- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Outsiders are best known for their Top 5 hit “Time Won’t Let Me”, and they’d had a second hit by the time The Outsiders came out, “Girl in Love”.
The Outsiders – The Outsiders (1966): This debut album by the Outsiders is actually named after their big hit song, Time Won’t Let Me; but the information that I put on the albums after I clean them up from the Katrina mud is typically limited to what is on the record label, and all it says is The Outsiders. This is the American band called the Outsiders; the lesser-known Dutch group called the Outsiders is one of the greatest bands in rock and roll history. Sadly, neither of the Outsiders bands is likely to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, despite the American band’s having something of a home field advantage since they were a Cleveland band.
Writing about the Outsiders and their four albums was one of my early Wikipedia projects, once I discovered that the band had only a short Wikipedia article or “stub” at that point in time. The Outsiders are best known for their Top 5 hit “Time Won’t Let Me” and are often incorrectly called a one-hit-wonder band; but they’d had a second hit by the time this album came out, “Girl in Love” that nearly made the Top 20. “Respectable” (the Isley Brothers song) followed later in 1966 and reached #15; the Outsiders had another Top 40 song, “Help Me, Girl”, and four other Outsiders singles charted. Original bandleader Tom King and lead singer Sonny Geraci had a falling out, and each man fronted a band called the Outsiders for a time. After King won the lawsuit for the use of the name, Sonny Geraci changed his band’s name to Climax and had an even bigger hit with the #3 song “Precious and Few” in 1972. The song was written by Outsiders guitarist Walter Nims. All four of the Outsiders albums are quite good; the somewhat rough-cut nature of their recordings often results in their being put into the garage rock band category, in which case the Outsiders qualify as one of the most successful garage rock bands ever.