Beverly Bivens
Encyclopedia
Beverly Bivens was lead singer with the American West Coast folk-rock group We Five
from 1965-67. After her marriage to jazz musician Fred Marshall and the break-up of We Five, she sang for a while with the experimental Light Sound Dimension, but, by the late sixties had largely left the music scene. After many years of relative seclusion, she sang at the opening of an exhibition in San Francisco in 2009. Her son is the saxophonist Joshi Marshall
.
on April 28, 1946. She attended Santa Ana High School
(attended also by Bill Medley
of the Righteous Brothers, as well as members of the Chantays and actress Diane Keaton
, who was her contemporary) and Orange Coast Junior College
, where she majored in liberal arts.
(1945–2002) and Jerry Burgan, who had formed a folk
duo at high school and branched out into electronic music with guitarist Bob Jones, whom they met at the University of San Francisco
. Bivens was recommended to Stewart by Terry Kirkman
, later of The Association
, who was then the boyfriend of her sister Barbara. With the addition of Pete Fullerton, this group, initially called the Ridgerunners and, for a while, the Mike Stewart Quintet, became known as We Five. They recorded their first album, the highly eclectic You Were on My Mind, for A&M
records in 1965 after Herb Alpert
, founder of A&M, heard them at the "hungry i
", a folk/night club on Jackson Street in the North Beach
area of San Francisco.
's song You Were On My Mind
. It became one of the first folk-rock hits, reaching number three in the Billboard
"Hot 100" in August 1965. Tyson (then Sylvia Fricker) says that she was unaware that her song had been "covered"
until she heard We Five's version on a car radio while driving on Highway 101
in California. One consequence of We Five's success was that Tyson's song, which, until then, had been unavailable in sheet
form, was published by Witmark
of New York, with a photograph of Bivens and We Five on the cover.
On 2 October 1965, We Five performed You Were on My Mind live on the ABC
television show The Hollywood Palace
, on which they were introduced by guest compère Fred Astaire
. Video footage of this performance survives, as does that of appearances around the same time on the Jack Benny
and Bob Hope
shows and Shivaree
. There have been some unsubstantiated claims that Bivens did not sing on the original studio recording of You Were on My Mind and that the female voice was that of another artist. However, most sources reject this suggestion.
under the shortened title Get Together.
A third single, You Let a Love Burn Out, was trailed by A&M as a "3rd We Five smash in a row" on the back of a Grammy nomination for You Were on My Mind. Released early in 1966, its "twangy-oriental sound", with Bivens "really put[ting] her voice in front of the others and set[ting] the tempo for the remainder of the group" represented a significant departure of style that, in various ways, was to be adopted by other bands in the coming year. However, it made limited public impact, a fate shared in May 1966 by a further single, There Stands the Door (which was coupled with Somewhere
, a song from the 1957 musical West Side Story
). Pete Fullerton felt that, with both these recordings, "there was always that edge of whining".
Bivens' performances on the album You Were On My Mind and in concert largely foreshadowed a female vocal style that, by 1967, was associated with, among others, Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane
, Grace Slick
of the Great Society and Jefferson Airplane
, and Cass Elliot
and Michelle Phillips
of The Mamas & the Papas
. Bivens was said to have inspired Jefferson Airplane's original vocalist Signe Toly Anderson
, who was already well established on San Francisco's jazz and folk scene before joining the Airplane. It may be no coincidence either that Karen Carpenter
who, like Bivens, had a fine vocal range, was signed by Alpert to A&M, with her brother Richard, in 1969.
Bivens' influence was apparent too in recordings by some male bands: for example, the Turtles
' single Happy Together
and the Cowsills' The Rain, the Park and Other Things (both major hits in 1967), as well as I Will Have You (1966) by the seemingly imitative British band, Just Five. In 2002, the British newspaper The Independent
described We Five as having "bridged the gap" between Peter, Paul and Mary
and the Mamas and Papas; indeed, Bivens' voice and that of Mary Travers
had a similar atmospheric quality, although Bivens' was the more commanding. In the latter respect, there was a similarity with both Judith Durham
of the Australian group the Seekers
and Dusty Springfield
, initially of the Springfields
, who made their names in England in the early to mid sixties as the lead singers of folk-oriented groups. The vocal delivery of Judy Dyble
, the original lead singer of England's premier folk-rock band, Fairport Convention
, and Kerrilee Male and Dorris Henderson
, successive lead singers of of Eclection
, also bore comparison with that of Bivens; so, in more recent times, have the performing styles of Trembling Bells
' Lavinia Blackwall and Zooey Deschanel
in her recordings with M. Ward
as She and Him.
, which, in England, became a defining symbol of "Swinging" London
, had yet to make a wide impact in America.
Bivens was then 5 foot 3 inches tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes. Musicologist Alec Palao has described her as "a petite powerhouse with demurely attractive looks [and] a penchant for European style". Surviving television clips capture her rather chic
, mod style of dress, with bobbed
hair and go-go boots
. Bivens' relatively brief career happened when she was one of a fairly small number of female rock musicians: her classic style was in contrast to the more Bohemian
look favored by contemporaries like Grace Slick
or Janis Joplin
.
At that time Bivens' favorite band was the Beatles, "... which is fairly obvious. I haven't really heard any that I really like besides the Beatles". Many years later, she recalled that, when We Five played in Pittsburgh in late 1965 with another English band, the Rolling Stones, she had been ignored by the Stones' lead singer Mick Jagger
when she had tried to introduced herself.
In October 1965 KYA, a leading San Francisco radio station, used a large photographic portrait of Bivens to draw attention to its inaugural International Pop Music Awards (maybe patronising her a little in the process with its caption, "Wee
One of the We Five"). Other photographs of Bivens included those of We Five taken by Lisa Bachelis (later Lisa Law
), using a Leica given to her by the group's manager and producer Frank Werber (1929–2007), who also managed the Kingston Trio, of which Mike Stewart's brother John (1939–2008) was a member. We Five sometimes used Werber's home at Mill Valley to rehearse; one photograph taken there shows Bivens barefoot in a bikini
top and jeans
, while the group used, among other things, a broom in place of a microphone. Bivens appeared barefoot also on the cover of You Were On My Mind, walking along a beach in a reddish-orange tunic
, accompanied by her male colleagues, all fully shod and wearing matching turtle necks.
