Emerging from the Deep South in the mid-1960s, the Gants ranked among the few garage bands from that region to register a national impact. Their cover of "Roadrunner" carried them into the Top 50 in 1965. In the ensuing year and a half, Liberty Records issued three albums dominated by cover material plus five additional singles, a schedule that drained the group’s momentum. The band merited more considerate handling, since lead singer and guitarist Sid Herring displayed genuine ability both as a performer and as a songwriter. Their style inclined so heavily toward the Beatles that it resisted classification as a conventional garage act; original numbers echoed the Fab Four’s approach around 1965 by merging mid-tempo acoustic and electric guitars, tight vocal harmonies, and a mild country shading. Herring’s voice itself recalled Lennon’s, and he freely adapted melodic fragments from “In My Life” and “From Me to You.” Even so, the stronger original songs were overshadowed by the band’s hurried, cover-laden albums, and no further hits followed “Roadrunner.”
