Little Hits

The Peppermint Rainbow — Will You Be Staying After Sunday?

(Decca Records 45, 1969)

This one’s actually a gift: my buddy JO was telling me about a festival of nostalgia he’d been having for the AM radio joys of his youth, during which he mentioned the Peppermint Rainbow’s “Will You Be Staying After Sunday?” as a lost favorite he couldn’t seem to lay hands on. As it happens, I have a copy of this single, which I bought a couple years ago as part of a foot-high stack from the late lamented Second Coming Records, which was poorly located in the basement of a building otherwise occupied by restaurants, on Mass Ave between Harvard Square and Central Square in Cambridge. Whole thing, over a hundred singles, cost me five bucks, as the guy on the register was amenable to my opening gambit of “Why don’t I save us both the hassle and just give you five bucks for the lot?” Sometimes that works.

Anyway, “Will You Be Staying After Sunday?” is one of those Little Hits rarities, a song that actually charted: according to my ever-present Joel Whitburn, it peaked at #32 in April 1969. The key name in the credits is producer and arranger Paul Leka, who was about to make a pot of cash for his half-written cast-off “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.” The names Kasha and Hirschorn in the songwriting credits mean nothing to me (although a quick Google reveals that a few years later, they wrote Maureen McGovern’s “The Morning After,” which I had no idea had won the Oscar for Best Original Song). And I have no clue who the singer is, but she reminds me a bit of my beloved Spanky McFarlane, of “and Our Gang” fame.

–Stewart Mason