MAKING MUSIC

Gary Puckett And The Union Gap Count Basie Center Red Bank

By Dave Gil de Rubio

Gary Puckett and the Union Gap may have enjoyed their heyday from 1967 to 1969, but it hasn’t kept these pop legends from continuing to tour and entertain their legion of fans.

Founded in 1967 by Puckett, the Union Gap enjoyed a string of five Top 10 hits for the next two years. Like other oldies acts, Puckett promises to keep the nostalgia flame burning bright with the group’s shows.

“The people want to hear the music of their youth and the music that they expect from me. I play all the hits and we play a lot of the songs that were on the first three albums for the Union Gap,” he explained. “So it’s built around music that they may recognize, but not necessarily were our hits—though I do all the hits—‘Woman, Woman,’ ‘Young Girl,’ ‘Lady Willpower,’ ‘Over You,’ ‘This Girl Is a Woman Now.’ But we also do some songs like The Bee Gees ‘To Love Somebody.’ Bob Dylan’s ‘Mighty Quinn,’ because it’s so much fun and I think it was on our second album. We do Petula Clark’s ‘Kiss Me Goodbye’—stuff like that, songs that everybody knows and loves.” Around the same time Puckett got a record deal, he came up with the idea of dressing himself and his band in Civil War-inspired outfits.

“I knew that it was a very competitive business. I knew that everybody wanted to be on that Top 40 and everybody wanted to get on the “Billboard” Hot 100 chart,” he recalled. “So I thought we might want to go for a visual image along with a record that we might be able to make. [The idea was that] maybe somebody would look at it, be curious and wonder what the record sounded like and that’s exactly what happened actually. I always thought the Civil War-era period of history for the U.S. was so interesting [and the uniforms] were spectacular to look at.”

The hits started coming, but Puckett and the Union Gap’s momentum was short circuited over creative differences with the band’s producer, Jerry Fuller. Puckett also pointed out that tastes and times were changing and his music didn’t fit the changing times.

“I made some poor decisions at a very bad time when things were changing,” he said. “The ‘60s were becoming the ‘70s. People were changing their attitudes, their minds, their music, their drugs—they were just changing and moving on.”

If You Go: Happy Together Tour: The Turtles, Little Anthony, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap & The Vogues

Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre at the Count Basie Center for the Arts, 99 Monmouth St, Red Bank, NJ 07701 For tickets: https://www.eventticketscenter.com/happy-togethertour-the-turtles-little-anthony-gary-puckett-and-theunion-gap-the-vogues-redbank-07-27-2023/5585945/t

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