The Clefs Of Lavender Hill

The folk-rock cult classic "Stop! Get a Ticket" remains the enduring hallmark of the Clefs of Lavender Hill, a group fronted by sibling singers and guitarists Travis and Coventry Fairchild—Brooklyn natives Joseph and Lorraine Ximenes. After relocating to Miami during 1966, the pair brought aboard bassist Bill Moss along with his sibling Fred on drums, both formerly members of the Twilights, whose sole 45, "She's There," had appeared the previous year. Their debut Clefs of Lavender Hill release, "First Tell Me Why," arrived on the Thames imprint, yet local Miami stations gravitated instead toward its B-side, drawn by the track's buoyant Merseybeat flavor. That regional enthusiasm prompted Date to secure national distribution rights, propelling the single to number 80 on Billboard's Top 100. Autumn brought the follow-up "One More Time," which climbed to number 114, while "It Won't Be Long" closed out 1966 without charting. The same fate greeted 1967's "Gimme One Good Reason," even though a complete album had already been recorded; Date ultimately abandoned the project, dropped the act, and left the LP unreleased. With the Moss brothers departed, Travis and Coventry enlisted bassist Frank Milone and drummer Steve Zaricki, only to disband in 1968. "Stop! Get a Ticket" resurfaced decades later on the 1998 Nuggets anthology, and the long-shelved album—augmented by the group's solitary non-album single—finally emerged in 2010 when Wounded Bird issued the collection under the title Stop! Get a Ticket.