The American Breed Pop Band
Chapter 2 — The Breed Years (Written By Music Historian Kenneth Voss)
As Gary and the Knight Lites had connected with record industry entrepreneur Bill Traut, recording a couple of singles on the Seeburg label as well as one on Traut’s Dunwich label, it was January of 1967 when they became the American Breed.
The story is one of those “fate” sagas. On January 27, 1967, a major snowstorm dumping 20” on the city stranded a couple of record executives in the city. Kenny Myers, a former senior vice president at Mercury Records, was in town scouting for new bands for a new record label being started up by Dot Records. Looking to coattail on the new “Chicago Sound” being created by the likes of the Buckinghams and Cryan’ Shames, Myers was searching for a band to help break the new Acta label.
Stranded by the snowstorm, Bill Traut held Myers captive, playing him some of the session material that Gary and the Night Lites had done. Myers was sold, returning to California “with exciting takes about a group that used driving brass arrangements and unusual four-part harmony.”
As Gary and the Knight Lites signed with Acta, as a subsidiary of Dot, label management had one issue. “They told us Gary and the Knight Lites sounded a little dated,” Loizzo said in a story in the Chicago Tribune. “So we put a bunch of names in a hat and pulled out American Breed.” Graziano spins the story of the name slightly different. “There was a suggestion of The New Breed, with the label feeling their needed to be an American feel to the band — and we became the American Breed.” The name not only reflected the “made in America” concept, the “Breed” was a reflection of the group being one of the first integrated band to emerge in pop music culture. As a matter of fact, they played one show in Mississippi that the contract had to be modified to specify an integrated audience was allowed.
The first single “I Don’t Think You Know Me” b/w “Give Two Young Lovers a Chance,”, laid the groundwork for Acta’s promotion team and broke the ice with national radio programmers getting introduced to the Breed’s “Chicago sound,” with the single going on to sell 175,000 copies.
Acta immediately followed up with “Step Out of Your Mind” which went Top 10 locally and rose to #24 on the Billboard charts nationally. The success of that single prompted to extend their contract with the American Breed. The American Breed suddenly became the driving force of the Acta label. While the band had first signed to a “singles only” contract, Acta now wanting to include albums in the deal.
Bill Traut produced their first album, which featured tasteful brass arrangements by Eddie Higgins, a man who really helped them to define and refine their sound. The album contained such R&B standards as “Knock on Wood,” “My Girl,” “Up Tight,” “Hi Heel Sneakers,” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” in addition to two originals, “Short Skirts” and “Same Old Thing.” The album also contained the group’s third hit single, “Don’t Forget about Me.”
“I credit Bill Traut for helping give us our style.” As dances such as the Monkey and Frug were fashionable at the time, “all the songs were on the beat, the dance beat,” says Graziano. And bringing in horns, “added a fresh excitement,” he added. Relying on renowned Chicago session producer Eddie Higgins to arrange horn charts to support the group’s recordings, the American Breed hit the market running with a fresh, upbeat, contemporary pop sound.
Soon, Acta made plans for a national tour by the Breed to coincide with their fourth single, “Bend Me, Shape Me.” With Graziano’s trotting drum intro, Eddie Higgin’s smooth horn opening and Loizzo’s rich vocalization, “Bend Me, Shape Me” climbed up the charts. By the end of 1967 the song was #1 in Chicago and reached #5 nationally, enjoying a 14-week run on the national charts on its way to becoming a million seller.
Acta set out to put together some tour dates. Bringing them out to the home offices in Hollywood, the label got them into the studio to sing “A Quiet Place” for the soundtrack to the movie No Way to Treat a Lady, thereby becoming the first Chicago band to sing in a movie.
While the American Breed had national success with their hit “Bend Me, Shape Me”, the group’s business decisions stalled the opportunity for greater success. Gary Loizzo was in college, and didn’t want to tour full time, limiting the band to weekends. And while their records were enriched with horn arrangements, the band continued to perform live as a four piece — able to travel together in a single van and keeping expenses down.
According to Graziano, the group also suffered from image confusion. Dot had created the Acta label in 1967 as an outlet for psychedelic rock releases, and while the label had the greatest success with the American Breed, “Some of our songs were getting typecast as psychedelic (“Bend Me, Shape Me”, “Step Out of Your Mind”), but the band image didn’t support it.” Mentioning one show in particular, “we did a show in Indianapolis with Cream. It was a total mismatch.” Meanwhile, their record label was billing them with popular black acts like the Four Tops and Fifth Dimension. “We didn’t fit their either,” says Graziano.
