The Turtles: Without a Doubt, A Singular Band...

The Turtles is an American band that played folk-rock and psychedelic besides bubblegum pop, which is a genre including catchy melodies, repetitive “hooks” and simple harmonies with lightweight lyrics.  In particular, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan in California were the ones founding The Turtles; however, they started under the name of “The Crossfires”, and as so, they signed to the label White Whale Records.  Their first release was titled “It Ain’t Me Babe”, which includes a song with the same name that became an extremely successful hit in 1965.

In spite of the great success of The Turtles’ debut album, the second one, which is called You Baby, did not have the same repercussion on the audience. In 1967, the bassist Chuck Portz and the drummer Don Murray decided not to belong to the band anymore due to the lack of success of their last album. For this reason, Chip Douglas and John Barbata replaced these two members. “Happy Together”, which is The Turtle’s greatest hit reached #1, position that was kept for three weeks in a row.

The following year, when they launched “The Story of Rock and Roll” and “Sound Asleep”, they had a not very bad, but not very good year because the two singles mentioned before got to be in the charts, but were not well received. In that same year, they launched a concept album titled The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. This disc comprises two singles that got to stay among the Top Ten: “Eleonore” and “You Showed Me”. In 1970, The Turtles released the album More Golden Hits, and one year later, their last album, called Wooden Head, was launched.