Song of the Day 8/20: The Youngbloods, “Get Together”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Those images of peace and love from Woodstock are engraved in our memory. Particularly vivid is the one where the Youngbloods sang their new good-vibes anthem “Get Together” – “Come on people/Smile on your brother” — as thousands of wet hippies hugged each other and sang along.

Except it never happened. The Youngbloods didn’t sing their new hippie anthem at Woodstock. They weren’t even close to the place.

The song wasn’t new, either. It was written in 1963 by Dino Valenti, who was soon to be jailed for drug offenses and later joined the Quicksilver Messenger Service. It later found some mild favor with San Francisco bands. The early Jefferson Airplane made it part of their act. A very young David Crosby recorded it as a demo. The We Five, who nobody ever confused with hippies, were the first to release it as a single, in 1965, but it didn’t turn many heads.

Then Greenwich Village folkie Jesse Colin Young heard “Get Together” in a New York club and the Youngbloods started playing it there, and then in California as part of a wave of East Coast folk singers who discovered rock and moved out west. The Lovin’ Spoonful also made that trip and were sometimes confused with the Youngbloods.

The Youngbloods released a recording of ”Get Together” in 1967, but it stalled low on the charts, and that finally seemed to be it for the song.

Then a few months before Woodstock, that noted promoter of rock music – the, uh, National Conference of Christians and Jews – used the Youngbloods’ version in a promotion. The ad got a lot of airplay. People started calling disc jockeys asking to hear it. “Get Together” was re-released in 1969, the same year as Woodstock, and this time it reached No. 5.

Woodstock had not booked the relatively obscure Youngbloods, though the slightly less obscure Richie Havens was alert enough to slip it into his set. We’ve been hearing it ever since.

Here are the Youngbloods. Looks like John Sebastian on harmonica, but you can’t hear him because the recorded version has been dubbed in.

Here’s an early version by the Jefferson Airplane.

Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore have performed the song since they began touring together, and included it on their 2018 LP, “Downey to Lubbock.” There’s a YouTube clip of them singing it at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, where they’re returning for a show next week.