Formed as a Bronx quintet in 1964, the group that became the Blues Magoos first performed under the name the Trenchcoats, later switching to the Bloos Magoos before settling on the standard spelling. Once established as regulars on the Greenwich Village club circuit, the band issued singles through the Ganim and Verve Forecast labels and moved to Mercury Records in 1966. Following an extensive image overhaul and promotional campaign, the quintet positioned itself as an East Coast counterpart to the San Francisco flower-power psychedelic movement, scoring a major hit that year with the single “(We Ain’t Got) Nothing Yet.” The accompanying album Psychedelic Lollipop also reached the charts. Although fundamentally a blues-rock outfit driven by garage-band energy rather than a Summer of Love act, the Blues Magoos retained psychedelic elements on the 1967 release Electric Comic Book and its 1968 follow-up, Basic Blues Magoos. The lineup and musical direction were subsequently revamped, leading to a new deal with ABC Records and a return to blues foundations on 1969’s Never Goin’ Back to Georgia. The 1970 album Gulf Coast Bound incorporated Latin accents into the blues framework and relied primarily on session musicians. The Blues Magoos moniker was discontinued by 1972, though the members reconvened for live performances in the late 2000s. Sundazed Records issued fresh CD and LP editions of Psychedelic Lollipop and Electric Comic Book in 2011, followed by the compilation The Mercury Singles 1966-1968 in 2016.
