It’s beach music, it’s blue-eyed soul, and while it only reached No. 39 on the Hot 100, it made a national act out of a band that had been playing the Virginia-Carolina beach music circuit for more than a decade but had never released a record before.
The song was written and originally done by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, performing it here on “The Village Square,” a syndicated TV show out of South Carolina.
Williams also played the beach circuit, and the Rhondels got frequent requests for “May I” from their audiences. One night Deal, who played keyboards, decided to give the tune its polka-style beat instead of doing a straight cover, and the audience went nuts. They recored this version within days. The high vocal is by drummer Ammon Tharp, with Deal handling the baritone parts.
The Rhondels spent about 18 months touring nationally, a period in which they scored two more Top 40 hits, but soon decided they didn’t like the road enough to make it worth it. They returned to the beach circuit and kept on playing, even after Deal’s death in 2003.