More today than yesterday

I was going through some of my old records today when I spotted an album that I hadn't played for quite some time. It was More Today Than Yesterday by The Spiral Starecase. I pulled it out of my collection, put the record on the turntable and let the music take me back to the late 1960s. I knew the title song, of course. More Today Than Yesterday was one of those songs that was everywhere when I was younger. But although I remembered the song quite well, I realised that I knew very little about the group that recorded it. So, with the album playing in the background, I started looking them up.

It turned out that The Spiral Starecase had quite an interesting story. The group began life in 1964 as The Fydallions, a four-piece instrumental band formed by Air Force servicemen in Sacramento, California, for a talent contest on their base. They eventually expanded to five members, with Pat Upton on vocals and guitar, Harvey Kaye on organ, Dick Lopes on saxophone, Bobby Raymond on bass and Vinny Parello on drums. After leaving the Air Force, they headed for Las Vegas and spent several years playing long lounge sets there and gradually developing their sound.

When Columbia Records became interested in them in 1967, the record company wanted something a little more suitable. The musicians chose The Spiral Starecase, taking the name from the 1946 film The Spiral Staircase. But they deliberately changed the spelling to “Starecase”. I suppose they wanted to be different, although I wonder how many people who bought their records ever noticed the spelling.

They signed with Columbia in 1967 and released a few singles, but none made much of an impact. Their fortunes changed when Columbia's A&R man Gary Usher encouraged Pat Upton to write some original material. While the group was performing in Las Vegas, Upton wrote More Today Than Yesterday. The song was released in early 1969 and suddenly everything changed.

It became a sizeable hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Cash Box charts. For a group that had spent years playing lounges, this must have been quite a transformation. One moment they were working their way through long sets in Las Vegas and the next they were appearing on the national charts.

The album followed in 1969, also titled More Today Than Yesterday. There were original songs alongside covers such as Proud Mary and For Once in My Life. The Spiral Starecase had a fairly distinctive sound, with the horns and organ giving the music that bright, almost sunshine-pop quality, while Pat Upton's voice gave it a soulful edge.

The group had a few follow-up singles, including She's Ready and No One for Me to Turn To, but none came close to repeating the success of More Today Than Yesterday. In fact, their period in the limelight was brief. Less than two years after their breakthrough, The Spiral Starecase had broken up. And yet, the song has survived all these years.

I'm rather glad that I pulled this old album out of my collection today. I had only intended to listen to a song I remembered from my younger days, but ended up finding out a little more about the five musicians who recorded it. The album is back on my shelf now. But I don't think I'll leave it there for another 50 years. And there are quite a lot more old records in my collection that deserve another spin.