The Royal Guardsmen

The Royal Guardsmen were a rock band out of Ocala, FL, that formed in 1966--originally called The Posmen--consisting of Bill Balough, John Burdette, Tom Richards, Billy Taylor, Barry Winslow and Chris Nunley. The band played at various teen functions--proms, dances, etc.--throughout the Ocala area, and were featured at a teen hangout called Johnson's Beat. They were opening for novelty act Monti Rock III in Tampa, FL, one night when a record producer named Phil Gernhard got in touch with them backstage. Gernhard, who had been around the business for a while and was involved with Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs' hit "Stay" in 1961, proposed that they record a song for which he had written the lyrics that capitalized on the huge popularity of the character Snoopy in Charles M. Schulz's beloved comic strip "Peanuts". One of the running "gags" in the strip was Snoopy imagining himself turning his doghouse into a Sopwith Camel airplane and fighting the German World War I ace fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen, aka "The Red Baron", only to be shown down every time. The band agreed and gathered at Richards' house with a two-track recorder to lay down the music track. They sent the finished product--which they didn't particularly like--to Gernhard, who loved it. They re-recorded the song at a professional studio and Gernhard made a deal with New York's Laurie Records to release it. It didn't take long for the song to catch on and it shot to #2 on the US pop charts and #8 on the UK charts, selling more than three million copies worldwide. They followed up "Red Baron" with "The Return of the Red Baron", which became a respectable hit (#15 on the US charts). The group had recorded enough "Snoopy" songs to last for a while, and many of them made it onto their "Snoopy's Christmas" album in 1967. The group, however, wanted to be taken seriously as a rock act rather than a novelty act and released a string of non-"Snoopy" singles, none of which charted. After that they came out with "Snoopy for President", in which the beloved beagle ran in the 1968 Presidential election. By this time the novelty was wearing off, and the song barely made it into the Top 100. Unable to break out of the "novelty act" label, the band finally broke up in 1969.