" of 1967. However, the original band had disbanded by then. Jerry Burgan and Pete Fullerton reformed We Five. Burgan's wife, Debbie, née Graf, who sang with a group called the Legendaires and had sometimes worked with the Ridgerunners (as they then were), took over from Bivens as lead vocalist. A group known as We Five was still performing forty years later.
In his notes for We Five's second album, Make Someone Happy (1967), released after they had split (an episode that later give rise to unfounded rumours that Bivens had been killed in a road accident), George Yanok observed that
Yanok asserted also that "there was nothing psychedelic
or arcane about We 5's music". However, various elements of the music of the psychedelic era, notably Bivens' vocal delivery, which Yanok described as "a major reason for this [We Five's] special something", were plainly discernible in We Five's output (for example, on Let's Get Together and such tracks as If I Were Alone, Love Me Not Tomorrow, You Let A Love Burn Out and Bivens' blues solo on Judy Henske
's High Flying Bird, which she has described as "like her heart song").
In some respects Bivens was an "outsider". She was the only female member of We Five, while the four men all went to college together: Stewart, Jones and Burgan were graduates of the University of San Francisco
, and Fullerton knew Stewart and Burgan from their days at a junior college
in Los Angeles County, Mt. San Antonio College
. The academic background of each was recorded prominently on the sleeve of You Were On My Mind, together with the information that Bivens had attended junior college. There were other mild hints of condescension: the same sleeve notes recognised that Bivens' "unusual brilliance and vocal range is the basis of our sound" and that she was "the spark of the group", but referred also to her "genuine involvement in singing and desire to learn", while, many years later, the We Five website referred curiously to Stewart and Burgan's having added "the sound of a female voice that was eventually to be made famous by Beverly Bivens". (This is perhaps consistent with another, possibly ironic, sleeve reference to Bivens' instrument as her throat, although it may allude also to the Ridgerunners' original female singer, Sue Ellen Davies, a coloratura
whom the other members had met at Claremont High.)
. In a 2002 Jerry Burgan attributed the band's collapse in part to the band's management, reflecting that "the dissolution was rooted in unfocused management that permitted a very young group to have too much autonomy. We factionalized into a blues contingent, a pop contingent, and an 'I'm out of here' contingent."
Despite Herb Alpert's own recording success, A&M was a rather small record label compared (for example) to RCA
, who signed We Five's local contemporaries Jefferson Airplane
. The band's success was greatly hindered by the fact that their second album, with Bivens as the lead singer, was not released until late 1967, over a year after it was recorded and six months after the band's final concert in May 1967 in Winona, Minnesota
. In 1968 We Five were among a number of A&M's artists included in an injunction by a Los Angeles court prohibiting the "pirating" of their recordings by a company named Superba Tapes.
We Five are sometimes dismissed as a "one hit wonder", although they actually had two charting singles and were the highest charting 1960s band from San Francisco until Creedence Clearwater Revival
in 1969. Jerry Burgan spoke more kindly of the band's management in 2007, recalling that Werber "had an ability to encourage creativity and the musical process without having to direct it. While encouraging us [We Five] to write, to sing, and to play, he surrounded us with a team that shaped all of the other elements which led to our success". However, there may be a certain implication in Burgan's further observation that "we were too young to see it at the time, but I later learned to appreciate the impact he had on my life". The 2009 compilation, There Stands the Door, to which all the surviving members of the original We Five contributed recollections, was dedicated to "the late, great Frank Werber".
by Collectors' Choice Music
in 1996 and a further compilation, including some previously unreleased recordings, including jingles for Coca Cola, was issued in 2009 by Big Beat under the title of There Stands The Door: The Best Of We Five. Because of her short period of contemporaneous fame, Bivens has remained a rather elusive figure, but one whose voice has plainly been cherished by many who heard her in the mid sixties. Although Mike Stewart appears to have been the "engine" of We Five, putting in extra hours to attend to arrangements of the group's material, George Yanok's notes for Make Someone Happy were perhaps revealing in that they concentrated on Bivens' centrality to We Five virtually to the exclusion of the other members: according to Yanok, she was "totally honest, gifted and possessed". Yanok also observed that We Five's music was about "fun" and that it was "unfortunate that that 'fun', in this age [i.e. 1967], has become equated with frivolity and dismissed as trivia".
Even so, although Bivens' documented recording career lasted less than two years and extended to little more than two dozen tracks, it seems probable that, had she remained in the industry (and there was no suggestion that she herself – "the miniskirt-wearing, free spirit of the band" – had become passée). her soaring and beautiful voice would have made her a big star. She herself has confirmed that "A&M called, they wanted me, but I think my husband [Fred Marshall, whom she married in 1966] insisted he produce the records ... I'd been working hard for a long time and just thought I'd take a break – turned out to be a couple of decades!"
Trio which famously recorded the incidental music for television specials based on the Peanuts
cartoons of Charles Schulz. Guaraldi had been an habitué of the hungry i club and Marshall's own band, the Ensemble, played at the Fillmore Auditorium
in San Francisco on the same bill as Jefferson Airplane on the night in October 1966 that Grace Slick first sang as their lead vocalist.
In 1966 Marshall began to collaborate with lighting technician Bill Ham (William Gatewood Ham, born 26 September 1932), who is generally credited with creating the first psychedelic light show, a concept that originated in the "beat" era of the 1950s and became a feature of many late 1960s rock concerts. Together with Jerry Granelli, who, in addition to playing on We Five's first album, had also worked with Guaraldi and been a close associate of the songwriter and producer Sly Stone
, they formed the Light Sound Dimension (which, as with the Beatles' 1967 song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
, many were quick to notice bore the initials LSD
), an "audio visual multi media group" combining lighting technology and experimental music. The LSD, which continued into the 1990s, established itself at various West Coast venues, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
and the Fillmore Auditorium (which became known for its psychedelic posters), and appeared with, among others, Big Brother and the Holding Company
and the Grateful Dead.
