The Coming of Age of "Merri Goes Round"

Don Frankel and Robbie Rist = Sundial Symphony recording Merri Goes Round

Ed Fox and I wrote "Merri Goes Round" in the early 1970s - I wrote the lyrics, Ed wrote the music, and I sometimes spelled the title with hyphens, like "Merri-Goes-Round".  Truth is, it was a throwaway, bubblegum song, something we wrote after landing a contract with Buddah Records to release "Ring Around My Rosie," by a group called Protoza, and led by David Fox (no relation to Ed), who also wrote the words and music to Rosie.  You can hear that here.

But Ed and I thought so little of Merri that we didn't even think of including it on Twice Upon a Rhyme.  We did go into a 16-track studio in New York, and recorded a demo that came out so good we realized it was marketable as a finished master record.  We got Bruce Scott, a little known singer, to do the lead.  Our regulars Pete Rosenthal on guitars, Boris Midney on sax, and most of the rest were on the record, and I was wailing in the background with my usual falsetto.  The record sounded good.  But we were still amazed when we sold it to Jimmy Wisner's Wizdom Records, where it was released as a single under the group name Trousers (yep, I came up with that). It was soon forgotten.  You can hear it here.

Many decades passed.  Sometime around 2013, Don Frankel - who, as Donny Frankel, had played all manner of keyboard, including accordion, on Twice Upon a Rhyme - sent me a CD with a recording he and Robbie Rist had made of "Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning)," one of the best-known songs from Twice Upon a Rhyme.  Robbie, in case his name sounds familiar, was on the original Brady Bunch, has had a great career as one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the bus driver in Sharknado (also released in 2013).  Don and Robbie called their group Sundial Symphony, and they gave Sunsets a zestful performance (you can hear that here).  They followed the next year with their power-pop rendition of the lead-off track from Twice Upon a Rhyme, "Today Is Just Like You" (that's here).

And, then, about two years ago, Don surprised me with news that he and Robbie (as Sundial Symphony) were doing a song not on Twice Upon a Rhyme - "Merri Goes Round".  The thing is, I gotta tell you, from the moment I first heard their recording of Merri, I was blown away.  I think it's much better than the original - power pop works better for the song than bubblegum.  Big Stir Records liked it, too, first releasing it as an A-side of a single (with "Looking the Sunsets" as the B-side), and then including both on their Third Wave compilation album, with lots of fine recordings by other power-pop artists.

Here's Sundial Symphony's "Merri Goes Round":




I don't know about you, but I can't stop listening to it ...

PS - And here, as a bonus, is a just-published interview I did in July, with all kinds of old and new photos, about how I came to write the lyrics to "Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning)".