Effective period / Period of releases: 1969

Eric Olson (3) of Milwaukee's Next Five wrote "What's That Melody," and this band is a continuation of the Next Five with a new name.

Olson:

Our third record “Sunny Sunny Feeling” was recorded at Chess Studio’s in Chicago on Friday, April 5, 1968. This was the most memorable session for us because it was the same day the riot’s broke out in Chicago because of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Stu Black was the engineer that day, Paul Christy was there, and we were well into the session when a man rushed into the studio and started screaming “get these kids out of here now, this place is going up”. At that moment we had no idea what was going on as we rushed to gather up all our things and headed down to the cars. Paul told us to get down and stay down until we got to the freeway. Once we were safe on the freeway heading back to Milwaukee Paul said “do you know who that was that came into the studio?” None of us knew and he said it was blues legend Muddy Waters. I also remember when we arrived at Chess I said to Paul “why are we recording in this old place” I remember him looking right at me and saying “you don’t know anything about this place”. He was right, I would learn later, the first place the Rolling Stones wanted to go when they came to America was Chess Studio’s where they recorded some of their earliest things and one of my favorite’s “It’s All Over Now”. After the riots were over and things got back to normal we went back to Chess to finish the session. Stu Black went on to engineer Fleetwood Mac and other major acts. Paul had moved to Virginia and it seemed like forever before he called to let us know we were now signed to Jubilee Records in New York. He had worked out a deal with A&R representative Steve Wax. In that deal, Jubilee wanted to change the name of the band for a fresh start. Our new name became The Toy Factory. Paul had used a song I wrote that we recorded in Appleton Wisc. a year or so earlier for the B-side, “What’s That Melody”.

We had waited a long time for the release of “Sunny, Sunny Feeling”, Paul and Jubilee Records wanted us to change our name and start fresh. I personally didn’t think that was going to be a good idea being the smaller markets or radio stations weren’t going to know who we were and all the DJ’s that played Next Five records wouldn’t know who the Toy Factory was. I think after time I realized it was probably something more then starting fresh, like perhaps the ownership of the name, if something really big were to have happened we wouldn’t have had much to say about the future of the band.