's. A photograph taken backstage in 1968 at the LSD's own theater in San Francisco (which ran for about 18 months from January 1968) shows Bivens and Marshall with Ham, Granelli, saxophonist Noel Hawkes (born 18 June 1940) and Ham's assistant Robert (Bob) Fine. One observer wrote at the time that:
Less prosaically, Hawkes recalled the LSD as "far out ... It was a mind opening experience. We were on the cutting edge, you might say, back then".
: the saxophonist Joshi Marshall
, who was born in Berkeley in 1971, and a daughter, Zoe Terry Marguerite. A publicity biography of Joshi, who has a son, Elijah Cole, with wife Leah, stated that, while still in high school in the latter half of the 1980s, he would "play in and host sessions with his mother ... and many notable jazz musicians which included saxophonist Pharoah Sanders
and pianist, Benny Green
." However, Bivens' career after leaving We Five is not well documented publicly and sketchy information is derived mainly from recollections posted on the Internet. Various rumours that she had died persisted for many years.
referred to her still living in Berkeley and to his having had another partner of long standing. In the mid noughties Bivens was said by Burgan to be doing up an old house.
Joshi Marshall recorded "special thanks" to his mother in connection with his album, In The Light, released in May 2009. The sleeve notes for Big Beat's retrospective CD of We Five's recordings, released in 2009, contained several reminiscences by Bivens and, on 24 September of that year, she sang High Flying Bird at the opening of an exhibition, mounted by the Performing Arts Library & Museum in San Francisco, of the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid sixties to early seventies. Asked by an ABC
reporter if the latter appearance marked a resumption of her singing career, she remarked teasingly, "God, I hope so. That would be awesome".
We Five
We Five was a 1960s folk rock musical group based in San Francisco, California. Their best-known hit was their 1965 remake of Ian and Sylvia's "You Were on My Mind", which reached #1 on the Cashbox chart, #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart...
from 1965-67. After her marriage to jazz musician Fred Marshall and the break-up of We Five, she sang for a while with the experimental Light Sound Dimension, but, by the late sixties had largely left the music scene. After many years of relative seclusion, she sang at the opening of an exhibition in San Francisco in 2009. Her son is the saxophonist Joshi Marshall
Joshi Marshall
Joshi Loden Marshall is a jazz saxophonist, born in Berkeley, California in 1971. In the 1990s he played with the Marshall Arts Trio of which his father Fred Marshall was also a member...
.
Background
Beverly Ann Bivens was born in Santa Ana, CaliforniaSanta Ana, California
Santa Ana is the county seat and second most populous city in Orange County, California, and with a population of 324,528 at the 2010 census, Santa Ana is the 57th-most populous city in the United States....
on April 28, 1946. She attended Santa Ana High School
Santa Ana High School
Santa Ana High School is the oldest and largest high school in Orange County, California, United States. The school was established in 1889.-Notable alumni:*Beverly Bivens, singer with the 1960s band We Five*Gerald P...
(attended also by Bill Medley
Bill Medley
William Thomas Medley is an American singer and songwriter, best known as one half of The Righteous Brothers....
of the Righteous Brothers, as well as members of the Chantays and actress Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970...
, who was her contemporary) and Orange Coast Junior College
Orange Coast College
Orange Coast College is a community college in Orange County, California. It was founded in 1947, with its first classes opening in the fall of 1948. It provides two-year associate of art and science degrees, certificates of achievement, and lower-division classes transferable to other colleges...
, where she majored in liberal arts.
Mid 1960s: We Five
With the encouragement of her mother, Bivens had developed her singing voice a child. In 1964, at the age of 18, she began performing with Mike StewartMichael Stewart (musician)
Michael “Mike” Stewart was the guitarist for We Five. He was also the brother of John Stewart , a one-time member of The Kingston Trio and later a very successful singer/songwriter, and the father of Jamie Stewart, frontman of popular avant-garde group Xiu Xiu...
(1945–2002) and Jerry Burgan, who had formed a folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
duo at high school and branched out into electronic music with guitarist Bob Jones, whom they met at the University of San Francisco
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco , is a private, Jesuit/Catholic university located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1855, USF was established as the first university in San Francisco. It is the second oldest institution for higher learning in California and the tenth-oldest university of...
. Bivens was recommended to Stewart by Terry Kirkman
Terry Kirkman
Terry Kirkman, in Salina, Kansas, U.S., is a musician and writer of the hit songs "Cherish", "Everything That Touches You", and "Six Man Band". He left the band Men in 1962 to become a founding member and sometime leader of the musical group The Association. Kirkman co-wrote some material with...
, later of The Association
The Association
The Association is a pop music band from California in the folk rock or soft rock genre. During the 1960s, they had numerous hits at or near the top of the Billboard charts and were the lead-off band at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival...
, who was then the boyfriend of her sister Barbara. With the addition of Pete Fullerton, this group, initially called the Ridgerunners and, for a while, the Mike Stewart Quintet, became known as We Five. They recorded their first album, the highly eclectic You Were on My Mind, for A&M
A&M Records
A&M Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates under the mantle of its Interscope-Geffen-A&M division.-Beginnings:...
records in 1965 after Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert
Herbert "Herb" Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, or TJB. He is also a recording industry executive — he is the "A" of A&M Records...
, founder of A&M, heard them at the "hungry i
Hungry i
The hungry i was originally a nightclub in North Beach, San Francisco. It was launched by Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, who sold it to Enrico Banducci in 1950.-The name:How the club's name came about is something of a mystery...
", a folk/night club on Jackson Street in the North Beach
North Beach, San Francisco, California
North Beach is a neighborhood in the northeast of San Francisco adjacent to Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf and Russian Hill. The neighborhood is San Francisco's Little Italy, and has historically been home to a large Italian American population. It still holds many Italian restaurants today, though...
area of San Francisco.
