The Ascots: Detroit’s Forgotten Teen Rockers
Dale Kath and John Neff tell the story behind their ’60s’ ‘Back from the Grave’ 45 single
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October 29, 1965, for the Halloween Dance at Pierce Jr. High School. Left to Right: Bob Pelmear, Dale Kath, John Neff, Chris Chappell, and Frank Giglio.
When the burgeoning garage and progressive-rock scene, a scene forged in Detroit and the surrounding Midwestern environs, broke across the U.S. in the late 1960s, it broke big — and The Great Lakes’ competitive radio broadcasting environment sounded the analog clarions. It was the Motor City’s WKNR battling the airwaves against WXYZ, along with the smaller outlets of WABX, WDTM and WOIA beginning their experiments with progressive-rock on a part-time evening basis, in conjunction with the growth of local, rock-driven record labels — such as Jeep Holland’s A-Square and Ed “Punch” Andrews’s Hideout and Palladium imprints, as well as Harry Balk’s R&B/soul-leaning Impact — along with the dizzying rate Detroit bands signed major label deals as their locally-released 45-rpms seen national distribution, which thrust Detroit on a national stage. A city known solely as the hub of the U.S. auto industry now spewed the greasy versions of San Francisco’s “Summer of Love” courtesy of the grittier sounds grinded by Alice Cooper, the Amboy Dukes, Grand Funk Railroad, the MC5, and Iggy and the Stooges — as well as the “no hit wonders” of Detroit’s ever-developing local-to-national scene transition with Cactus, Catfish, Frost, Sky, SRC, and Third Power. The soiled celebrity bestowed to Detroit musicians, while popular on mom n’ pop progressive rock stations across the U.S., also conquered commercial “Top 40” AM radio, as the Motor City produced its own brand of one-hit, pop-rock radio wonders with Brownsville Station’s “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room,” Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen’s “Hot Rod Lincoln,” and Frijid Pink’s “House of the Rising Sun” each topping the charts. Even Alice Cooper and Grand Funk Railroad transitioned from those once scoffed at “hippie stations” to the airwaves of the shiny, corporate AMs. The denizens of the 8 Mile arrived. It’s Detroit — and not Cleveland — that rocks. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley didn’t write “Detroit Rock City” for naught.
It was amid these local-to-national successes and failures and the critical praises and drubbings of the new, harder and faster sounds emanating from the Motor City — sounds that eschewed the pop-radio safer, Funk Brothers-backed “Motown Sound” the city was known for — that the major record labels realized local impresarios Jeep Holland and Ed “Punch” Andrews, with their scene-developing clubs and record labels, were onto something — that can sell. So the leading executive contenders of Capitol and Elektra Records opened offices in the city, their suits at-the-ready to discover the young hopefuls strolling along the 8 Mile to national stardom.
One of those youthful, British Invasion-inspired hopefuls was a guitarist by the name of Dale Kath who got his start in the teen garage band, the Ascots, which existed from 1963 to 1967. Founded by John Neff, the band’s chief songwriter and lead guitarist, the band also featured vocalist Chris Chappell, bassist Bob Pelmear, and Frank Giglio on drums. According to Kath’s memories, they were all about 14 to 16 years old at the time, possibly as young as 12 or 13, according to Neff.
“After Bob Pelmear left — for a band fronted by Joe and Paul Felice, who were in my first band in the 7th or 8th grade before the Ascots, where we specialized in covering the Tokens’ ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ thanks to my high falsetto — Jim Steil was the bass player for a while, as the band continued until the middle of 1967. Later, myself, Pelmear, and the Felice brothers formed the Tribe. We signed with Punch Andrews, who was handling Bob Seger, and we recorded my second record, ‘Maple Street Park.’ My first record, ‘So Good,’ was the A-Side of the Ascots’ first single and only single, released in April 1966.
“The Tribe recorded at Ralph Terrana and Al Sherman’s Tera Shirma Studios [fellow D-Towners Frijid Pink, the MC5, Mitch Ryder, and Rare Earth recorded there] and we appeared on CKLW-TV’s Swingin’ Time,” Neff reflects. We changed the name to Pavement and eventually broke up in 1968.”
Pavement at the Silverbell, 1968.
Of course, as with any teen band in the early 1960s, the Beatles served as the Ascots’ foremost influence.
