The Story Behind: Jay and the Techniques, “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”

Each month in “The Story Behind,” I’ll look at the history of a well-known Top 40 hit based on interviews I’ve conducted with individuals who performed some of the most familiar pop hits of the 1960s and ’70s. This month, I’ll look at the Jay and the Techniques’ 1966 hit, “Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie.”

Jay Proctor was an Allentown, PA, singer who had cut a few unsuccessful singles in 1960 and ’61, and who, by the mid-’60s, was still trying to find direction with his musical career. Proctor and his friend George “Lucky” Lloyd were “sitting in a bar having a beer when a friend of ours came in and said he was starting a group, and he asked us to audition” he told me.

From that audition emerged a group of seven consisting of Proctor and Lloyd as well as Chuck Crowl, Karl Landis, Ronnie Goosley, Jon Walsh, and Dante Dancho, who decided to call themselves the Techniques. By 1966, the group came to the attention of Philadelphia producer Jerry Ross, who was riding a string of pop-star discoveries like Dee Dee Warwick, Keith, Spanky and Our Gang, and Bobby Hebb.

Ross had offered Hebb a song called “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” as a follow-up to his smash “Sunny,” but Hebb refused it and Ross gave it to his new group instead. “Actually, several people and groups had tried recording the song — I think even Jerry Butler,” Proctor said. “Jerry Ross didn’t like the way any of them did it, and so he gave it to me.

“But I didn’t like ‘Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie,’” Proctor told me. “I’m a very soulful singer, and there wasn’t any soul in that song at all. I didn’t want to sing about no damn fruit!” But rather than fight it, he just did what he was told. “I’m raw off the street, I don’t know anything about music, so I just opened my mouth and whatever came out, came out. Well, whatever came out pleased him, so we got to release it.”

The “we” in this case comes with a qualifier, because Proctor was the only member of the group to actually attend the recording session. “Jerry used session musicians on everything we did. The band was the road group, and they never went in the studio. I asked Jerry to use them, but he just felt they weren’t good enough because they didn’t read music well.”

But to his credit, Ross chose top-notch session musicians and singers, including backup singers who would later go on to have their own hits: Melba Moore and Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson.

In addition to not being allowed in the studio, when the record was released the band was in for another surprise: the record’s label said it was by Jay and the Techniques, though they simply considered themselves the Techniques. “I think Jerry changed it because there was Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Martha and the Vandellas, and he just didn’t like that single-name thing. It wasn’t that I was the leader of the group, just the lead singer on the song. Then it didn’t make sense to change it back after the song was a hit.”

And the song was indeed a hit. It went to #6 on the pop charts, sold a million copies and earned a gold record — a phenomenal debut effort by anyone’s estimation. So despite the fact that the group hadn’t actually played on the song, and their name had been changed without their being asked, and even though Proctor says he “didn’t even like the song,” since it was a hit, the group just shrugged it all off.

“The rest of the group wished they could have played on it, but early on it wasn’t a problem — though I think it became a problem later on when some of them got jealous and things like that.”

They followed the success of “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” with “Keep the Ball Rollin,” a song “written just for us,” Proctor said. “But Jerry Ross picked the song. I didn’t pick anything, and I didn’t do anything but go in and perform what I was told or asked to.

“But I wasn’t crazy about ‘Keep the Ball Rollin’’ either — that wasn’t soulful to me. But of course I did it, and I’m glad I did.” Ross clearly had a better ear for a hit than his lead singer, as “Keep the Ball Rollin’” soared to #14 on the charts, sold a million copies and earned them yet another gold record.

Their next recording, “Strawberry Shortcake,” was by the same writers who had composed “Apples, Peaches” and sounded so much like it that “we never did it live but once because it was too close to ‘Apples, Peaches.’ It was by the same writers, used the same musicians, same singer. It was okay, and it had a nice beat, but those kinds of songs, you hear them once and you don’t want to hear them no more.”

“Strawberry” peaked at #30, and after just one more Top 100 record in 1968, the group’s charting days were over as quickly as they had begun. “The music was all way too bubblegummy — they even called it bubblegum soul. You look back at it, and it was kind of ridiculous,” Proctor said. “It was way far from what I thought my career would be like. I never really had the chance to do anything soulful like I wanted to do.”

Perhaps it was inevitable that with Proctor being the sole focus of the group — and with Proctor himself unhappy about the music they were offered — before long, dissension started to set in and they broke up. Eventually, Proctor re-formed the group with new members, and though they released a few singles in the ’70s, nothing really connected with audiences as well as their biggest hit, the classic “Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie.”

Rick Simmons

Dr. Rick Simmons has published five books, the two most recent being Carolina Beach Music from the '60s to the '80s: The New Wave (2013) and Carolina Beach Music: The Classic Years (2011). Based on his interviews with R&B, “frat rock,” and pop music artists from the '50s, '60s, and '70s, his books examine the decades-old phenomenon known as Carolina beach music and its influence on Southern culture. His next book, The Carolina Beach Music Encyclopedia, 1940-1980, will be published by McFarland in 2018. He currently lives in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.