9 minute read
Looking Back Remembering The Royal Guardsmen
When Ocala’s ‘Snoopy Boys’ brought Christmas cheer to the world
BY CARLTON REESE WITH THE HISTORIC OCALA PRESERVATION SOCIETY
As the Vietnam War raged, the approaching Christmas season of 1967 thirsted for a little jolt of civility amid race riots and demonstrations that sullied the streets of America. Then along came the Royal Guardsmen, a rock band comprised of six Ocala boys who had made their mark in the music industry the year before with their breakthrough hit “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron.”
Hitting the charts was the Guardsmen’s newest release, “Snoopy’s Christmas,” which played off the success of the cartoon theme and would eventually sell over a million copies. In the song, enemies of the air war, Snoopy the dog and the Red Baron, battle over the skies of Germany during World War I, with the dog being forced down behind enemy lines. Instead of finishing off Snoopy, the Red Baron offers him a holiday toast. The song invokes the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 in which German soldiers met with Allied soldiers in the neutral zone during the middle of World War I, celebrating Christmas and playing soccer with each other for many days over the holiday.
The song was popular in the United States and was also a huge hit in New Zealand where it reached No.1 on the charts and continued to break into the charts in following years, even through the new millennium.
Claimed by many as an anti-war song, “Snoopy’s Christmas” is really a song about peace and goodwill among men, especially enemies.
The Royal Guardsmen consisted of a mix of students from Lake Weir and Ocala high schools: Bill Balogh (bass), Chris Nunley (vocals), Tom Richards (guitar), John Burdett (drums), Barry Winslow (vocals, rhythm guitar) and Billy Taylor (organ). Legend has it that Burdett and Richards were both thrown out of Ocala High for having long hair, then after receiving haircuts they both stuffed the hair into the school’s mailbox.
Richards passed away in 1979, but remaining members still perform gigs that include original Guardsmen tunes plus covers of other hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Before 1966, the Royal Guardsmen played mostly cover tunes at places like Johnson’s Beach on Lake Weir before being discovered at a show in Tampa by record producer Phil Gernhard. Gernhard approached the band with the idea of composing music to a novelty song that would be “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron.” Gernhard liked what he heard and the band went to the studio to record.
The song reached No.2 on the Billboard chart behind The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer” and actually hit No.1 on the American Bandstand Top 10 for consecutive weeks in January 1967.
When the Royal Guardsmen came along, the state of Florida offered very little to the world in terms of pop and rock music, making the band trailblazers of sorts. Bill DeYoung, who authored the book, “Phil Gernhard, Record Man,” noted in an interview the importance of The Royal Guardsmen: “The story of the Royal Guardsmen is really key for Florida and Florida’s sense of pop culture history. They were really the first Florida band. … Nobody from Florida had really made it in that particular universe.”
The Royal Guardsmen recorded nonSnoopy themed songs that hit the charts, but the group will forever be remembered for its impact based on the cartoon dog. Coming along at the end of the British Invasion that saw the dramatic influence of bands such as the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Kinks, the Royal Guardsmen etched their place in music history and became the first musical group to put Ocala on the map.
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