Paul Revere and the Raiders

Top (L-R) Drake Levin, Mark Lindsay, Phil Volk
Bottom (L-R) Paul Revere, Mike Smith
Paul Revere and the Raiders emerged  from the rock and roll scene of the Northwest to become a national pop success, trading on the enormous teenybopper appeal of ponytailed lead singer Mark Lindsay

Members:
    Paul Revere - keyboard
    Mark Lindsay - saxophone and lead singer
    Drake Levin - lead guitar -replaced by Jim Valley - replaced by Freddy Weller
    Phil Volk - rhythm guitar - replaced by Charlie Coe - replaced by Keith Allison
    Mike Smith - drums - replaced temporarily by Joe Correro Jr.

Paul Revere was born January 7, 1938 in Harvard, Nebraska, and grew up in Boise, Idaho. As with any unusual name, it subjected the young Revere to some schoolyard ribbing, such that even after he started in the entertainment business, he never thought of using it professionally.

Early on Revere did think of entertainment. When he was small he would go to the movies and see the Hoosier Hotshots and Spike Jones and the City Slickers. It was then that he first thought of mixing music and comedy together.

The music that Revere listened to as he grew up was boogie-woogie, and like many people of his age, the success of the early rockers of the mid-'50s was the inspiration to play the music himself. To the piano-playing Revere the main catalyst was Jerry Lee Lewis, whose "A Whole Lotta' Shakin' Going On" became a smash hit when he was 19.

Revere after high school went to barber college, opened his own barber shop, and eventually opened a drive-in restaurant, the Reed 'n' Bell, in Caldwell, Idaho. Possessing considerable business insight, Revere approached rock and roll with a far more professional attitude than his peers, and soon after joining a local band, began to transform them into a polish act.

At that time Mark Lindsay, a 16 year old who had already sung in a high school band, was working in a bakery across from Revere's restaurant. Revere's band had caught Lindsay's ear and it was while they were playing at a local dance at the Elks Hall and walked on stage and asked to sing a song with them.

The next day Revere walked into the bakery to pick-up a delivery and told the bespectacled bun boy with flour on his face and baker's hat on his head, about the crazy, skinny kid who  had gotten up onstage the night before.  "How was he?" Lindsay asked.  Revere replied "He wasn't bad." Lindsay whipped of his hat and glasses and said "It was me!" Lindsay

Soon Lindsay had replaced the band's lead singer and, picking up the tenor saxophone, became a full paid member of the group, which eventually became called Downbeats, a name taken from the jazz magazine. At the end of the '50s, the Downbeats were playing sock hops and after game dances at high school, but aspired to more. That is what led Revere and Lindsay to a small recording studio in the area, where they cut a half dozen tracks.

Mark Lindsay

Revere took the tapes to Los Angeles and began knocking on doors without much success until he stopped at the Gardenia pressing plant of John Guss. Not only did Guss agree to cut a record from Revere's tape, but when he found out Revere's name suggested a name change to Paul Revere and the Nightriders. Revere rejected the name, but later settled on Paul Revere and the Raiders, which was the name that appeared on the groups first single, a boogie woogie version of Chopsticks called "Beatnik Sticks."

Revere then went around to radio stations in Idaho plugging the song as well as it's follow-up, "Paul Revere's Ride," but it was the group's third single "Like Long Hair," an instrumental which crossed the serious classical style of Rachmaninoff with Jerry Lee Lewis, that caught on nationally.

Paul Revere and the Raiders 1964
Top L-R: Phil Volk, Paul Revere, Drake Levin
Bottom L-R: Mike Smith, Mark Lindsay
Photo Courtesy Jeff Miller

"Like Long Hair" entered the charts in March 1961, eventually reaching the Top 40 and even got on American Bandstand. Revere was unable to follow up the records success since, by the time the it peaked in the charts, he had been drafted. In fact, a two week national tour without him, as Lindsay fronted a band called "Paul Revere's Raiders that included a young Leon Russell subbing for him on the piano.

Revere's was assigned Conscientious Objector status due to his family's Mennonite religion, and he chose to serve his alternative service as a cook at a mental institution in Wilsonville, Oregon. Lindsay moved to California, but returned in 1962 to join Revere in a new version of the band.

The two joined with Roger Hart, a disc Jockey from KISN in Portland, to promote shows at local teen dances and armories, and he became their manager.

A variety of bassists and guitarists passed through the Raiders during 1962 and 1963, while Portland  born drummer Mike Smith turned out to be a long term group member.

