The Young Rascals Good Lovin

Felix Cavaliere played the porches of Syracuse University before becoming a ...

As a student at Syracuse University in the early 1960s, Felix Cavaliere’s major was pre-med.

But music was always his passion.

The native of Pelham, near New Rochelle in Westchester County, had taken classical piano lessons from the age of 6.

At SU, he became a member of a rock band named The Escorts, and started playing at parties.

Frank Malfitano, founder and executive director of the M&T Syracuse Jazz Fest — where Cavaliere will perform Friday at Onondaga Community College — recalls seeing Cavaliere perform at fraternity and sorority parties.

“They’d have bands on porches,” Malfitano says. “His songs weren’t fully formed yet, but you could see he was an incredible artist with a lot of soul.”

The summer after his junior year, Cavaliere recalls during a recent phone interview, he landed a job as a musician at a resort in the Catskills.

His days as an SU student were toast.

“I got bit bad by the show biz bug,” says Cavaliere, 66.

SU’s loss turned out to be the world’s gain.

“One of the ties (in the Catskills) led me to Joey Dee and the Starlighters,” Cavaliere explains. “They flew me over to Europe for a tour. That was the beginning of my Magical Mystery Tour.”

Oh, what a whirlwind it turned out to be for the singer and keyboardist.

“I worked with the Beatles over in Europe, in Germany and Sweden, before them coming to the United States,” Cavaliere says. “I said, ‘We can do this. We have to put together a group of guys that can shock the world.’ And we did.”

That group was the Young Rascals, with Cavaliere joined by Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati and Gene Cornish. In October, 1965, they scored a gig at a chic Long Island club, The Barge. One of people who caught the set was Atlantic Records promoter and manager Sid Bernstein.

The Atlantic deal paid off quickly, with the single “Good Lovin’” hitting No. 1 in 1966. The name was trimmed to The Rascals, but the hit list kept growing with “Groovin’,” “A Beautiful Morning” and “People Got to Be Free.”

Brigati and Cornish left in 1971, and the band broke up a year later.

Cavaliere kept recording on his own, and joined the band Treasure in 1977. He released another solo record in 1994, and The Rascals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2009, Cavaliere was inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame.

Birds of a Feather: The Young Rascals and the Small Faces ...

Double CD a few years back , I gained a new appreciation for one of my favourite British bands of the 1960s, the Small Faces . The intense quality of the selected B-sides and album tracks – wild, explosive R&B jams – proved a joy to behold for someone who had only ever gathered up the singles and later albums. And when I wrote All Hopped Up and Ready To Go , I gained a new understanding for one of America’s most successful singles bands of that decade, the Young Rascals : their reputation as dedicated purveyors of Rhythm & Blues, as fans of southern soul music on a flourishing and competitive east coast circuit, and ultimately as a positive influence on subsequent American rock music, was evidently second to none.