“The Ascots, with our influences of the Beatles, Chuck Berry, and the Kingsmen,” Dale Kath recalls, “started rehearsing in the basement of St. Benedict’s School in the city of Pontiac. The band got started in 1963. Those rehearsals went pretty well, so we recorded John’s ‘So Good,’ while Bob Pelmear wrote the flipside, ‘Who Will It Be.’ We knocked those out in a one-day session in a couple of hours.”
“My older brother, Tom, mastered them shortly after,” interjects Neff. “Years later, I fixed the ‘bad harmony’ on ‘Who Will It Be’ when I was at David Lynch’s studio, probably around the time we worked on the Mulholland Drive soundtrack [released in 2001]. I used a 1963 single-pickup Gibson Melody Maker on the record. In live situations: I preferred two pickups, so I played a Kent by Teisco, which was branded through the Layfayette Radio Electronics chain, and used a 1963 Sears Silvertone Twin Twelve. Dale played a Chicago-made Harmony Bobcat — one of which I own, today. He played through a beautiful, 1964 Fender Super Reverb. Bob had a 1–15” Danelectro bass amp and bass.”
That lone Ascots’ recording also served as the lone release for their homegrown, vanity-imprint, Frat Records, and its related publisher, Watkins Music. Unlike the numerous, sequential releases by larger Detroit-based labels, such as Harry Balk’s Impact (which released a one-off pop-rock single by future Detroit’s Wilson Mower Pursuit guitarist Rick “The Lion” Stahl’s first band, Sincerely Yours) and Punch Andrews’s Hideout (which released Bob Seger’s early works), each which carried catalog numbers — Frat’s lone release notes the matrix code from the run outs on the label as a faux catalog number.
“The single was recorded in August of 1965 and it took months to get the mixed-master back, then to get the record pressed,” Neff confirms. “It was eventually pressed and released — 500 copies in total — in April of 1966 through Columbia Special Products, courtesy of my dad’s company, Detroit Art Services.”
As with Capitol and Elektra, Columbia also capitalized on the Motor City’s burgeoning scene and opened offices in Detroit. In fact, Capitol entered the Detroit market in 1955 when they offered a one-year deal to an ex-mail room employee, Bunny Paul, who got her start during the waning years of the big-band era as the vocalist for Detroit’s Don Pablo Orchestra. Capitol’s next Detroit signing was Jake Scott. When his label, Top Rank — which placed Scott’s “What in the World’s Come over You” into the Top Five of the national singles charts — went out of business, Capitol Records picked up Scott’s contract.
As with RCA Records and other companies that owned plants, Columbia Records handled the logistics of custom pressings for smaller labels — one of which was Punch Andrews’s Hideout Records. The reason for the frustrating, almost year-long recording-to-release schedule John Neff speaks of: The #ZTSC matrix code on the 45-rpm label/run outs indicates that series was first sent to Columbia’s Chicago studio for mastering, and then the stampers were shipped to one of their plants, most likely, in Terre Haute, Indiana. The 45-rpm that precedes the Ascots’ release from the Columbia synergy: Hideout’s the Four of Us (Hideout 1012). Also managed by Punch Andrews, the Four of Us once featured a young Glenn Frey, later of famed, Southern California rockers, the Eagles (and let’s not forget the Knack’s Doug Fieger cut his teeth on Detroit stages with Sky).
While the recording-to-release process lagged, the promotional route to radio airplay was quick for the Ascots, courtesy of the aforementioned radio station responsible for introducing garage and progressive bands to Detroit — both local and national: WXYZ-FM. The Ascots involvement with the station came as result of a sock hop at Detroit’s Notre Dame High School.
“We got this gig, a really huge gig, opening for the Shades of Blue and the Capitols, each who had pretty big hits in the day,” says Kath.
“‘Oh, How Happy’ was Shades of Blue’s big hit and the Capitols’ ‘Cool Jerk,’ that was their brand new release,” interjects Neff.
“Dave Prince, a DJ at WXYZ, hosted the event, so we were able to give him a copy of our single,” continues Kath. “And Dave played ‘So Good’ on the station. Then Rosalie Trumbull, the Program Director over at CKLW Ontario — who is noted for breaking Bob Seger on the radio — started getting requests, so we sent her a copy. We also appeared on Robin Seymour’s Swingin’ Time in 1965. He was a DJ on WKMH and his TV show aired on CKLW-TV Channel 9.”