Still, the Breed enjoyed the success they garnered. They appeared on American Bandstand four times. Their songs were included in movie soundtracks No Way To Treat a Lady, Jud and The Brain. And they were in high demand in Chicago jingle studios cutting commercials for Coca-Cola, Bell Telephone, American Airlines and others.
Their singles continued to chart with “Ready, Willing and Able” reaching #84, “Green Light” peaking at #39, “Anyway That You Want Me” at #88 and “Hunky Funky” at #107.
And the record label kept pushing for more. In less than two years, the group cranked out four albums. It was too much, too fast. They couldn’t write that much new material that quickly. While they were charting, they were only reaching the lower rungs and fell off fairly quickly. The Breed lost direction on the last two albums. Sadly, the final album was a real hodgepodge. Says Graziano, “Gary didn’t participate a lot because he was sick. And while the album was well done, there was no direction, no leadership.”
At that time, the American Breed added keyboardist Kevin Murphy, who was also a great baritone voice addition to the band’s three-part harmonies, as well as two female background vocalists including Paulette McWilliams. McWiliiams had been singing in some smaller groups before, and doing sessions for Don Talty’s Formal label on which Colbert had recorded for with the Trinidads. But then Murphy got drafted, and missed the sessions for their last album. Those changes impacted the sessions for the final album and headed the American Breed sound in a different direction.
By now, the band was floundering, as well their record label. Wanting to head in a different direction, while Loizzo wanted to stay with a more commercial pop sound, the band members were telling Loizzo, “we gotta go out,” but Loizzo balked. That, coupled with the new lineup evolving the group into a more funk-laden sound, “we basically told Gary we were leaving. We’re gonna start another group,” says Graziano. “It was the era of bubblegum music. Every band who emphasized vocal harmonies was put into the bubblegum category. If you didn’t play progressive, rabble-rousing crazy, nobody noticed you.“
Colbert, Graziano, Murphy and McWilliams split off the form Grip which evolved into Smoke, that group morphing into Ask Rufus and ultimately becoming Rufus, although all had departed before Rufus debuted. Guitarist Al Ciner headed down into central Illinois joining with the country-rock outfit Light Brigade, a group that also featured band members Dennis Belfield and Ron Stockert; Ciner returning when he was invited back eventually bringing the two with him.
Loizzo remembers the band’s breakup in November of 1969. “It was a mutual thing. We all wanted to grow. I wanted to continue singing commercial type songs; they wanted to get into something more progressive. We’d been at it for almost eight years at the time. We’d beaten the odds, but there was just nowhere else to go.”
It was an amicable parting, although Loizzo attempted to keep the American Breed name alive briefly with a different lineup supporting him. Loizzo had been convinced by people in the business that he didn’t need the rest of the group, scoured the Chicago music scene to put together a “New Breed.” The people he eventually came up with were Bill Jordan on vocals and percussion, Greg Owen on organ, Greg Biela on bass, Glen Rupp and Gary Wisner on guitars, and Maria LaRusso on drums. All except Wisner and LaRusso were former members of the Shady Daze. After about six months, Bruce Gordon replaced Biela, who moved on to Heartsfield. And Ron Kaplan, formerly of For Days and a Night, took over for LaRusso on percussion. As Loizzo recalls, “It was sort of a catch-as-catch-can thing with the backing band. I didn’t really want to do as much touring as we did; rather, I hoped to concentrate on making and producing our records. Unfortunately, the new Breed didn’t record very much.”
By that time Loizzo saw himself heading into a different direction. With an acoustic engineering educational background from DePaul, he was ready to utilize his technical and acoustical abilities and began a new chapter of his life. While he did a one-off album project released under the moniker Uncle Willard, pursuing the role of recording engineer, Loizzo built a recording studio in his Palos Hills garage. With almost immediate success, he soon expanded to a stand-alone studio building in Oak Lawn. And Pumpkin Studios was born. “The name Pumpkin Studios came from the idea of Cinderella,” said Gary’s son Todd, “the pumpkin that turned into a carriage at midnight, just like the garage that turned into the studio.”
While it seemed like the end, the American Breed legacy name lived on. In 1970, they released a limited-edition, blue vinyl 12” EP with three takes of the song “We’re Only in It for the Money” and in 2005 helped celebrate the Chicago White Sox baseball successful world championship season with the CD single “Rock With the Sox.” And now, have planned a new digital-only release Epiphany, featuring tracks cut by Loizzo, Ciner and Colbert just before Loizzo’s passing including an updated version of “Bend Me, Shape Me.”
(Note: Chapter 3 will explore the post-years of the American Breed. The success of Chaka Khan and Rufus; Paulette McWilliams solo career; Graziano partnering on a record label and management company; Ciner, Belfield and Stockert going on as successful studio musicians and more.)