The Happenings – See You In September
One of the original Tempos went on to have hits under his own name: Bobby Vinton.
The song that made the Happenings famous in 1966 already had a hit version behind it — one most people who know the Happenings’ recording have never heard. Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards wrote See You in September in a single afternoon at the Brill Building in June 1959. Wayne suggested the title at eleven in the morning. By early afternoon they had it finished. By evening they had sold it to a publisher for five hundred dollars, and he had already called a Pittsburgh vocal trio and told them to get on a plane.
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That trio was The Tempos, and they recorded the song the very next day with the Billy Mure orchestra, a week after it existed as nothing more than a title one songwriter liked the sound of. Climax released it that June. It reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 — a modest hit, not a smash — and one of the three voices on it belonged to a young man who would shortly stop being one third of a group and start being famous entirely on his own terms. Before Roses Are Red, before Blue Velvet, before Mr. Lonely, Bobby Vinton sang backup on a doo-wop record about summer ending.
Four graduates from Paterson
The Happenings came together in Paterson, New Jersey — Bob Miranda, David Libert, Tom Giuliano and Ralph DiVito, calling themselves The Four Graduates before anyone thought better of it. They signed to B.T. Puppy, a label The Tokens had started, and this song was their second single, recorded in the spring of 1966 with Bob Crewe producing, the same man behind the Four Seasons and Mitch Ryder. Crewe took the doo-wop bones of the Tempos’ record and sped them up, layered the harmonies tighter, and gave it the bright, driving arrangement that radio in 1966 wanted.
It worked considerably better the second time around. The Happenings’ version reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 and went to No. 1 in Canada, sold past a million copies, and became one of nine Billboard hits the group would land between 1966 and 1968 — including I Got Rhythm and Go Away Little Girl. It never charted in Britain at all; a London quartet called The Symbols, signed specifically to cover it, took the song into the UK top 20 instead.
The memo that missed the point entirely
The song is about nothing more complicated than two people saying goodbye for the summer, certain they will see each other again once the season turns. That did not stop it from ending up, decades later, on an internal Clear Channel memo circulated after September 11, 2001 — a list of roughly 150 songs stations were advised to consider pulling from rotation. The list was widely reported and widely mocked, not least because whoever compiled it appears to have worked from titles rather than lyrics. A song about a summer romance ending well was flagged because of a month on a calendar.
Bob Miranda is still the one constant. The other three original Happenings have long since moved on, but Miranda has kept performing this song for close to sixty years, on cruise ships and at reunion shows, to audiences who mostly have no idea a Pittsburgh trio got there first — or that one of that trio spent the rest of the sixties becoming a much bigger name than any of them.
SONG INFORMATION
The song that made the Happenings famous in 1966 already had a hit version behind it — one most people who know the Happenings’ recording have never heard. Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards wrote See You in September in a single afternoon at the Brill Building in June 1959. Wayne suggested the title at eleven in the morning. By early afternoon they had it finished. By evening they had sold it to a publisher for five hundred dollars, and he had already called a Pittsburgh vocal trio and told them to get on a plane.
Keep watching: More 60s music videos on Music Videos Club
That trio was The Tempos, and they recorded the song the very next day with the Billy Mure orchestra, a week after it existed as nothing more than a title one songwriter liked the sound of. Climax released it that June. It reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 — a modest hit, not a smash — and one of the three voices on it belonged to a young man who would shortly stop being one third of a group and start being famous entirely on his own terms. Before Roses Are Red, before Blue Velvet, before Mr. Lonely, Bobby Vinton sang backup on a doo-wop record about summer ending.
Four graduates from Paterson
The Happenings came together in Paterson, New Jersey — Bob Miranda, David Libert, Tom Giuliano and Ralph DiVito, calling themselves The Four Graduates before anyone thought better of it. They signed to B.T. Puppy, a label The Tokens had started, and this song was their second single, recorded in the spring of 1966 with Bob Crewe producing, the same man behind the Four Seasons and Mitch Ryder. Crewe took the doo-wop bones of the Tempos’ record and sped them up, layered the harmonies tighter, and gave it the bright, driving arrangement that radio in 1966 wanted.
It worked considerably better the second time around. The Happenings’ version reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 and went to No. 1 in Canada, sold past a million copies, and became one of nine Billboard hits the group would land between 1966 and 1968 — including I Got Rhythm and Go Away Little Girl. It never charted in Britain at all; a London quartet called The Symbols, signed specifically to cover it, took the song into the UK top 20 instead.
The memo that missed the point entirely
The song is about nothing more complicated than two people saying goodbye for the summer, certain they will see each other again once the season turns. That did not stop it from ending up, decades later, on an internal Clear Channel memo circulated after September 11, 2001 — a list of roughly 150 songs stations were advised to consider pulling from rotation. The list was widely reported and widely mocked, not least because whoever compiled it appears to have worked from titles rather than lyrics. A song about a summer romance ending well was flagged because of a month on a calendar.
Bob Miranda is still the one constant. The other three original Happenings have long since moved on, but Miranda has kept performing this song for close to sixty years, on cruise ships and at reunion shows, to audiences who mostly have no idea a Pittsburgh trio got there first — or that one of that trio spent the rest of the sixties becoming a much bigger name than any of them.
A second clip survives of the original recording artists — The Tempos performing the song on The Dick Clark Show in 1959, the trio that includes a pre-fame Bobby Vinton.