You Were on My Mind
We Five's first single, from their debut album of the same name, was a reworked version of Sylvia TysonSylvia Tyson
Sylvia Tyson, CM , is a musician, performer, singer-songwriter and broadcaster. From 1959 to 1974, she was half of the popular folk duo Ian & Sylvia with Ian Tyson....
's song You Were On My Mind
You Were on My Mind
"You Were On My Mind" is a song written by Sylvia Tyson in 1964. It was originally performed by her and Ian Tyson as the duo Ian & Sylvia and they recorded it for their 1964 album, Northern Journey. It was published in sheet form by M...
. It became one of the first folk-rock hits, reaching number three in the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
"Hot 100" in August 1965. Tyson (then Sylvia Fricker) says that she was unaware that her song had been "covered"
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
until she heard We Five's version on a car radio while driving on Highway 101
U.S. Route 101
U.S. Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101, is an important north–south U.S. highway that runs through the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, on the West Coast of the United States...
in California. One consequence of We Five's success was that Tyson's song, which, until then, had been unavailable in sheet
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
form, was published by Witmark
M. Witmark & Sons
M. Witmark & Sons was a leading publisher of sheet music for the United States "Tin Pan Alley" music industry.The firm of Marcus Witmark & Sons was established in New York City in 1886...
of New York, with a photograph of Bivens and We Five on the cover.
On 2 October 1965, We Five performed You Were on My Mind live on the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
television show The Hollywood Palace
The Hollywood Palace
The Hollywood Palace is an hour-long American television variety show that was broadcast weekly on ABC from January 4, 1964 to February 7, 1970. It began as a mid-season replacement for the short-lived Jerry Lewis Show, another variety show which had lasted only three months...
, on which they were introduced by guest compère Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
. Video footage of this performance survives, as does that of appearances around the same time on the Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
and Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
shows and Shivaree
Shivaree (TV series)
Shivaree was a Los Angeles-based music variety show that ran in syndication from 1965 to 1966. It was hosted by Gene Weed. In its brief run, the show featured numerous well-known acts, including the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Byrds, the Bobby Fuller Four, the...
. There have been some unsubstantiated claims that Bivens did not sing on the original studio recording of You Were on My Mind and that the female voice was that of another artist. However, most sources reject this suggestion.
Subsequent singles
A subsequent 1965 single, Chet Powers's Let's Get Together, was a more modest commercial success, reaching number 31 on the Hot 100. The song, which had been recorded in 1964 by the Kingston Trio, became a much bigger hit in 1969 for the YoungbloodsThe Youngbloods
The Youngbloods was an American folk rock band consisting of Jesse Colin Young , Jerry Corbitt , Lowell Levinger, nicknamed "Banana," , and Joe Bauer . Despite receiving critical acclaim, they never achieved widespread popularity. Their only U.S. Top 40 entry was "Get Together".-Background and...
under the shortened title Get Together.
A third single, You Let a Love Burn Out, was trailed by A&M as a "3rd We Five smash in a row" on the back of a Grammy nomination for You Were on My Mind. Released early in 1966, its "twangy-oriental sound", with Bivens "really put[ting] her voice in front of the others and set[ting] the tempo for the remainder of the group" represented a significant departure of style that, in various ways, was to be adopted by other bands in the coming year. However, it made limited public impact, a fate shared in May 1966 by a further single, There Stands the Door (which was coupled with Somewhere
Somewhere (song)
"Somewhere" is a song from the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story which was made into a film in 1961. The music is composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and takes a phrase from the slow movement of Beethoven's 'Emperor' Piano Concerto, which forms the start of the...
, a song from the 1957 musical West Side Story
West Side Story
West Side Story is an American musical with a script by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins...
). Pete Fullerton felt that, with both these recordings, "there was always that edge of whining".
Influence and style
Bivens' voice gave We Five its distinctive and memorable sound. Almost operatic in quality, its range was described as low tenor to high soprano. Bob Jones has recalled that "Bev had this husky kind of voice, and somehow there's this old soul in there".Bivens' performances on the album You Were On My Mind and in concert largely foreshadowed a female vocal style that, by 1967, was associated with, among others, Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane
Spanky and Our Gang
Spanky and Our Gang was an American 1960s folk-rock band led by Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane. The band derives its name from Hal Roach's popular Our Gang comedies of the 1930s...
, Grace Slick
Grace Slick
Grace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...
of the Great Society and Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
, and Cass Elliot
Cass Elliot
Cass Elliot , born Ellen Naomi Cohen and also known as Mama Cass, was an American singer and member of The Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, she released five solo albums. Elliot was found dead in her room in London, England, from an apparent heart attack after two weeks of sold-out...
and Michelle Phillips
Michelle Phillips
Michelle Phillips is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She gained fame as a member of the 1960s group The Mamas & the Papas, and is the last surviving original member of the group.-Early life:...
of The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas were a Canadian/American vocal group of the 1960s . The group recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968 with a short reunion in 1971, releasing five albums and 11 Top 40 hit singles...
. Bivens was said to have inspired Jefferson Airplane's original vocalist Signe Toly Anderson
Signe Toly Anderson
Signe Toly Anderson is an American singer who was one of the founding members of the American rock band Jefferson Airplane.-Early life and joining Jefferson Airplane:...
, who was already well established on San Francisco's jazz and folk scene before joining the Airplane. It may be no coincidence either that Karen Carpenter
Karen Carpenter
Karen Anne Carpenter was an American singer and drummer. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo The Carpenters. She was a drummer of exceptional skill, but she is best remembered for her vocal performances of idealistic romantic ballads of true love...
who, like Bivens, had a fine vocal range, was signed by Alpert to A&M, with her brother Richard, in 1969.
Bivens' influence was apparent too in recordings by some male bands: for example, the Turtles
The Turtles
The Turtles are an American rock group led by vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman. The band became notable for several Top 40 hits beginning with its cover version of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" in 1965...
