Sopwith Camel (band)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sopwith Camel was a rock music band associated with the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene of the late 1960s.
Career
The band formed in late 1965 and their line-up consisted of vocalist and saxophone player Peter Kraemer, guitarists Terry MacNeil and William "Truckaway" Sievers, bassist Martin Beard, and drummer Norman Mayell. Sopwith Camel is best known for being the second San Francisco band to get a recording contract with a national record label, and the first to have a Top 40 hit.
Sopwith Camel released their first album (and only album recording during the 1960s), the eponymous Sopwith Camel, in 1967 on the Kama Sutra Records label. The band's only hit single, "Hello, Hello", became the first hit title to emerge from the San Francisco rock scene and reached No. 26 on the U.S. pop music charts in January 1967 and No. 9 on the Canadian RPM Magazine charts in February. The band's first album, and the vaudevillian "Hello, Hello" in particular, had more in common soundwise with earlier songs by The Lovin' Spoonful than typical 1960s psychedelic rock; producer Erik Jacobsen produced for both Sopwith Camel and The Lovin' Spoonful. The band was unable to follow up the success of their first album and hit single and disbanded later in 1967. Sopwith Camel's debut album has been re-released twice: as Frantic Desolation in 1986, and as Hello Hello Again in 1990.
Sopwith Camel reformed in 1971 and recorded their second album, 1973's The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon on Warner Bros. Records' Reprise label. The band broke up again in 1974. After sitting in the Warner Bros. vaults for 30 years, the Camel's 1973 album, The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon, was issued on CD in 2001. It was called, The Millennium Edition. In 2006, the second CD release of the The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon, was called Remastered 2006.
