Crazy Elephant

It was a good jape: Crazy Elephant, the most underground of groups, made up of Welsh coal miners. In reality, Crazy Elephant was the concept of Cadillacs member Bob Spencer, who shacked up with the Super K production team. Their sole hit, “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’,” was penned by Joey Levine and Richie Cordell; most of the rest of this, their 1969 debut album, was Kasenetz-Katz material, other than Otis Redding’s “Respect,” and Sondheim and Bernstein’s “Somewhere.” It’s a solid, smart bubblegum album with some soul and R&B edges; the production team is getting ambitious with the seven-minute “Respect,” from its goth-y organ drones at the start, to the weird, cut-up rhythm in the verse. But that debut single towers over everything. They’d move to London the following year and hook up with the nascent 10cc writing team for a classic last gasp, “(There Ain’t No) Umbopo.”