Beverly Bivens - Mid 1960s: We Five

Mid 1960s: We Five

With the encouragement of her mother, Bivens had developed her singing voice as a child. In 1964, at the age of 18, she began performing with Mike Stewart (1945–2002) and Jerry Burgan, who had formed a folk duo at high school and branched out into electronic music with guitarist Bob Jones, whom they met at the University of San Francisco. Bivens was recommended to Stewart by Terry Kirkman, later of The Association, who was then the boyfriend of her sister Barbara. With the addition of Pete Fullerton, this group, initially called the Ridgerunners and, for a while, the Mike Stewart Quintet, became known as We Five. They recorded their first album, the highly eclectic You Were on My Mind, for A&M records in 1965 after Herb Alpert, founder of A&M, heard them at the "hungry i", a folk/night club on Jackson Street in the North Beach area of San Francisco.