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According to Tom Dawes ’65, there is still a chance for The Cyrkle to have another reunion.
Dawes is referring to the band that he, Don Danneman ’65, Marty Fried ’66, and Earle Pickens ’65 made popular with its hit “Red Rubber Ball,” which made it all the way to #2 on the U.S. charts. During this time, The Cyrkle was also the opening act for the Beatles during their 1966 summer tour, playing for crowds of over 70,000.
“We’ve had a few reunions, one where we played in Allentown in the mid-eighties, another at our 30th reunion in 1995, and the last, about a year ago in New York, just for dinner with our mates and a lot of oldies harmonizing,” says Dawes. “Maybe in another 10 years, we’ll have another reunion to discuss which assisted-living facility we should all move to and play ‘Red Rubber Ball’ on Saturday nights at the Senior Canteen.”
While many alumni surely remember The Cyrkle, they might not know that Dawes also is the creator of the “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz” Alka Seltzer jingle.
Before retiring from jingle writing in 1990, Dawes was the creative source of hundreds of other popular jingles, including “We’re American Airlines,” which ran for 20 years. Dawes met his wife, Ginny Redington, through the jingle business, and the two collaborated on the popular “Coke is It!” jingle.
These days, Dawes and Redington are still collaborating. Their musical, The Talk of the Town, ran for six weeks at the Bank Street Theater in Greenwich Village, N.Y., at the end of 2004 and for 14 months through August 2006 in the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in midtown New York City. The plot focuses on the 1920s and ’30s and the interaction of Algonquin Roundtablers Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, and Alexander Woollcott.
Dawes credits Lafayette with his early interest in this subject.
“After taking a course in 1920s literature at Lafayette, I remember enjoying their wit, and when Ginny came up with a great book of quotes on them and an idea for a musical – and the first five songs! – I thought, ‘This is going to be fun!” And it was, but difficult at the same time,” he says. “It took us 10 years from inception to getting ‘discovered’ and getting the show put on, but it was worth the wait.”
Dawes is now busy taking pictures for the books he and Redington have published. Their latest book, to be published by the Antique Collectors Club in the fall of 2007, is called Georgian Jewellery. They have two prior books, The Bakelite Jewelry Book and Victorian Jewelry, Unexplored Treasures, which were published by Abbeville Press in New York.