient children’s game, Hide-and-Seek:
Ready or not, here I come.
Gee, that used to be such fun. 
Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie
Who’s not ready? Holler “I”
That’s a game we used to play, yeah
Hide and seek was its name.

Maurice Irby updates the lyrics later in the song to reflect an adult game of hide-and-seek with the guy in “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” promising:
...I’ll find you anywhere you go
I’m gonna look high and low
You can’t escape this love of mine, Anytime,
Well, I’ll sneak up behind you
Be careful where I find you.

In “Strawberry Shortcake” Irby tackles a children’s jumprope rhyme game and adapts it to a chasing game. The intro begins in the same fashion of “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”:
Get a head start,
it won’t help none
Betcha I’ll still catch you.

Maurice Irby adds a traditional jumprope rhyme:
Strawberry shortcake with cream on top
Tell me the name of your sweetheart.

In the jumprope rhyme, what children say next is:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, etc.
(They keep going through the alphabet until the jumper misses. The letter shouted when the jumper lands is the first letter of their sweetheart’s name).

But the lyrics to “Strawberry Shortcake” unfold from a jumprope game to a game of chase as the singer recalls,
You’re the little girl I used to chase around the block.

Now, the lyrics tell the adult guy is going to chase her around the clock. They’re going to have a race to see which one can get to his home first. He tells her, “If I beat you home, you know the rules. You got to let me kiss you pretty baby.” Jay & The Techniques were pushing songs with memories of childhood games as similes for adult romantic pursuits.

“Strawberry Shortcake” peaked at #2 in New Glasgow (NS) for two weeks, and also in Marshfield (WI), #3 in Vancouver (WA), #5 in Manchester (NH), #6 in Augusta (GA), Wilkes-Barre (PA), and Orlando, #7 in Moscow (ID), #8 in Toledo (OH), Bowling Green (KY), and San Diego, #10 in Easton (PA), and #11 in Reading (PA). It was the last single release for Jay & The Techniques to reach the Billboard Top 40, where it stalled at #39.

Jay Proctor told a reporter years later about “Strawberry Shortcake” and “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”, “The music was all way too bubblegummy — they even called it bubblegum soul. You look back at it, and it was kind of ridiculous. It was way far from what I thought my career would be like. I never really had the chance to do anything soulful like I wanted to do.”

During their career, Jay & the Techniques appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, The Murray the K Show and the Steel Pier Show. Jay sang in front of a packed Houston Astrodome, Madison Square Garden, Philadelphia’s Uptown Theatre, in colleges and universities across the country, many charity benefits. The group also gave free concerts at Army bases and prisons throughout the United States.

In 1968, the group released “Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music” which stalled at #64 on the Hot 100. Four more single releases in 1968 and 1969 were commercial flops.

George “Lucky” Lloyd didn’t like life on the road. So he left Jay & The Techniques and spent most of his adult working for 17 years at Mack Trucks in Allentown, then at Victaulic in Alburtis before retiring in 2005. He occasionally got back together with Jay Proctor and eventually formed a local R&B dance group.

In 1974, “I Feel Love Coming On” charted to #6 on the Billboard Disco Action chart. The group’s last charting single, “Number Onederful”, was a disco hit in 1976 in Newark (NJ) and a few other radio markets on the United States east coast.

Jay Proctor’s career took a tragic turn when a nightclub arson fire claimed the lives of nine friends and left Jay hospitalized for months. Following several years of despair and recovery, Jay put a new group together and began to perform regularly on the oldies circuit. In 1996, the group performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the same period, Mercury Records released The Best of Jay & the Techniques, which even contained the first new recording in over a decade with “Love’s Just Not For Sale”. In 2005, Jay Proctor released a solo album titled Still Got Flow.

August 4, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
“Jay Proctor Interview,” Soul Music Archive, 2009.
Alan Jennings, “The Many Stories of Jay & the Techniques With Jay Proctor,” The Jennings Report, WDIY-FM, Lehigh Valley, (PA), June 10, 2022.
“Final notes for a sweet-voiced Techniques singer,” The Morning Call, Orlando Sentinel, July 10, 2010.
“Nick Ashford of Ashford & Simpson songwriting team dies at 70,” Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2011.
“Maurice Irby Jr.,” Ancientfaces.com, November 9, 2022.
“Strawberry Shortcake Jump Rope,” YouTube.com.

CKEC 1320-AM New Glasgow (NS) Top Ten | March 1, 1968