Biography
In 1965 Bruce Blackman, who sang and played keyboards, and drummer Roy Whittaker—both enrolled at Delta College in Cleveland, Mississippi—launched the sunshine-pop ensemble Eternity’s Children, which later acquired a devoted cult audience. Lead guitarist Johnny Walker, rhythm guitarist Jerry Bounds, and bassist Charlie Ross soon joined the lineup, originally called the Phantoms, and the musicians began refining the intricate, overlapping vocal arrangements that would define their sound for years. Dawn Eden’s detailed liner notes for the 2002 Rev-Ola reissue Eternity’s Children recount that the Phantoms moved to Biloxi the following year, serving as the house band in the Biloxi Hotel’s basement nightclub and supporting visiting acts such as Charlie Rich and B.J. Thomas. Local folksinger Linda Lawley’s arrival prompted the group to adopt the name Eternity’s Children; after Baton Rouge health-club owner Ray Roy witnessed one of their performances, he persuaded associate Guy Belello to establish the management firm Crocked Foxx Productions and Music, which promptly placed the band under contract.
A demo quickly reached A&M producer Allen Stanton, leading the group to cut its sole release for that label in spring 1967—the David Gates composition “Wait and See,” produced by former Music Machine bassist Keith Olsen, later renowned for his partnership with studio wizard Curt Boettcher. The single failed to chart, and despite a package tour alongside the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Seeds, and the Blues Magoos, A&M dropped Eternity’s Children. Crocked Foxx next secured a deal with Tower, Capitol’s tax-shelter imprint; Olsen again supervised sessions, this time enlisting Boettcher, already celebrated for hits with the Association and for his own projects Sagittarius and the Millennium. Although the resulting self-titled debut contains moments of inspiration, it does not stand among the Boettcher-Olsen team’s finest work; competing commitments meant that alongside potential hits such as the lilting “Mrs. Bluebird” and the lovely “Again Again,” the album also included “Rupert White,” which simply overdubbed vocals onto a backing track previously issued as the Chocolate Tunnel’s “The Highly Successful Rupert White,” and “You Know I’ve Found a Way,” a Boettcher demo that features none of the group and later appeared in fuller form on Sagittarius’ Present Tense.
Mounting tensions with management prompted Blackman, Walker, and Bounds to depart before the album’s mid-1968 release; only Blackman was replaced, by classically trained keyboardist Mike “Kid” McClain, formerly of Houston’s the Neurotic Sheep. An American Bandstand appearance propelled “Mrs. Bluebird” to number 69 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for three weeks, yet Tower offered scant promotion and both single and band soon vanished from the chart. The remaining members nevertheless began recording a follow-up, Timeless, engaging Boettcher’s longtime engineer Gary Paxton; with Blackman gone, Ross, Lawley, and McClain supplied original songs while Paxton also obtained material from future Byrds Clarence White and Gene Parsons. After Whittaker exited mid-sessions, drummer Bo Wagner completed the tracks—later joining Blackman and Walker in their subsequent project, simply called the Children (the same pair would achieve major success in the mid-1970s as members of Starbuck, whose “Moonlight Feels Right” reached the Top Five). Promo copies of the first single, “Till I Hear It from You,” were sent to radio, but when the track generated little interest Tower canceled the U.S. release of Timeless, although Capitol’s Canadian division issued the album and “Mrs. Bluebird” became a substantial hit there. Seeking fresh surroundings and a new direction, the group relocated to Memphis and American Studios, where Chips Moman and session bassist Tommy Cogbill helped shift their sound toward earthy blue-eyed soul on the single “The Sidewalks of the Ghetto.” The record went nowhere; Capitol was dismantling Tower, though one final Eternity’s Children single, the Spooner Oldham-penned “Blue Horizon,” appeared, as did solo outings from Lawley (“When the World Turns”) and Ross (“A Railroad Trestle in California”). A last opportunity arose when Liberty, needing a replacement for the departed 5th Dimension, signed the band for “Alone Again,” yet the label’s absorption into United Artists ended the association. No further recordings were officially released, but assorted lineups of Eternity’s Children continued performing through the 1970s.
A demo quickly reached A&M producer Allen Stanton, leading the group to cut its sole release for that label in spring 1967—the David Gates composition “Wait and See,” produced by former Music Machine bassist Keith Olsen, later renowned for his partnership with studio wizard Curt Boettcher. The single failed to chart, and despite a package tour alongside the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Seeds, and the Blues Magoos, A&M dropped Eternity’s Children. Crocked Foxx next secured a deal with Tower, Capitol’s tax-shelter imprint; Olsen again supervised sessions, this time enlisting Boettcher, already celebrated for hits with the Association and for his own projects Sagittarius and the Millennium. Although the resulting self-titled debut contains moments of inspiration, it does not stand among the Boettcher-Olsen team’s finest work; competing commitments meant that alongside potential hits such as the lilting “Mrs. Bluebird” and the lovely “Again Again,” the album also included “Rupert White,” which simply overdubbed vocals onto a backing track previously issued as the Chocolate Tunnel’s “The Highly Successful Rupert White,” and “You Know I’ve Found a Way,” a Boettcher demo that features none of the group and later appeared in fuller form on Sagittarius’ Present Tense.
Mounting tensions with management prompted Blackman, Walker, and Bounds to depart before the album’s mid-1968 release; only Blackman was replaced, by classically trained keyboardist Mike “Kid” McClain, formerly of Houston’s the Neurotic Sheep. An American Bandstand appearance propelled “Mrs. Bluebird” to number 69 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for three weeks, yet Tower offered scant promotion and both single and band soon vanished from the chart. The remaining members nevertheless began recording a follow-up, Timeless, engaging Boettcher’s longtime engineer Gary Paxton; with Blackman gone, Ross, Lawley, and McClain supplied original songs while Paxton also obtained material from future Byrds Clarence White and Gene Parsons. After Whittaker exited mid-sessions, drummer Bo Wagner completed the tracks—later joining Blackman and Walker in their subsequent project, simply called the Children (the same pair would achieve major success in the mid-1970s as members of Starbuck, whose “Moonlight Feels Right” reached the Top Five). Promo copies of the first single, “Till I Hear It from You,” were sent to radio, but when the track generated little interest Tower canceled the U.S. release of Timeless, although Capitol’s Canadian division issued the album and “Mrs. Bluebird” became a substantial hit there. Seeking fresh surroundings and a new direction, the group relocated to Memphis and American Studios, where Chips Moman and session bassist Tommy Cogbill helped shift their sound toward earthy blue-eyed soul on the single “The Sidewalks of the Ghetto.” The record went nowhere; Capitol was dismantling Tower, though one final Eternity’s Children single, the Spooner Oldham-penned “Blue Horizon,” appeared, as did solo outings from Lawley (“When the World Turns”) and Ross (“A Railroad Trestle in California”). A last opportunity arose when Liberty, needing a replacement for the departed 5th Dimension, signed the band for “Alone Again,” yet the label’s absorption into United Artists ended the association. No further recordings were officially released, but assorted lineups of Eternity’s Children continued performing through the 1970s.