' single Happy Together
Happy Together (song)
"Happy Together" is a 1967 song from The Turtles' album of the same name. Released in February 1967, the song knocked The Beatles' "Penny Lane" out of the #1 slot for three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the group's only chart-topper. "Happy Together" reached #12 on the UK Singles Chart in...
and the Cowsills' The Rain, the Park and Other Things (both major hits in 1967), as well as I Will Have You (1966) by the seemingly imitative British band, Just Five. In 2002, the British newspaper The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
described We Five as having "bridged the gap" between Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
and the Mamas and Papas; indeed, Bivens' voice and that of Mary Travers
Mary Travers (singer)
Mary Allin Travers was an American singer-songwriter and member of the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and Noel Stookey...
had a similar atmospheric quality, although Bivens' was the more commanding. In the latter respect, there was a similarity with both Judith Durham
Judith Durham
Judith Durham, OAM is an Australian jazz singer and musician who became the lead vocalist for the Australian popular folk music group The Seekers in 1963. She left the group in mid-1968 to pursue her solo career...
of the Australian group the Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
and Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
, initially of the Springfields
The Springfields
The Springfields were a British pop-folk vocal trio who had success in the early 1960s in the UK, US and Ireland and included singer Dusty Springfield and her brother, record producer Tom Springfield, along with Tim Feild, later a noted Sufi writer, who was latterly replaced by Mike Hurst, who...
, who made their names in England in the early to mid sixties as the lead singers of folk-oriented groups. The vocal delivery of Judy Dyble
Judy Dyble
Judith Aileen Dyble, better known as Judy Dyble , is an award winning British singer/songwriter most notable for being one of the vocalists with, and founder members of, Fairport Convention and Trader Horne; in between these she was very briefly with Giles, Giles and Fripp, which evolved into...
, the original lead singer of England's premier folk-rock band, Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...
, and Kerrilee Male and Dorris Henderson
Dorris Henderson
Dorris Henderson was an American-born, United Kingdom-based folk music singer and autoharp player.-Early years:Born in Lakeland, Florida but raised in Los Angeles, she was the daughter of an African American clergyman and the granddaughter of a Blackfoot Native American...
, successive lead singers of of Eclection
Eclection
Eclection were a British-based folk rock band, originally formed in 1967 in London by Norwegian-born Georg Kajanus , Canadian Michael Rosen, Australians Trevor Lucas and Kerrilee Male, and Britisher Gerry Conway...
, also bore comparison with that of Bivens; so, in more recent times, have the performing styles of Trembling Bells
Trembling Bells
Trembling Bells is an English folk rock group formed by drummer Alex Neilson, a musician with a strong history of free and improvised playing with several artists...
' Lavinia Blackwall and Zooey Deschanel
Zooey Deschanel
Zooey Claire Deschanel is an American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter. In 1999, Deschanel made her film debut in Mumford, followed by her breakout role as young protagonist William Miller's troubled older sister Anita in Cameron Crowe's 2000 semi-autobiographical film Almost Famous...
in her recordings with M. Ward
M. Ward
Matthew Stephen Ward, known by his stage name M. Ward, is a singer-songwriter and guitarist who rose to prominence in the Portland, Oregon music scene. In addition to his solo work he is known as a member of She & Him and Monsters of Folk.-Career:...
as She and Him.
Personal interests and images
In 1965 Bivens' personal interests were said to be fashions, Chinese food and freedom. As regards fashion, photographs show her wearing dresses whose hemlines were well above the knee in 1965, at a time when the mini-skirtMiniskirt
A miniskirt, sometimes hyphenated as mini-skirt, is a skirt with a hemline well above the knees – generally no longer than below the buttocks; and a minidress is a dress with a similar meaning...
, which, in England, became a defining symbol of "Swinging" London
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
, had yet to make a wide impact in America.
Bivens was then 5 foot 3 inches tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes. Musicologist Alec Palao has described her as "a petite powerhouse with demurely attractive looks [and] a penchant for European style". Surviving television clips capture her rather chic
Chic (style)
Chic , meaning 'stylish' or 'smart', is an element of fashion.-Etymology:Chic is a French word, established in English since at least the 1870s...
, mod style of dress, with bobbed
Bob cut
A "bob cut" is a short haircut for women in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at about jaw-level, often with a fringe at the front.-The beginning:...
hair and go-go boots
Go-go boots
Go-go boots are a low-heeled style of women's fashion boot worn since the mid-sixties when fashion silhouettes focused on accentuating the leg...
. Bivens' relatively brief career happened when she was one of a fairly small number of female rock musicians: her classic style was in contrast to the more Bohemian
Bohemian style
In modern usage, the term "Bohemian" is applied to people who live unconventional, usually artistic, lives. The adherents of the "Bloomsbury Group", which formed around the Stephen sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in the early 20th century, are among the best-known examples...
look favored by contemporaries like Grace Slick
Grace Slick
Grace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...
or Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
.
At that time Bivens' favorite band was the Beatles, "... which is fairly obvious. I haven't really heard any that I really like besides the Beatles". Many years later, she recalled that, when We Five played in Pittsburgh in late 1965 with another English band, the Rolling Stones, she had been ignored by the Stones' lead singer Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
when she had tried to introduced herself.
In October 1965 KYA, a leading San Francisco radio station, used a large photographic portrait of Bivens to draw attention to its inaugural International Pop Music Awards (maybe patronising her a little in the process with its caption, "Wee
Human height
Human height is the distance from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head in a human body standing erect.When populations share genetic background and environmental factors, average height is frequently characteristic within the group...
One of the We Five"). Other photographs of Bivens included those of We Five taken by Lisa Bachelis (later Lisa Law
Lisa Law
Lisa Law is an American photographer and filmmaker, who's best known for the book and documentary about the 1960s titled Flashing on the Sixties.-External links:...
