White Eyes

They didn’t make a huge splash nationwide, but White Eyes were favorites in the rock ballroom and homegrown festival circuit in the Midwest throughout their heyday from the late ’60s and early ’70s, playing psychedelic rock with strong guitar work, impressive harmonies, and melodies which were catchy and clever without blunting the impact from the music. The Light Eyes story started in 1965, when high-school close friends Philip Jackson (guitars, vocals, keyboards) and Butch Dillon (drums) had been attending Missouri American State School in St. Joseph, Missouri. Both were thinking about forming a spirit/R&B music group, and recruited guitarist and vocalist Greg Camp and vocalist Kitty Sherrell, the last mentioned just 14 when she became a member of the music group but already having a strong, self-confident voice. The music group, referred to as Dillon’s Kids, didn’t last lengthy as the music artists embraced the changing noises of rock and roll music, and in 1969 they transferred to Columbia, Missouri, house from the School of Missouri and a far more friendly locale for all those sympathetic towards the hippie way of living. The group added another guitarist, Kent “Duck” Linneweh, and used a fresh name, Light Eyes, inspired with the titular animals in the low-budget horror film Plague from the Zombies. Hauling their equipment within a rundown hearse, Light Eyes gigged frequently enough that these were able to go along without time jobs because they performed frequent local displays and regularly strike the street for out-of-town times, with Kansas Town and Lawrence, Kansas regular locations for the group. In past due 1969, an clothing known as Anthony Comstock Productions staked the music group to enough studio room time to slice an album-length demonstration, which White colored Eyes would make use of to impress reservation agents and ideally land an archive deal. By Might 1970, White colored Eyes had slice eight songs reside in the studio room — seven originals and a cover from the Lennon/McCartney obscurity “It’s for you personally” — and an A&R guy at Chrysalis Information liked it plenty of to set up for the music group to open trips for two from the label’s larger performers, Procol Harum and A DECADE After. Nevertheless, no record agreement ever materialized, and several music artists drifted in and from the group, including guitarist Larry Knight, who previously sat in using one music for the demonstration, and keyboardist Jimmy Harlow. In 1975, White colored Eyes finally known as it each day, and Greg Camp and Jimmy Harlow created a fresh group, Camp Harlow, that became a long-running fixture within the Missouri rock and roll picture, while Philip Jackson would type White colored Rock Prairie Music group. After many years of using Camp Harlow so that as a single take action, Greg Camp passed away in ’09 2009. In 2015, the archivist label Numero Group provided Light Eye’ 1970 demonstration tape its initial official release, rendering it their debut record 40 years once they broke up.