The Wandering Minstrels

he New Christy Minstrels persisted minus their former leader Randy Sparks, who sold his interest in the name to his two business partners. By the spring of 1965, they faced the future sans Barry McGuire. In many ways the Wandering Minstrels (1965) album is a continuation of the path that the Christys had commenced on their previous long-player, Chim Chim Cher-ee (1965). Taking the place of what once would have been a platter full of self-penned material is now a variety of covers with only a pair of Art Podell-penned numbers. At this point in the combo's career, they had survived eight incarnations in roughly three years with Podell and Nick Woods as the sole survivors of the first incarnation. As the concurrent "owners" considered the Christys' fate from strictly a financial perspective, they encouraged the ensemble to branch out and incorporate the influx of new styles and sounds. As they had done with "He's a Loser" and "Downtown" on Chim Chim Cher-ee, Wandering Minstrels offers the pop-influenced "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport," "Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)," and an outstanding reading of "The Girl From Ipanema." The latter captures the lilting nature of the original, updating the arrangement with the wispy solitude of vocalist Karen Gunderson, who had joined a year earlier. Ann White, Gunderson's female compatriot, similarly shines on Podell's "Go, Lassie, Go." They kept one foot in folk as evidenced by the included translation of "Hava Nagila," retitled here as "Live! Live!" The platter's eclectic nature may well have been manifested in the fact that the unit had no musically central force working from within the Christys' own ranks and was followed by the departure of Clarence Treat, Woods, and then Larry Ramos, who hooked up with the sunshine pop outfit the Association. Although they lumbered on while becoming increasingly out of step with the times, The Wandering Minstrels is an apt moniker for the lack of direction, if not relevancy, that the band was plagued with by the mid-'60s. ~ Lindsay Planer|