“It was my dad who had the foresight to bring a copy of the single to the Notre Dame High School gig to give to Dave Prince, who was spinning records there,” Neff recalls. “I gave it to Dave myself and he played my side, ‘So Good,’ during the dance. He introduced us as ‘Detroit’s newest recording act’ and took the record back to the station. As for how it ended up on CKLW: Rosalie called my house during dinner time. My dad, who handled everything, as far as getting the record pressed by Columbia, answered. ‘It’s someone from CKLW,’ he tells me. So I sent Rosalie a copy. She also gave me the number of a distributor to get the record in the stores. Thanks to her airplay, we sold out our 500 copies.”
Thanks to the radio support, the gigs got even bigger.
“The Ascots’ biggest gig was appearing as an undercard for the Turtles’ tour stop at Cobo Hall in the spring of 1966,” Neff remembers.
“In those days,” recalls Motor City warhorse drummer Ron Course, who worked with Dale Kath in the later, early 1970s concern, White Heat, “promoters turned even the smallest club dates, at places like The Silverbell Hideout, into these all-day events, booking four or more bands. So when a major band came to town, one of the big Detroit bands, like the MC 5, SRC, or Nugent’s Amboy Dukes, would get the opening slot, and the promoter would toss two or three smaller bands on the bill as undercards. You didn’t actually ‘open’ for the big guys and you never met them, but it was a nice feeling knowing you shared a stage with them. There were lots of opportunities for the smaller bands to run through their mostly covers sets as the first band of the evening to warm up the crowd. Russ Gibb, the owner of the Grande [Ballroom], was always very giving when it came to giving the little guys a shot on its bigger stage.”
“I remember seeing the Wha? [featuring bassist Daniel O’Connell; in the late 1970s he formed Capitol Records’ Barooga Bandit, managed by Punch Andrews] there all the time as the first band of the night,” finishes Neff.
After the Turtles, John Neff recalls his little rock ’n’ roll combo received another one of those calls to warm up the crowd: the Ascots shared the same stage as the Who on their Detroit date — on Keith Moon’s 21st birthday. “That’s when Keith drove a car into a hotel pool, as I recall. But it wasn’t to last, as the Ascots split by 1967.”
The Ascots at Pat and Diane’s Party B-Day Party, 1966: Left to Right: John Neff, Dale Kath, Frank Giglio, Chris Chappell, and Bob Pelmear.
Oh, yes. The Who’s infamous, three Detroit tour stops during 1967, each which Detroiters remember for drummer Keith Moon not only trashing hotel rooms into the double-digit thousands — but for driving a car into a hotel’s swimming pool.
The Who’s first Detroit gig in 1967 also served as their first date in the U.S. — except for an earlier series of Easter Week specialty shows for famed disc jockey Murray the K at the RKO 58th Street Theater in New York during the last week of March and first week of April — at Ann Arbor’s 500-seat Fifth Dimension club on June 14, 1967. That’s the show where the Ascots appeared.
Then there’s Keith Moon’s infamous Birthday Party “drive” — in a debated Rolls Royce or a Lincoln Continental — into the swimming pool of a Flint, Michigan, Holiday Inn on August 23, 1967. The drive — contested as happening or not happening — occurred after the Who’s undercard slot for Herman’s Hermits with Blues Magoos opening, at Flint’s 11,000-seat Atwood Stadium.
Then there are those Detroiters who recall Keith’s Birthday Drive-incident occurring during the Who’s third Detroit date later in the year — on November 22, 1967, at Southfield High School with Ted Nugent’s the Amboy Dukes opening and Taylor, Michigan’s the Unrelated Segments, as the undercard.
That tumultuous year of Detroit gigs graduated the Who to headlining five shows from 1968 to 1969 at the Motor City’s premiere tour stop for progressive rock bands: The Grande Ballroom. After those shows the Who partied with the locals at the infamous, 46-roomed Gar Wood mansion on Grayhaven Island. The Gatsby-era estate served as the band house and rehearsal space for fellow Detroiters, Stonefront.
The Ascots in August 1965, 20 minutes before recording their single — according to the memories of John Neff. Left to Right: John Neff, lead guitar; Bob Pelmear, bass and vocals; Dale Kath, rhythm guitar; Chris Chappell, vocals; Frank Giglio, drums.
“Now, I can’t recall the exact date of the Turtles’ show in 1966, but Weaver Music sponsored us and gave us all-new Fender gear for the show,” says John Neff. “Another of our memorable gigs was this summer when we played the Walkins Lake Parade — on a pontoon boat!”
While the Ascots’ single didn’t reach the top of the national radio charts, years later, Dale Kath explains their single became a coveted garage-rock rarity that collectors are willing to pay several hundred dollars to acquire.
