| "Today" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by The New Christy Minstrels | ||||
| from the album 'Today' | ||||
| B-side | "Miss Katy Cruel" | |||
| Released | May 1964 | |||
| Genre | Folk | |||
| Length | 2:44 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Randy Sparks | |||
| Producer(s) | Randy Sparks | |||
| The New Christy Minstrels singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"Today" is a 1964 folk song that was a hit for The New Christy Minstrels. Written by the group's founder, Randy Sparks, it was introduced in the American comedy-Western film Advance to the Rear (1964) and released on the album titled Today.
Randy Sparks founded the American large-ensemble folk-music group The New Christy Minstrels in 1961, during popular music's folk revival. The band recorded two Top 40 radio hits in 1963, Green, Green [1] and "Saturday Night", [2] but creative tensions within the organization led to Sparks' decision to leave. [3] On the verge of exiting the group, whose name he would sell to its managers, Sparks
...contracted to write the score for a film comedy set during the Civil War titled Advance to the Rear, and as part of that soundtrack he wrote "Today" (perhaps better recognizable from its opening line, "Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine"), its simple folk style reflecting the 19th-century time period of the film. The temporal tone of the lyric, in turn, may have reflected the film's wartime setting ("Who cares what the morrow may bring?")... [3]
The final song on The New Christy Minstrels' May 1964 Columbia Records album Today, [4] the title track was released as the single Columbia 43000 with the B side "Miss Katy Cruel". The record peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard magazine "Hot 100" chart and No. 4 on the magazine's Adult Contemporary chart. [5] [6]
Vocalists on the original release of "Today" include New Christy Minstrels members Barry McGuire, later to issue the solo hit "Eve of Destruction", and Gene Clark, who would go on to co-found the rock band The Byrds. [3]
AllMusic reviewer William Ruhlmann called it a "lovely folkish ballad", [3] while AllMusic's Bruce Eder, reviewing the album, found the song "achingly beautiful." [4]
John Denver, who started his career working for Randy Sparks in 1964, often performed "Today" in concert. One such performance is included on An Evening with John Denver.
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States with significant influence on the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. British pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Who, the Kinks, the Zombies, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, the Spencer Davis Group, the Yardbirds, Them, Manfred Mann, the Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Peter and Gordon, the Animals, the Moody Blues, Cream, Traffic, Pink Floyd, and Procol Harum, as well as solo singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Donovan, and Marianne Faithfull were at the forefront of the "invasion."
Barry McGuire is an American singer-songwriter primarily known for his 1965 hit "Eve of Destruction". He was later a singer and songwriter of contemporary Christian music.
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The New Christy Minstrels are an American large-ensemble folk music group founded by Randy Sparks in 1961. The group has recorded more than 20 albums and scored several hits, including "Green, Green", "Saturday Night", "Today", "Denver" and "This Land Is Your Land". The group's 1962 debut album, Presenting the New Christy Minstrels, won a Grammy Award and remained on the Billboard 200 albums chart for two years.
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