The Ravens: History

The Ravens History: 1965
by John Anthony

We were playing almost every week at dances called Stags in Danbury at places like the Elk's, the Masonic Temple and St. Anthony's. We had many strong
Peer Bands to compete with for a share of the greater Danbury area audiences. We kept our sound polished and sometimes did crazy stunts on stage to keep 'em coming in.

Our First Record is Recorded and Released

We began writing songs and Bert developed an association with Sol Goodman of the Record Fair in Danbury. In August we recorded a couple of songs at Jack Russell's studio in Bridgeport that were pressed into a 45 record.

On one side was a song I wrote called Sleepless Nights. Bruce sang lead on the song that went on the other side. It was a Roy Orbison tune called Workin for the Man

At that time we had a keyboard player with us named Mickey Gee who played organ on both songs. The studio was small and we were packed in like sardines. We did each song in one take. No doing instruments first, and vocals afterward like we did in recordings later on. The record did well and Sol sold a bunch of them at The Record Fair. It was a good feeling to hear our record on the juke boxes at the local hangouts.

Bruce, Ritchie and I graduated high school. Ritchie got a job and Bruce and I started college. Our 2S draft board deferments helped us stay civilians and we were able to keep playing as The Ravens.

Ritchie received his draft notice and was supposed to enter Army basic training sometime in 1966. I tried to sway him to go to a college and get a deferment so he could stay stateside and keep playing. But he was ready to go.

We knew we had to find someone to fill the spot Ritchie would soon vacate and Bert found us a great replacement in Joe Gracia from Danbury. Joe played guitar very well and sang even better. We began working with Joe on all the songs we did. He quickly came up to speed on them and The Ravens sound continued to tighten and blossom.

Toward the end of the year we began playing some weekends at Todd's Supper Club which was located a few miles east of Danbury near Peach Lake NY.

The club was run by John Todd and his wife. I remember they had great hot, roast beef sandwiches. They really hit the spot when we'd arrive early to play and hadn't had dinner yet. Very often we'd feast on them at the end of the night too. Ummm. I can almost taste them now.

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