“Today, you can easily find our two songs on You Tube, but prior to that, they appeared on a few garage rock compilations. I do, however, want to point out there was another ‘Ascots’ from the northeastern U.S. that had a few records that’s confused with us — the ones from Pontiac, Michigan [there were, in fact, 29 other “Ascots” across the U.S. during the mid-to-late ’60s]. So, in speaking with John Neff, as we kept in touch over the years, he points out that we, the Ascots, are on these retro-garage compilation albums issued in Australia and other overseas countries — they even put our picture on the cover. It turns out there are fans who concentrate on garage bands and they have this whole online community and a ‘ratings system,’ with the Ascots, I am proud to say, part of that ‘network,’ as it were.
“So John contacted the labels that reissued our single and he sent me some royalties from it. Again, these labels are overseas and I don’t know how John did it, but he tracked them down and was able to get royalties for his writing credit. All I did was play rhythm guitar, as well as sing some, admittedly, off-key vocals on the other side, ‘Who Will It Be,’ which Bob Pelmear wrote. But it was really nice of John to send me a check for $50 bucks. It’s really cool that we’re included in this classic garage band scene of the ’60s and remembered so affectionately.”
Though diligence, John Neff discovered the bootleg market distributed the Ascots music since 1985.
“Crypt Records was the biggest of those labels and I actually signed a contract with them in 2004 and they paid royalties-to-date, which I then distributed to the band. Bob Pelmear, our bassist on the recording, was still alive at the time, but after a bad relationship breakup in Florida, he moved to a remote town in the California Sierra foothills and was very hard to reach. As far as I know, he died there. I never heard of what causes.”
“We all got together one more time — me and John, along with Jim Steil, our bassist who replaced Bob towards the end of the band, as well as Frank Giglio and Chris Chappell — in the basement of St. Benedict’s for our high school union, where it all began 59 years ago, in 1963,” beams Kath.
Meanwhile, back in Detroit in the late 1960s . . . Led Zeppelin arrived. And the rock got harder. So did Dale Kath who, along with Bobby Einheiser, formed the Electric Blues Band. Hanging around the MC5’s Hill Street band house consolidated their popularity into an appearance at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. Then they recorded an album for Elektra Records. Well, sort of.
“After the Tribe and Pavement, I co-opted the name after Dale and Bobby’s band broke up,” as John Neff clarifies the band’s infamy, fifty-plus years later, “but it became confusing right away, so we shorted the name to EBB, then Ebb Black. We did some recording but never released anything.
“Elektra became involved with my next band, the Toad and the Mushroom. We were pure psychedelia with a stage show and costumes. The label gave us some development money and we recorded an album, Obscenity in the Purest Form, at Frank Merwin’s studio, Pontiac Music & Sound. I did a lot of business with Frank, back when it was known as Pontiac Percussion Center. We mixed the album at United Sound in Detroit. When Elektra folded into Warner Bros. a lot of acts were dropped — and the Toad and the Mushroom’s album was never released, but WABX played two songs from the acetate. We played at Punch Andrews’s The Silverbell Hideout and we opened shows for Fleetwood Mac and the Spencer Davis Group.”
April 1973: Grand Opening of Pontiac Music and Sound.
In the ensuring years, John Neff’s varied career led to employment with producer Don Davis at United Sound Studios as a session guitarist on over 200 songs: everyone from Isaac Hayes to Curtis Mayfield to the Spinners.
“A little on Don: He was with Motown from 1959 to 1965. Prior to that, he produced ‘Soul Man’ and other hits for Sam and Dave. He oversaw both house bands at Motown and Stax — the Funk Brothers, of course — and he did the same set up at United, a band that I joined in 1971.”
By the mid-’70s, John Neff worked as a touring bassist for Steppenwolf, Hoyt Axton, and country-rock one-hit wonders, Redeye. By the turn of the decade, he settled into award-nominated and winning partnerships in Maui with Walter Becker of Steely Dan, filmmaker David Lynch in Los Angeles, as well as producing the platinum Arnel Pineda-era catalog of Journey.
During his retirement move to Maui inspired by his marriage, Neff forged a broadcasting career as a popular and long-running morning show deejay — with some studio production side hustles. During his post-divorce years in Phoenix, Arizona, when he built and operated another studio, Neff found a new career in turnkey-constructing recording studios. One of his clients was David Lynch. The duo clicked: they began developing film soundtracks starting in 1995, as well as forming their own band, BlueBOB.
