This Diamond Ring --
Gary Lewis & Playboys


Year: 1964 
Position: #1 
Label: Liberty

    Producer Snuff Garrett had already made his mark at Liberty Records. He was the man behind numerous hits of the early ’60s including all of Bobby Vee’s, Johnny Burnette’s, Gene McDaniels’, and others. But when 1965 rolled around, Snuff was having a dry spell. He knew he needed a new act to get back into the Top 10. He just wasn’t sure where to look. As it happened, Snuff found his next hitmaker only two doors down from his home in the posh Bel Air section of Los Angeles--at comedian Jerry Lewis’ house.
     Jerry and Snuff had a mutual friend, conductor Lou Brown, who’d worked with Jerry ever since the Martin & Lewis days. It was Brown who brought Gary Lewis to Snuffs attention.
SNUFF GARRETT: “Lou came up to the office one day and said, ‘Jerry’s son Gary is playin’ in a group. . they’re playin’ out at Disneyland.’ A week or so later, he said, ‘They’re gonna rehearse at Paramount tonight. Why don’t I come over and pick you up, we’ll have a bite to eat and go over and see them?’ So I did, and Gary was the drummer. He wasn’t the singer or anything else. The next day I got to thinkin’ if I could make him the singer--I’d never heard him sing--I thought, hey, if I can get a record cut with him, it’d be a new way to promote records--the son of a famous entertainer!”
    Snuff talked it over with the group and got their OK--and then took them into a recording studio with a song called “This Diamond Ring” to see what he could do. The session was financed by Gary’s mother, Patty Lewis. In it, the Playboys were almost irrelevant--they weren’t allowed to play their instruments and their voices were used sparingly. Snuff wanted a hit, so he insisted on using trusted studio musicians.“I got a piano player I knew named Leon Russell to do the arranging. My string stuff wasn’t making it anymore, so I [used only] five pieces [authors’ note: they included Tommy Alsup on guitar, Leon Russell on keyboards, and Hal Blaine on drums]. I didn’t use the Playboys at all except as overtones.”
     As for Gary’s lead vocals. .. well, that’s not just Gary’s voice you hear on the record. To help fill out what he felt to be Gary’s vocal inadequacies, Snuff brought in a session singer, too. His name was Ron Hicklin. Ron did the basic vocal track; then Snuff added Gary’s voice, overdubbed him a second time, added some of the Playboys, and then added more of Hicklin. “When I got through. . . [Gary] sounded like Mario Lanza” Snuff commented.
    Next came the hype. Snuff got it onto the radio in New York City by making a deal with WINS disc jockey Murray the K. Murray, who ran a series of all-star concerts at theaters around the New York area, was promised that if he played Lewis’ record, the Playboys would do his shows. Then Snuff had his neighbor, Jerry Lewis, pull strings to get his son onto “The Ed Sullivan Show”. Within a few weeks, Gary and his group were on America’s top variety program. There was a problem, though. It was Sullivan’s policy that all the acts appearing on his show had to perform live: since so many studio tricks had been used on the record, there was no way the Playboys could recreate its sound. So a compromise was struck. Gary sang along with prerecorded tracks as the Playboys faked it on instruments. According to Garrett, this marked the first time that a song had been “lip-synched” on the show. America didn’t mind. Gary Lewis and the Playboys were instant stars.
FOR THE RECORD.The song, which had been turned down by Bobby Vee, was written by Al Kooper. Kooper went on to work with Bob Dylan and to form Blood, Sweat and Tears (among his many other accomplishments).  Leon Russell, of course, became a superstar musician and a popular singer in the early ’70s.  Gary Lewis was drafted into the army at the end of 1966, and the Playboys broke up after a string of seven Top 10 hits.