), using a Leica given to her by the group's manager and producer Frank Werber (1929–2007), who also managed the Kingston Trio, of which Mike Stewart's brother John (1939–2008) was a member. We Five sometimes used Werber's home at Mill Valley to rehearse; one photograph taken there shows Bivens barefoot in a bikini
Bikini
The bikini is typically a women's two-piece swimsuit. One part of the attire covers the breasts and the other part covers the crotch and part of or the entire buttocks, leaving an uncovered area between the two. Merriam–Webster describes the bikini as "a woman's scanty two-piece bathing suit" or "a...
top and jeans
Jeans
Jeans are trousers made from denim. Some of the earliest American blue jeans were made by Jacob Davis, Calvin Rogers, and Levi Strauss in 1873. Starting in the 1950s, jeans, originally designed for cowboys, became popular among teenagers. Historic brands include Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler...
, while the group used, among other things, a broom in place of a microphone. Bivens appeared barefoot also on the cover of You Were On My Mind, walking along a beach in a reddish-orange tunic
Tunic
A tunic is any of several types of clothing for the body, of various lengths reaching from the shoulders to somewhere between the hips and the ankles...
, accompanied by her male colleagues, all fully shod and wearing matching turtle necks.
1966-7: Split of We Five
We Five were in the vanguard of the San Francisco bands, including Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, that reached international prominence in the "Summer of LoveSummer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
" of 1967. However, the original band had disbanded by then. Jerry Burgan and Pete Fullerton reformed We Five. Burgan's wife, Debbie, née Graf, who sang with a group called the Legendaires and had sometimes worked with the Ridgerunners (as they then were), took over from Bivens as lead vocalist. A group known as We Five was still performing forty years later.
In his notes for We Five's second album, Make Someone Happy (1967), released after they had split (an episode that later give rise to unfounded rumours that Bivens had been killed in a road accident), George Yanok observed that
"We 5 was the first "electric band" to come out of San Francisco. It predated the entire present "happening" in the Haight-Ashbury [a district of San Francisco that became the centre of "flower power"] with all its attendant trippery and hang-overs …".
Yanok asserted also that "there was nothing psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
or arcane about We 5's music". However, various elements of the music of the psychedelic era, notably Bivens' vocal delivery, which Yanok described as "a major reason for this [We Five's] special something", were plainly discernible in We Five's output (for example, on Let's Get Together and such tracks as If I Were Alone, Love Me Not Tomorrow, You Let A Love Burn Out and Bivens' blues solo on Judy Henske
Judy Henske
Judy Henske is an American singer and songwriter, once known as "the Queen of the Beatniks".-Life and recording career:...
's High Flying Bird, which she has described as "like her heart song").
Circumstances of the split
The precise reasons for the break-up of the original group remain unclear, although there has been periodic speculation and comment over the years. Most versions have tended to focus on Bivens herself. The official website of the latter-day We Five, which was in a position to capture the collective memory of some its original members, explained that "Beverly turned her back on stardom to marry ... [to] explore experimental music, and become a mom". A year before her marriage, she had described touring without her boyfriend as "a big drag" and has since reflected that, by the time of the split, she was "kinda dancing" and that her husband was having an influence on her. However, there have been suggestions that, among other things, differences within the group and aspects of its management were also factors. Bivens was not the only member of We Five who abandoned a performing career prematurely. Peter Fullerton left the music business altogether around 1970 to work with homeless people in the Bay Area and much later put out two albums of mostly religious music to benefit his charity, the "Truck of Love."In some respects Bivens was an "outsider". She was the only female member of We Five, while the four men all went to college together: Stewart, Jones and Burgan were graduates of the University of San Francisco
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco , is a private, Jesuit/Catholic university located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1855, USF was established as the first university in San Francisco. It is the second oldest institution for higher learning in California and the tenth-oldest university of...
, and Fullerton knew Stewart and Burgan from their days at a junior college
Junior college
The term junior college refers to different educational institutions in different countries.-India:In India, most states provide schooling through 12th grade...
in Los Angeles County, Mt. San Antonio College
Mt. San Antonio College
Mt. San Antonio College is a community college located in the Los Angeles suburb of Walnut, California, 2.12 miles west of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona ....
. The academic background of each was recorded prominently on the sleeve of You Were On My Mind, together with the information that Bivens had attended junior college. There were other mild hints of condescension: the same sleeve notes recognised that Bivens' "unusual brilliance and vocal range is the basis of our sound" and that she was "the spark of the group", but referred also to her "genuine involvement in singing and desire to learn", while, many years later, the We Five website referred curiously to Stewart and Burgan's having added "the sound of a female voice that was eventually to be made famous by Beverly Bivens". (This is perhaps consistent with another, possibly ironic, sleeve reference to Bivens' instrument as her throat, although it may allude also to the Ridgerunners' original female singer, Sue Ellen Davies, a coloratura
Coloratura
Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...
whom the other members had met at Claremont High.)
Issues of achievement and management
The original We Five, and Bivens in particular, did not fulfill their potential during their rather short career. They were managed by Frank Werber, and the production of their recordings was handled by Werber's own company, Trident, rather than by A&M RecordsA&M Records
A&M Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates under the mantle of its Interscope-Geffen-A&M division.-Beginnings:...
. In a 2002 Jerry Burgan attributed the band's collapse in part to the band's management, reflecting that "the dissolution was rooted in unfocused management that permitted a very young group to have too much autonomy. We factionalized into a blues contingent, a pop contingent, and an 'I'm out of here' contingent."
Despite Herb Alpert's own recording success, A&M was a rather small record label compared (for example) to RCA
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
, who signed We Five's local contemporaries Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
. The band's success was greatly hindered by the fact that their second album, with Bivens as the lead singer, was not released until late 1967, over a year after it was recorded and six months after the band's final concert in May 1967 in Winona, Minnesota
Winona, Minnesota
Winona is a city in and the county seat of Winona County, in the U.S. State of Minnesota. Located in picturesque bluff country on the Mississippi River, its most noticeable physical landmark is Sugar Loaf....
