#959: One Track Mind by The Knickerbockers

Peak Month: April 1966
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
YouTube.com: “One Track Mind”
Lyrics: “One Track Mind”

The Knickerbockers were a pop/rock group, best remembered for their 1966 Beatles sound-alike hit single, “Lies,” which peaked at #20 in the USA and #6 in Vancouver. Buddy Randell’s lead vocal sounded similar to John Lennon, as well as the vocal whoops, before Beau Charles guitar solo. Charles guitar also reminded radio listeners to Paul McCartney’s guitar playing. The Knickerbockers was a band that formed in 1962 in Bergenfield, New Jersey. The band consisted of vocalist and guitar player, Beau Charles, his brother John Charles on bass and vocals and, by 1964 they had a permanent vocalist and saxophone player named William “Buddy” Randell. The Charles brothers birth names were Robert (born 1944) and John Carlos Cecchino. Buddy Randell had earlier been a member of the Rockin’ Saints and the Royal Teens. The later group had enjoyed a hit in 1958 titled “Short Shorts.” Jimmy Walker was the bands’ drummer. The bandmates took their name from Knickerbocker Road, which ran through the town next to Bergenfield, two miles to the east. Knickerbocker Road stretched six miles between Englewood, NJ, and Closter, NJ, west of the Hudson River and across from the Bronx and Yonkers.
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