The Lovin’ Spoonful was America’s answer to the Beatles! The band, led by John Sebastian, Steve Boone, Joe Butler, and Zal Yanovsky, exploded, sending their first seven singles soaring onto Billboard’s top-10 charts virtually overnight. 

The Spoonful formed in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1965 at the Night Owl Café and signed to Kama Sutra Records. They appeared on every major TV show of the era: The Ed Sullivan Show, Hullabaloo, and Shindig! Their first single, “Do You Believe in Magic,” flew to the top of the charts and was followed by an unprecedented string of hits including: “Daydream,” “Younger Girl,” “Summer in the City,” “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice,” “Darling Be Home Soon,” “Jug band Music,” “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind,” “Lovin’ You,” “Didn’t Want to Have to Do it,” “Rain on the Roof,” “Six O’clock,” “Nashville Cats,” “Coconut Grove,” and “She’s Still a Mystery (to Me).”

The Spoonful reworked their earliest influences, jug bands and blues music, into a popular format. In 1965, the band helped pioneer the development of the musical genre of folk rock. By 1966, the group was “one of the most highly regarded American bands and the year’s third-best-selling singles act in the U.S., after the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

The band was so influential that music legends such as Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson cited them as forces of inspiration, as did many others. John Lennon called them “tunesmiths!”

Today, the Lovin’ Spoonful tours with Steve Boone, its founding members, Jeff Alan Ross, Bill Cinque, Rob Bonfiglio, and Mike Auturi. They faithfully celebrate the rich, good-time catalog of hits that made them one of the world’s most beloved groups of the ’60s.

The Lovin’ Spoonful was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

.