Sugar Creek

A psychedelic blues-rock outfit whose only album, 1969's Please Tell a Friend, has enough interesting moments, given the era's production quirks, to make it a highly sought after period piece, Sugar Creek originated when John Edwards (who later, as Jonathan Edwards, had a big hit in 1971 with "Sunshine") and guitarist Malcolm McKinney met while both were attending Ohio University. The two drafted in Malcolm's brother Tod McKinney and began playing music together as St. James Doornob, becoming the Infinite Doornob when Joe Dolce and Gary Gans came over to join from the Finite Minds. Moving east to Boston, the band built a fair following on the New England/New York club circuit, changing its name yet again, this time to Headstone Circus, and eventually settled in as Sugar Creek. That was the name under which they recorded the Please Tell a Friend LP in 1969 with producer Peter Casperson in New York, releasing it on Metromedia Records (Dolce had left the band by this time and his name does not appear on the album jacket.). A curious mix of blues and rock with the frequent psychedelic touches that were so popular with the various West Coast's acid folk and harmony bands (Moby Grape, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, et. al) at the time, Please Tell a Friend has become somewhat of a lost period treasure over the past decades. Fallout Records finally reissued the LP on disc in 2008. Edwards tired of the club circuit and went in a more acoustic direction when he went solo, eventually hitting big in 1971 with the bright and folky "Sunshine."