The band began honing its style at local dances, adding hard driving R&B from the black charts to their repertoire and developed a manic showmanship that would become their onstage trademark. The front line Lindsay, the bassist, and the guitarist would perform choreographed steps, while Revere performed his own crazy antics in back and often climaxed the show by setting his $50 upright piano on fire.

With such tactics, and Hart's promotional help, the Raiders became a big regional act, rivaling the success of the Seattle based Wailers. One of the Raider's most popular songs was "Louie, Louie." The Raiders continued to record at Gardena, but despite their early success with "Like Long Hair" making records wasn't Revere's primary goal. The Raiders were to be a working rock and roll touring band.

Roger Hart suggested that the group record "Louie, Louie."   The master recording cost $40 to cut at Northwest Recorders in Portland, where it was made at roughly the same time that the Kingsmen, another local group, recorded the same song at the same studio. The Raiders version came out first April 25, 1963), but the Kingsmen's' (early May 1963) went on to become a monstrous hit.

However, Ken Bolster the local Columbia Records rep, requested a copy of the Raiders and within a few weeks they received a phone call from David Kapralick of CBS and signed with Columbia.

photo courtesy The Phil "Fang" Volk Fan Page

It was at this time that Revere and Lindsay discovered the Raiders' look in a dusty old costume shop in Portland Oregon. While walking down Southeast Broadway in Portland, they passed a costume shop and discovered some George Washington type uniforms.. Laughing  and saying "that's the way the old guys used to dress," they rented the costumes.

That night during the second half of their show at Lake Oswego Armory, the Raiders went on wearing their costumes.The whole attitude changed. It was suddenly the Marx Brothers on stage. Nobody had seen anything like it. Seeing how much fun it was for both the Raiders and the audience Revere began thinking knew he had discovered something. Soon Revere was having Revolutionary War costumes, complete with tri-corned hats, custom made.

With steady work and the Columbia signing, the Raiders solidified as a quintet featuring Revere, Lindsay, and Smith, guitarist Drake Levin and bassist Mike "Doc" Holiday, both formerly of the Sir Winston Trio (also known as the Surfers), who joined the band at the end of summer of 1963.

The Raiders' follow up to "Louie, Louie" was "Louie - Go Home, " only enjoyed regional success as did their third Columbia single "Over You."

Columbia now assigned staff producer Terry Melcher to handle the Raiders' recordings. Melcher was a recording star in his own right with his partner Bruce Johnston, turning out surf hits under the names of the Ripchords and Bruce and Terry.

Roger Hart and the Raiders

The Raiders continued to play in their strongholds in the Northwest and Hawaii during 1964 to 1965, weathering the British invasion.

Just as Revere credits Hart as the inspiration to record "Louie, Louie," it was Hart that contacted Dick Clark when Clark was looking for a backup group to use on his upcoming pilot for a show to be called Where the Action Is.

(Front L-R) Paul Revere, Dick Clark, Mike Smith
((Back L-R) Drake Levin, Paul Volk, Mark Lindsay

For the Raiders, the summer of 1965 was what any popular artist dreams of. Where the Action Is premiered on ABC-TV on June 27. In July, the Raiders played at a CBS records convention in Miami that lead to company approval for a nationwide summer tour. The combination of TV exposure and live experiences pushed their debut album in the charts.

When the Raiders were hired for Action, they were just one of a cast of members that included Linda Scott, Steve Alaimo, Tommy Roe among others. However, the group was so visual and with their craziness they over shadowed all the others.

Steve Alaimo, Mike Smith, Mark Lindsay, Phil Volk,
Linda Scott, Paul Revere, and Drake Levin

At the end of 13 weeks, with their first Top 50 hit, "Steppin' Out" moving up the charts, the Raiders were able to renegotiate their contract becoming the shows stars.

In October , the Raiders followed up "Steppin Out" with what was to become one of their all time classics "Just Like Me." Written  by Rick Dey, a big  Raider fan from the Northwest, "Just Like Me" was released in November 1965. With a sizzling multi-tracked guitar solo by Levin, it became the groups' first Top 20 hit.