. In 1968 We Five were among a number of A&M's artists included in an injunction by a Los Angeles court prohibiting the "pirating" of their recordings by a company named Superba Tapes.
We Five are sometimes dismissed as a "one hit wonder", although they actually had two charting singles and were the highest charting 1960s band from San Francisco until Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival was an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a number of successful singles drawn from various albums....
in 1969. Jerry Burgan spoke more kindly of the band's management in 2007, recalling that Werber "had an ability to encourage creativity and the musical process without having to direct it. While encouraging us [We Five] to write, to sing, and to play, he surrounded us with a team that shaped all of the other elements which led to our success". However, there may be a certain implication in Burgan's further observation that "we were too young to see it at the time, but I later learned to appreciate the impact he had on my life". The 2009 compilation, There Stands the Door, to which all the surviving members of the original We Five contributed recollections, was dedicated to "the late, great Frank Werber".
Bivens in retrospect
The two albums featuring Bivens were re-released as a compilation compact discCompact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
by Collectors' Choice Music
Collectors' Choice Music
Collectors' Choice Music is a company primarily in two businesses. They are best known for re-issuing albums originally recorded in LP record form as compact discs...
in 1996 and a further compilation, including some previously unreleased recordings, including jingles for Coca Cola, was issued in 2009 by Big Beat under the title of There Stands The Door: The Best Of We Five. Because of her short period of contemporaneous fame, Bivens has remained a rather elusive figure, but one whose voice has plainly been cherished by many who heard her in the mid sixties. Although Mike Stewart appears to have been the "engine" of We Five, putting in extra hours to attend to arrangements of the group's material, George Yanok's notes for Make Someone Happy were perhaps revealing in that they concentrated on Bivens' centrality to We Five virtually to the exclusion of the other members: according to Yanok, she was "totally honest, gifted and possessed". Yanok also observed that We Five's music was about "fun" and that it was "unfortunate that that 'fun', in this age [i.e. 1967], has become equated with frivolity and dismissed as trivia".
Even so, although Bivens' documented recording career lasted less than two years and extended to little more than two dozen tracks, it seems probable that, had she remained in the industry (and there was no suggestion that she herself – "the miniskirt-wearing, free spirit of the band" – had become passée). her soaring and beautiful voice would have made her a big star. She herself has confirmed that "A&M called, they wanted me, but I think my husband [Fred Marshall, whom she married in 1966] insisted he produce the records ... I'd been working hard for a long time and just thought I'd take a break – turned out to be a couple of decades!"
Late 1960s: Fred Marshall and the Light Sound Dimension
On February 13, 1966, at the age of 19, Bivens married jazz bassist Fred Marshall (Frederick Calvin Marshall, 4 October 1938 - 14 November 2001). Marshall had worked with a number of West Coast rock bands and been a member of the Vince GuaraldiVince Guaraldi
Vincent Anthony "Vince" Guaraldi was an Italian American jazz musician and pianist noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements and for composing music for animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip...
Trio which famously recorded the incidental music for television specials based on the Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
cartoons of Charles Schulz. Guaraldi had been an habitué of the hungry i club and Marshall's own band, the Ensemble, played at the Fillmore Auditorium
The Fillmore
The Fillmore Auditorium is a historic music venue in San Francisco, California, made famous by Bill Graham. Named for its original location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it lies on the boundary of the Western Addition and the Pacific Heights neighborhoods.In 1968,...
in San Francisco on the same bill as Jefferson Airplane on the night in October 1966 that Grace Slick first sang as their lead vocalist.
In 1966 Marshall began to collaborate with lighting technician Bill Ham (William Gatewood Ham, born 26 September 1932), who is generally credited with creating the first psychedelic light show, a concept that originated in the "beat" era of the 1950s and became a feature of many late 1960s rock concerts. Together with Jerry Granelli, who, in addition to playing on We Five's first album, had also worked with Guaraldi and been a close associate of the songwriter and producer Sly Stone
Sly Stone
Sly Stone is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of...
, they formed the Light Sound Dimension (which, as with the Beatles' 1967 song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney, for The Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band...
, many were quick to notice bore the initials LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
), an "audio visual multi media group" combining lighting technology and experimental music. The LSD, which continued into the 1990s, established itself at various West Coast venues, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
and the Fillmore Auditorium (which became known for its psychedelic posters), and appeared with, among others, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
and the Grateful Dead.
Vocal experimentation
After leaving We Five, Beverly Bivens sang for a while with the LSD, her work including vocal experimentation paralleling Yoko OnoYoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
's. A photograph taken backstage in 1968 at the LSD's own theater in San Francisco (which ran for about 18 months from January 1968) shows Bivens and Marshall with Ham, Granelli, saxophonist Noel Hawkes (born 18 June 1940) and Ham's assistant Robert (Bob) Fine. One observer wrote at the time that:
Using rear projection to flood a wide screen with essentially liquid images, and large speakers to project highly amplified jazz-electronic improvisations, the LSD. is an intensely dedicated, highly gifted group of light artists and musicians who carry abstract light-sound art to perhaps its ultimate in purity and concentration.
Less prosaically, Hawkes recalled the LSD as "far out ... It was a mind opening experience. We were on the cutting edge, you might say, back then".
1970s-80s
During the 1970s Bivens appears to have done some session recording, as well as making occasional appearances on television and recording radio jingles. Until their divorce in 1978, she and her husband raised two children in Berkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
: the saxophonist Joshi Marshall
Joshi Marshall
Joshi Loden Marshall is a jazz saxophonist, born in Berkeley, California in 1971. In the 1990s he played with the Marshall Arts Trio of which his father Fred Marshall was also a member...
, who was born in Berkeley in 1971, and a daughter, Zoe Terry Marguerite. A publicity biography of Joshi, who has a son, Elijah Cole, with wife Leah, stated that, while still in high school in the latter half of the 1980s, he would "play in and host sessions with his mother ... and many notable jazz musicians which included saxophonist Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award–winning American jazz saxophonist.Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on...
and pianist, Benny Green
Benny Green (pianist)
Benny Green is a hard bop jazz pianist who was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He has been compared to Bud Powell in style and counts him as an influence. As a boy he grew up in Berkeley, California and studied classical piano from the age of seven...
