What an amazing year 1966 was in music. Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde hit the racks. So did The Beatles’ Revolver, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Stones’ Aftermath and so many more.
Into this stellar crowd quietly strolled Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful, the third studio album by Greenwich Village’s own folk-rock mavens. Today the disc just barely makes it onto a list of the top 50 albums of that lush, flush year, but in its own way, it made wonderful waves.
Hums — which would ultimately be the last full project by the Spoonful’s original lineup — was the band’s concerted effort to record in a wide variety of styles on a single disc. For it, they composed and played pop-, country-, jugband-, folk- and blues-fused tunes.
The album spawned four charting singles, including “Summer in the City,” “Rain on the Roof,” “Nashville Cats” and "Full Measure.”
Of “Nashville Cats,” principal songwriter John Sebastian said, "We thought our version would cross over to the country market. It never did. So we're always kinda, gee, well, I guess that tells us what we are — and what we aren't."
Incidentally, Flatt & Scruggs did take "Nashville Cats" to the country charts, hitting No. 54 with it as a single.
And elsewhere in the country crowd, Johnny Cash and June Carter covered Hums’ “Darlin’ Companion” on 1969’s Johnny Cash at San Quentin album.
About This Song
“Loving You,” Hums’ opening track, was never a hit single for the Spoonful, but a month after the disc’s release in November 1966, Bobby Darin made the Top 40 with a cover version of the tune.
Subsequently, the song also became a good vehicle for four different female vocalists, including Anne Murray (1969), Helen Reddy (1973) and Dolly Parton (1977) and Mary Black (1983).
Meanwhile, the song came into the Floodisphere before The Flood was even The Flood.
In 1975, after a year of regularly jamming together, Charlie and David started looking for new material to work on beyond their main interests in folk music, and for a brief time they landed on The Lovin' Spoonful's catalog.
Here — like the audio version of a crinkled old baby picture — is a sound clip fished from The Flood archives. Click the button below to hear Charlie and Dave sampling the song exactly 50 years ago this week at a jam session at the Peyton House:
The Spoonful’s Jug Band Roots
Only later did Bowen and Peyton realize that The Lovin’ Spoonful had been heavily influenced by some of the same 1920s-’30s jug band tunes that The Flood loves.
Before he founded the Spoonful, John Sebastian with his partner Zal Yanovsky, long active in Greenwich Village's folk scene, set out to create an "electric jug band.”
"Yanovsky and I were both aware of the fact that this commercial folk music model was about to change again,” Sebastian recalled, “that the four-man band that actually played their own instruments and wrote their own songs was the thing.”
In early 1965, as they prepared for their first public performances, Sebastian and Yanovsky along with their new band mates Joe Butler and Steve Boone, searched for a name.
It was Fritz Richmond, the washtub bass player for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, who suggested “The Lovin’ Spoonful,” referring to the lyrics of the song "Coffee Blues" by the country blues musician Mississippi John Hurt. It worked and it stuck.
Our 2025 Take on the Tune
At last week’s rehearsal, The Flood channeled those rich jug band roots of the Spoonful.
For this tune, Jack switched from his usual drum kit to those funky wooden spoons and Charlie reached for the five-string. Then Danny, Sam and Randy just did what they always do to make it all work.
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