The Lancers - A History

In June of 1963, five guys set up their equipment in the band room of Balboa High School and Junior College in the Panama Canal Zone. An engineer from the local Armed Forces radio station carefully positioned a couple of expensive mics, each one direct-wired to a single channel of a two-track Ampex recorder.  As the group warmed up, the engineer listened through his headphones, moved mics, listened some more, finally arriving at an acceptable mix. There would be no re-mix after these songs were laid to tape.It was the same “live-to-tape” process a mop-haired, oddly named British group had used just a few months earlier when they recorded to a glorious three tracks in a world-class studio in London.

The Lancers' song list for this recording date was made up of mostly original instrumentals in the style of the guitar group, The Ventures, whose “Walk, Don’t Run” had been a big hit.Bob Taylor bought his top of the line Fender Jazzmaster because The Ventures had used it on their records.The piano you hear was an old school upright pulled out from the wall to be played by Bob and Ed Idol, who doubled on bongos and latin percussion.Ralph Smith's drum set was set up near the piano.Close to the back wall, a single Gretch amp carried both rhythm and lead guitars. Near the right mic, Gene Linfors played clarinet, sax and flute.The Lancers were a kind of “surf band with a wind player!

No vocals were recorded that day.The engineer and his EARSA Records business partner wanted to avoid paying any royalties.But in live performance, The Lancers did plenty of vocals, "covers" of pop songs of the day ... Chubby Checker’s "Let's Twist Again," Everly Brothers hits, heart-throb ballads (in both English and Ed’s mellow Spanish), and up tempo arrangements of standards and folk tunes.

For a few more months, Dallas would remain just another hot town in Texas.The "British Invasion" led by the Beatles wouldn’t hit the charts until the following spring, a musical renewal after the trauma of the John F. Kennedy assassination.In that simpler world, The Lancers had been a popular weekend dance band, and their audience wanted to hear recognizable hits, not unknown tunes by cute, post-adolescent poets who wanted to “Hold Your Hand.”

The master tapes from that '63 session, spliced in order and separated by an awkward eight to ten seconds of silence, were sent off to New York to be mastered by Capitol Records' Custom Service Department.Using photos shot in Panama and Florida (Buddy had already left the Canal Zone), MacMurray Press pasted up the cover art from Bob’s concept drawing.When the final LP's were delivered in the fall, three of the five Lancers were already off to college in the States.With no band to push them, few records moved off the shelf.

The Lancers did get together one last time.In the summer of 1964 they regrouped for a show at the Balboa Theater ... but by then the world had changed.This time the girls screamed when they sang covers of Beatles and Dave Clark Five tunes.The Brits had landed, and a whole new musical landscape existed for American teens.Now, original vocals were the thing, and a record format of just dance instrumentals would be very hard to sell to the buying public.