The Raiders' next song "Kicks," an anti-drug song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, went into the top five. Then came another Mann-Weil composition "Hungry" and another smash hit. But, at this time the group was starting to developing its own songwriting and Melcher began using session musicians on the Raiders' recordings

Jim Valley, Mark Lindsay, Paul Revere, Phil Volk, Mike Smith

The first product of these two developments was "The Great Airplane Strike," a Lindsay-Melcher composition that became a Top 20 hit in 1967. By this time the Raiders' personnel had changed as Levin had been drafted and went into the National Guard. Though,  Levin still found time to work in the studio, Jim Valley, a veteran of such Northwest bands as Viceroys and Don and the Goodtimes, came in to replace him, primarily on Action and tour.

Hits continued to come with "Good Thing," reaching to Top 5 in early 1967, followed by "Ups and Downs," a more modest success two months later. By this time Actions' two year TV run was coming to an end and Volk, Smith and Levin, (who had returned replacing Valley) decided to leave the group and go off on their own.

Revere searched for replacements, first adding Atlanta based guitarist Freddy Weller, who joined the group for its first live appearance on a late April Ed Sullivan Show to promote the next single "Him or Me - What's It Gonna Be," another Top 5 hit. After the show, Revere brought back Charlie Coe and hired drummer Joe Correro Jr, to complete the group.

In the studio, the change only extended Lindsay and Melcher's use of session musicians and overdubbing. This experimentation reached its apex with the next single, "I Had a Dream," a Top 20 hit released in July.

At this time the Beatles records such as "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" single and Sgt. Pepper album radically the demands of their pop music peers. These musical developments were paralleled by the rising social consciousness of the time, which led to the lyrical sentiments as the one expressed in the Raider's next single "Peace of Mind" and the title of their next album Revolution!. They also recorded a seasonal album, A Christmas Present..and Past. This proved to be Melcher's swan song, as Lindsay took over the writing and producing. Lindsay produced his first Raider single in December 1967, "Too Much Talk" that returned to more uptempo style of earlier hits and nearly reached the Top 10 in early 1968.

The success of "Too Much Talk" was assisted by a new Saturday morning TV show, Happening '68, hosted by Revere and Lindsay, that premiered in January.

Meanwhile, Lindsay continued to write and produce the Raiders' records. In the summer Keith Allison replaced Coe on the bass, the Raider lineup of Weller, Correro, and Allison presented Lindsay with a seasoned band who were often used in the studio.

The next single release in May was "Don't Take It So Hard."

During this period changes were in the air as era saw the rise of rock criticism in the forms of such magazines Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. Lindsay now encountered the problem of having to write songs that weren't to heavy for the Raiders' fans, but not so light that they wouldn't be taken serious by the media.

Despite continuing success of the singles, the Raiders' started receiving less airplay based on who they were. An example was "We Gotta All Get Together," reached #25 on the sales based Cash Box magazine chart, but only got to #50 in Billboard, which factored airplay into its chart.

In an attempt to shed their image they changed the name of the group to simply the Raiders. The result was confusion, which probably hurt the sales of the first "Raiders" single, an uptempo rocker called "Just Seventeen," and couldn't have helped the performance of Collage, the album Lindsay was pinning his hopes on. The album was only to reach #154 on the Billboard chart.

However, the Raiders' biggest hit was yet to come. Columbia A&R man Jack Gold, noting the success of Don Fardon's recording of John Loudermilk's song "Indian Reservation (The Lament Of The Cherokee Reservation Indian)" on the British Charts in the fall of 1970 suggested that the Raiders record it. The Raiders cut the song "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)" in November 1970. Indian Reservation" became the Raiders only #1 song.

By this time, the band's concert appearances had changed, revealing contrasting attitudes between Revere and Lindsay. Revere wanted to play small venues, lounges, and clubs which provided the opportunity to make the group into a tighter and more entertaining stage act. For Lindsay this was the last straw, and he left the Raiders at the start of 1975.

Raiders Members 2005
Paul Revere, Jamie Revere, Carl Driggs, Omar Martinez, Doug Heath, Daniel Krause, and Ron Foos.

In 1988, Paul Revere and Righteous Brother Bill Medley opened the oldies dance club Kicks in Reno, Nevada.

In October 2014, the band's web site announced that Revere had died "peacefully" on October 4, 2014, at his Garden Valley, Idaho home, a "small estate overlooking a tranquil river canyon", from cancer. He was 76 years old.

Drake Levin died of cancer July 4, 2009 at his home in San Francisco, he was 63.
Mike Smith died of natural causes March 6, 2001 in Kona, Hawaii, he was 58.
Paul Revere died October, 14, 2014 in Garden Valley, Idaho, he was 76.
Keith Alllison died at his home in Sherman Oaks, California on November 17, 2021, at the age of 79.