Come To The Sunshine

Harpers Bizarre and the Recording of "Come to the Sunshine"

Harpers Bizarre traced their origins to a Santa Cruz, California surf band called the Tikis, which formed in 1963. The Tikis' lineup included Ted Templeman and Dick Scoppettone, along with Eddie James, Dick Yount, and John Peterson, who had briefly played with the Beau Brummels. The group released several singles in the surf and Beatles-influenced pop idiom without achieving significant commercial traction, recording for the Autumn label run by San Francisco radio personality Tom Donahue. When Autumn Records was absorbed by Warner Bros. Records, the Tikis came to the attention of Lenny Waronker, a young producer who would become one of the most consequential figures in American pop music over the next two decades.

Waronker recognized the vocal talents of Templeman and Scoppettone specifically, seeing in their voices a quality suited to a more polished, harmony-centered pop style. He arranged for them to record a version of Simon and Garfunkel's "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," using the elite session collective known as the Wrecking Crew as the instrumental backing. The Wrecking Crew lineup on the sessions included guitarist Glen Campbell, bassist Carol Kaye, and drummer Jim Gordon, the same musicians whose playing underpinned an enormous proportion of the decade's most commercially successful recordings. The resulting single peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1967, establishing the newly renamed Harpers Bizarre as a commercially viable act.

Van Dyke Parks and the Song's Origins

"Come to the Sunshine" was written by Van Dyke Parks, who had originally recorded it himself as a single on MGM Records in 1966, paired with "Farther Along." Parks was at the time one of the most intellectually ambitious young figures in the Los Angeles music scene, deeply engaged with the sonic experiments of the Brian Wilson Smile sessions and developing the densely allusive compositional approach that would define his debut album Song Cycle. His composition for Harpers Bizarre was far more accessible than his more experimental work, a piece of melodic sunshine pop that fit perfectly within Waronker's vision for the group's commercial identity.

Parks himself was present during the recording sessions for the debut album, contributing keyboard performance to the track. His involvement reinforced the collegial quality of the Los Angeles creative community that surrounded the recording, in which songwriters, producers, performers, and session musicians moved in overlapping circles and contributed to each other's projects with considerable fluency. The debut album Feelin' Groovy featured compositional contributions from Parks, Randy Newman, and Leon Russell, gathering an extraordinary concentration of songwriting talent in service of Waronker's vision for a group that would bring a sophisticated, chamber-pop sensibility to the Top 40 format.

Billboard Performance and Album Context

"Come to the Sunshine" was released as a single on Warner Bros. Records as a follow-up to "Feelin' Groovy," drawn from the debut album. The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 20, 1967, entering at number 89. It climbed steadily over the following weeks: 74 in the second week, 60 in the third, 47 in the fourth, and reaching its peak of number 37 during the week of June 17, 1967. The record spent a total of seven weeks on the Hot 100, establishing Harpers Bizarre as a group capable of charting multiple singles from a single album, a commercial validation of Waronker's approach.

The debut album Feelin' Groovy was released in April 1967 and served as both a commercial calling card and a statement of aesthetic intent, demonstrating that the sunshine pop format could accommodate material of genuine compositional sophistication without sacrificing the melodic accessibility required for chart success. The album included interpretations of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Happy Talk" alongside original compositions and covers of new material from emerging songwriters, an eclectic approach that positioned Harpers Bizarre as a group with broader cultural ambitions than the simple sunny-pop format might suggest.

Ted Templeman's Later Career and the Group's Legacy

The group recorded four albums for Warner Bros. between 1967 and 1969, all produced under Waronker's supervision and all demonstrating the consistent quality that the debut had established. Ted Templeman went on to become one of the most successful record producers in rock history, working with the Doobie Brothers, Van Morrison, Little Feat, and Van Halen, among many others. His experience with Harpers Bizarre provided the apprenticeship under Waronker that formed his production sensibility. In 2021, Cherry Red's El label collected all four Warner Bros. albums in a four-CD box set titled after the Van Dyke Parks song, Come to the Sunshine: The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings, recognition that the group's catalog merited serious archival treatment.