written by Alan Gordon and Garry Bonner

produced by Joe Wissert

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I’m making this page on June 22nd, 2021, the 74th birthday of

The Turtles’ (also sometimes spelled as “Tyrtles”) co-lead singer and

co-frontman Howard Kaylan (nee Kaplan). Happy Birthday, HK!!

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Here’s an L.A. band that before checking out today, I believed was one of those oldie-one hit wonders. To be fair, their “one” hit in question was way before my time. It seems that together with partner Mark Volman, birthday boy Howard headed up The Turtles in the ’60s, starting as teenagers (the two are the same age), and re-partnered as Flo & Eddie in the ’70s. In the 21st century—they’re still going—they’re billed as The Turtles Featuring Flo & Eddie. Oh, but in between those two acts, they joined Frank Zappa’s band The Mothers Of Invention (where they had to go by different names, and were known as... The Phlorescent Leech... and Eddie... ah, that wacky Zappa. (But what else would you expect from a fellow who birth-names his daughter Moon Unit?) I suppose when they had another go at it later on, Flo & Eddie just... Flo’d better.)

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When I started collecting CDs full-time (summer-fall ’97) many of the first ones I got were compilations belonging to budget series. On June 10th, 1997, for instance, Rhino Records’ newly founded imprint Flashback released a whole slew of short compilations, of pure oldies and not-quite-so-oldies. One full of ’60s classics contained this song, “Happy Together” by The Turtles. I had known the song from the radio, and it was a contributing reason to my purchasing this particular volume. 21st-century kids would probably know the song better from—among other sources, I’m sure—Jamie Lee Curtis’ and Lindsay Lohan’s remake of Freaky Friday, where it opens the movie and plays for 45 seconds, before being swallowed up by Simple Plan’s version.

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Have notes to add? Let me know!

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YT:

full version

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The Turtles’ official website