White Heat 1972: left to right, back row: Ron Course, Charlie Verno, Dave Anderson. Front row: Johnny Heaton, Mike Sneed, and ex-Ascot, Dale Kath.
As for the Dale Kath-version of the “first” Electric Blues Band: it provided Kath with a fond Bob Seger connection.
“The Electric Blues Band opened for Bob at The Silverbell Hideout, which Russ Gibb, a popular DJ at WNKR, then owned [and Wilson Mower Pursuit, copying a move by the MC5 recording their debut Kick Out the Jams at The Grande Ballroom, recorded their debut album at The Silverbell]. That was a coveted gig by us locals. At that little joint we’d see Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, the Stooges, the MC5, the Up, all of these [then] local bands. There’d be, like, 120 of us in that basement room, standing ten feet from Bob Seger.
“So, on the night of our gig: my amp wouldn’t work! And Bob allowed me to use his amplifier; it was one of those Magnatone amplifiers, which sounded fantastic and are a collector’s item now. At the time, it was ‘Wow, I am plugging into Bob Seger’s amplifier!’ Bob is rock royalty in Detroit. He was always respected and always quick to help other musicians. The same goes with Punch Andrews. Both are cool guys in my book.”
Dale Kath also has pleasant memories knowing Alice Cooper.
“Alice lived about a mile from my place. He heard that me and my friend, Pete, had one of those Sony sound-on-sound four-tracks. Alice got word to us that he wanted to borrow it. So we took it down to their barn and they had it for a couple of weeks. Then they called us and said we could come pick it up. We hung out and they played ‘I’m Eighteen,’ the song they were practicing for their upcoming album [first released as a single in November 1970].
“I eventually reconnected with [Cooper guitarist] Michael Bruce, years later, on email. I repeated this story I’m telling you and he wanted to know if I still had the tape. But Alice was smart: he gave us back the recorder and kept the tape. Alice, unlike the Ascots or the Electric Blues Band, made it to the big time. But there are a lot of great musicians from those days. I always felt the Stockwell brothers, Rick and Joe [from the aforementioned Stonefront; each got their respective starts in the teen-garage rock bands the Coronados and the Nomads], along with Mike Marsac [from Coloradus with the Stockwell brothers that recorded for Chess Records], from my next band, White Heat, should have also made it out of Detroit to bigger and better things.”
Yes, White Heat is another Detroit legend languishing on the dusty vinyl shelves alongside the Electric Blues Band, White Bucks (a Seger and Mitch Ryder prog-rock sidebar), and Wilson Mower Pursuit.
“My time with White Heat goes back to 1971 to 1972,” one-time Ascot Dale Kath recalls. “The band’s rotating roster featured Ron Course [Detroit teen-band the Excels, as well as Coloradus], along with Johnny Heaton [later of Tantrum, which opened Bob Seger’s 1974 U.S. tour], Mike Sneed, and Rick Stockwell. We served as the house band at the Firebird Lounge, six nights a week playing five, forty-five minute sets. And it was ‘work,’ let me tell you. You’d work six nights a week and Monday would be the night off. You just don’t see that anymore on any club scene. Today, a band will play a Friday and Saturday night, and that’s it.”
“White Heat was a great, great band,” adds drummer Ron Course. “Dale and I, during our time with the Zeltones, played the Firebird Lounge — the same place where White Heat cut our version of the Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ back in 1972. I am really proud of our version, still. I look to what I put into that band — all of my bands — and got out of it with satisfaction, every night.”
The Ascots’ St. Benedict’s Reunion, 2015: Left to Right: Dale Kath, John Neff, Jim Steil, Chris Chappell, and Frank Giglio.
As is the case with most, if not all, of the garage-inflected, psychedelic sounds of the 1960s, the music lives on a digital world.
“I believe Johnny and Ron have You Tube pages, maybe Soundcloud pages, where they uploaded some of White Heat’s catalogue,” says Dale Kath. “Back then, it was all covers because that’s what you were contracted to play back in those days: the ‘hits’ by the popular acts. But we put our unique spin on them. Ron Course and I were also in the Zeltones, led by Danny Zella. A lot of Detroit musicians started their careers with Danny. That band eventually featured White Heat members — and that’s how White Heat came to be, from the Zeltones. Again, those gigs were very hard work, but Detroit back then, to play music on the scene, it was so much fun and those were the best days.”
“Detroit was an amazing town for music,” agrees John Neff. “A great town with great times.”
John Neff passed away in late December 2022.
All photos and image scans courtesy of John Neff from his personal archives.
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