Smokey and his Sister

You get intrigued when a sixties duo is said to be "twee pop decades before the term existed," and also; Smokey's sweet hairdo helps keep the interest up. Smokey and his Sister was Connecticut siblings Viki and Larry "Smokey" Mims, and they recorded a few songs after moving to New York in the late sixties. Their music can be said to be an orchestrated form of Sunshine Pop mixed with a bit of folk music.

Columbia put out a couple of singles with them in 1967, but wouldn't release an album as they didn't have a hit. The two singles along with nine unreleased tracks from the same period did get a release when Sundazed Records put it out forty years later, in 2007. Smokey and his Sister did however get an album out in 1968 on Warner Brothers, confusingly enough both the Warner and Sundazed albums are self-titled. Hopefully someone will re-release the Warner album too as the vinyl record is difficult to get a hold of.

Success eluded them though, and little has been heard from them since the late sixties. Viki died from cancer in 2006, and Smokey is believed to live somewhere in the south. The first song he wrote told about a young man who left his home for half a century so maybe he'll return in a few years.