Harpers Bizarre emerged from California during the late-1960s sunshine pop wave, crafting relaxed and buoyant tracks that featured orchestral arrangements, layered vocal harmonies, and lighthearted themes. Across a short span from 1967 to 1970 the ensemble scored several modest chart entries and issued four albums with its founding members before adopting a mildly countercultural stance on the 1969 release Harpers Bizarre 4. Founding participant Ted Templeman later concentrated on production duties, guiding projects for Carly Simon, Van Morrison, the Doobie Brothers, Van Halen, and additional major artists over subsequent decades.
The group originated as the Tikis, a Santa Cruz outfit assembled in 1963 that comprised Templeman, Dickie Scoppettone, Eddie James, Dick Yount, and John Peterson, the last of whom had performed briefly with the Beau Brummels. The Tikis explored surf sounds alongside Beatles-influenced pop and put out a handful of singles. In 1967 they cut a Leon Russell arrangement of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” that highlighted vocal layering and an upbeat, hopeful mood; issued as Harpers Bizarre’s debut single, the track surpassed any prior Tikis release by reaching number 13 on the U.S. Billboard charts and entering the U.K. Top 50. The band swiftly completed its first album, Feelin’ Groovy, which appeared in April 1967 and yielded a second minor hit via the Van Dyke Parks composition “Come to the Sunshine.” Before year’s end the follow-up Anything Goes arrived, titled after the Cole Porter standard the group covered and promoted as a single.
Shortly after Anything Goes was issued, James departed and Tom Sowell took his place. Harpers Bizarre continued releasing singles and albums, among them 1968’s The Secret Life of Harpers Bizarre and 1969’s Harpers Bizarre 4, consistently blending original songs with contemporary covers in their bright, chamber-pop manner. Later efforts failed to replicate the early singles’ commercial impact, and the band dissolved quietly in 1970, freeing Templeman to focus on production at Warner Bros. Records. A partial reunion excluding Templeman produced the 1976 album As Time Goes By.
