Exploring Tampa Bay’s impact on Florida music history

Phil Gernhard was one of the most important people in Florida popular music. Most people don’t know his name, because he was a behind-the-scenes guy – a record producer – but in the 1960s and ‘70s, he logged more national Top Ten songs that anyone else from the Sunshine State.

And he did most of it from right here in Tampa Bay.

Before Lynyrd Skynyrd or .38 Special, Tom Petty or Gloria Estefan came the Royal Guardsmen, a band of teenagers from Ocala. In 1966, their “Snoopy vs. the Red-Baron” (produced and co-written by Gernhard) went to No. 1 in many countries around the world.

Here in the United States, it was the year’s fastest-selling single (ahead of the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Supremes) but only made it to No. 2 on the Billboard chart (stuck behind the Monkees, riding their first big wave of success). Nevertheless, it was Florida’s first real hit record.

Gernhard composed his half of “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” (the Snoopy verses) in class at Stetson College of Law in Gulfport, and recorded the group at a four-track studio on MacDill Avenue in Tampa. He ran his “empire” from a nondescript bungalow on 1st Avenue South in St. Petersburg.

Published this week by St. Petersburg Press, Record Man: The Story of Phil Gernhard, Florida’s No. 1 Hit Producer is a revised and expanded edition of a book this reporter wrote several years ago, for another publisher.

We think it’s an important story that went more or less unnoticed the first time around.

Most of the changes are subtle, reflecting new information received, newly-discovered photographs, or new interviews conducted by those who knew or worked with Gernhard.

Significantly, the title and the cover are new, to put more direct focus on this remarkably talented man and what he accomplished – for Tampa Bay, for Florida and for the world of American music.

At the same time he was turning the Royal Guardsmen into novelty-record stars (their “Snoopy’s Christmas” was another worldwide chart-topper), he was producing the earliest singles by Tampa Bay garage bands including the Tropics, the Outsiders, the Sugar Beats, the Beau Heems and the Raven.

Many of these are considered classics today.

“Abraham, Martin and John” – one of the most-recorded songs in modern history – was written inside this bungalow on 1st Ave. South in St. Petersburg, in 1968. Photo by Bill DeYoung.

In 1968, his “Snoopy” co-writer Dick Holler composed “Abraham, Martin and John” – one of the most-recorded songs in history – in the back room of Gernhard’s St. Petersburg office. Dion’s original recording of the song, produced in New York by Gernhard, was an international smash.

He gave the Sugar Beats’ singer and songwriter, St. Pete resident Kent LaVoie, a new name: Lobo. Together they gave the world “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” (No. 5), “I’d Love You to Want Me” (No. 2) and several others.

Jim Stafford, a guitar-playing comedian from Winter Haven, was propelled to stardom through Gernhard’s productions of his songs “Spiders and Snakes” (No. 3), “My Girl Bill” (No. 12) and “Wildwood Weed” (No. 7).

Stafford’s tour manager and co-writer was the Tampa comedian known as Gallagher.

In his role as Stafford’s mentor and manager, Gernhard shifted his business to Los Angeles in 1974. He brought Gallagher, along with Pasco County’s singing/songwriting David Bellamy (who’d written the original “Spiders and Snakes”).

In 1976, Gernhard produced “Let Your Love Flow,” the first single by Bellamy and his brother Howard. The Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow” was another global No. 1 smash.

Raised and schooled in Sarasota, the producer had cut his first No. 1 in 1960, as a college student in Columbia, S.C. “Stay” by local doo-wop act Maurice Williams & Zodiacs had taken the country by storm, and Gernhard, along with his co-producer Johnny McCullough, spent the next three years trying to repeat that great success.

They never did, although they (unknowingly) crafted the very first recordings by future Funk Brothers guitarist Dennis Coffey, and singer Linda Martell, who would go on to be country music’s first Black female star (Martell is name-checked on Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter album).

Gernhard eventually made his way back to the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. He hated law school, but he loved discovering new songs and fresh talent. As a concert promoter, he brought Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton and Elton John to the bay area for the first time. He got involved in civic matters, too, planning and building the Pass-a-Grille snack bar (still there today) in 1969.

As head of Artists & Repertoire for Nashville’s Curb Records in the 1990s and beyond, he was an integral part of the team that made superstars out of Tim McGraw and Rodney Atkins.

None of that, it turned out, was enough, and Gernhard committed suicide in 2008.

Record Man is the story of a complex man and an extraordinary life. Gernhard was married four times, had a love/hate (mostly the latter) relationship with his abusive father, former Sarasota County Commissioner Boyd Gernhard, and struggled for decades with alcoholism and drug addiction.

He was a shrewd (some would use the word “crooked”) businessman who made sure he owned the all-important publishing rights to his artists’ songs.

In Record Man Lobo, Stafford, Holler, McCullough, the Royal Guardsmen, label boss Mike Curb, Gernhard’s sister and his ex-wives, along with other artists, friends and associates, share their memories and their insights into what made this creative but ultimately self-destructive Floridian tick.

Record Man: The Story of Phil Gernhard, Florida’s No. 1 Hit Producer is available from Amazon, St. Petersburg Press and wherever quality history books are sold.