." However, Bivens' career after leaving We Five is not well documented publicly and sketchy information is derived mainly from recollections posted on the Internet. Various rumours that she had died persisted for many years.
1990s-2009 re-emergence
Jerry Burgan reported that, when he spoke to Bivens in 1999, she was not singing professionally. After Fred Marshall died in Oakland in 2001, an obituary published in his home state of ArkansasArkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
referred to her still living in Berkeley and to his having had another partner of long standing. In the mid noughties Bivens was said by Burgan to be doing up an old house.
Joshi Marshall recorded "special thanks" to his mother in connection with his album, In The Light, released in May 2009. The sleeve notes for Big Beat's retrospective CD of We Five's recordings, released in 2009, contained several reminiscences by Bivens and, on 24 September of that year, she sang High Flying Bird at the opening of an exhibition, mounted by the Performing Arts Library & Museum in San Francisco, of the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid sixties to early seventies. Asked by an ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
reporter if the latter appearance marked a resumption of her singing career, she remarked teasingly, "God, I hope so. That would be awesome".
Albums
The tracks shown in italics were solo (S) or largely solo performances by Beverly Bivens. However, her voice dominated virtually all recordings by We Five and some others (SF) contained marked solo flourishes.- You Were On My Mind (1965) A&M LP-111/SP-4111
1. Love Me Not Tomorrow (S) 2. Somewhere Beyond The SeaBeyond the Sea (song)"Beyond the Sea" is a 1946 contemporary pop song with music taken from the song "La Mer" by Charles Trenet and lyrics by Jack Lawrence.Trenet had composed "La Mer" with French lyrics totally different and unrelated to the English language version that Lawrence composed...
3. My Favorite ThingsMy Favorite Things (song)"My Favorite Things" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music.-The Sound of Music version:The song was first introduced by Mary Martin in the original Broadway production, and sung by Julie Andrews in the 1965 film.In the musical, the lyrics to the song are a...
4. If I Were Alone 5. TonightTonight (1956 song)"Tonight" is a popular song with music written by Leonard Bernstein and the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and was published in 1956.It was introduced in the Broadway musical West Side Story. The song was revived in 1961 on single records in versions by Ferrante & Teicher and Eddie Fisher, whose...
6. Cast Your Fate to the WindCast Your Fate to the Wind"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" is an American jazz piece written and originally recorded by Vince Guaraldi, with lyrics later added by Carel Werber. It won a Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition in 1963...
(SF) 7. You Were On My Mind 8. Can't Help Falling in LoveCan't Help Falling in Love"Can't Help Falling in Love" is a pop song originally recorded by American singer Elvis Presley and published by Gladys Music, Elvis Presley's publishing company. It was written by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss. The melody was based on "Plaisir d'Amour" but with a different...
9. Small World 10. I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'Porgy and BessPorgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
11. Softly As I Leave You (SF) 12. I Can Never Go Home Again (SF)
- Make Someone Happy (1967) A&M LP-138/SP-4138
1. Let's Get Together 2. High Flying Bird (S) 3. Make Someone Happy 4. Five Will Get You Ten 5. SomewhereWest Side StoryWest Side Story is an American musical with a script by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins...
6. What Do I Do Now 7. First Time 8. Our Day Will ComeOur Day Will Come"Our Day Will Come" is a popular song composed by Bob Hilliard and Mort Garson which was a #1 hit in 1963 for Ruby & The Romantics.-Ruby & the Romantics:...
9. Poet 10. What's Going On 11. Inch WormInchworm (song)"Inchworm", also known as "The Inch Worm", is a song originally performed by Danny Kaye in the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen. It was written by Frank Loesser....
12. You Let A Love Burn Out
- A compact disc, combining these albums, was released by PolyGram (DPSM 5172) in 1996.
- A compilation of 22 tracks by We Five, including two from 1969 by the post-Bivens incarnation of the band and takes of Coca-ColaCoca-ColaCoca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
advertisements recorded in 1965, was released by Big Beat (CDWIKD 286) in 2009 as There Stands the Door: The Best of We Five.
Other
- Several of the tracks on We Five's two albums were released as 45 inch singles or EPExtended playAn EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
s. Special issues appeared in some countries, including Spain (for example, the 1966 EP, Estabas En Mi Recuerdo [You Were On My Mind], distributed by Hispavox HDA 377-02). Brazil, Japan and the Netherlands. In Taiwan, You Were On My Mind was released on red vinyl.
- The title track of You Were on My Mind was included on the first disc ("Seismic Rumbles") of a 4-CD boxed set Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970 (Rhino Records, 2007).
- An extract from Bivens' live performance of High Flying Bird in San Francisco in 2009 has been posted on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWnzv_yk5TU
External links
- We Five: folk rock revival
- Bill Ham Lights
- We Five on Hollywood Palace, 1965: You Were on My Mind
- http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.breda-en-alles-daaromheen.nl/santa%2520ana-c_bestanden/image025.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.breda-en-alles-daaromheen.nl/santa%2520ana-c.htm&usg=__QgQK1OuMIWYo6T5raHNIF4grj8w=&h=462&w=343&sz=22&hl=en&start=71&zoom=1&tbnid=gnRt7Yy_hgfkIM:&tbnh=163&tbnw=120&ei=jCDcTaOUDI2n8QPfwPD7Dw&prev=/search%3Fq%3DBEVERLY%2BBIVENS%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dig%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D653%26site%3Dwebhp%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divnso0%2C2300&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=354&vpy=318&dur=152&hovh=261&hovw=193&tx=125&ty=187&sqi=2&page=6&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:71&biw=1024&bih=653 Beverly Bivens on the cover of KYA Beat, 23 October 1965]
- Beverly Bivens interviewed by ABC, September 2009
