Lee Michaels - Career

Career

Michaels began his career with The Sentinals, a San Luis-based surf group that included drummer Johny Barbata, later of The Turtles, Jefferson Airplane, and Jefferson Starship. Michaels joined Barbata in the Strangers, a group led by Joel Scott Hill, before moving to San Francisco. There he joined an early version of The Family Tree, a band led by Bob Segarini. In 1967, he signed a contract with A&M Records, releasing his debut album, Carnival Of Life, later that year. As a session musician, he played with Jimi Hendrix, among others.

Michaels' choice of the Hammond organ as his primary instrument was unusual for the time, as was his bare-bones stage and studio accompaniment: usually just a single drummer, most often a musician known as "Frosty" (Bartholomew Eugene Smith-Frost) a member of Sweathog, or with Joel Larson of The Grass Roots. This unorthodox approach attracted a following in San Francisco, and some critical notice, but Michaels did not achieve real commercial success until the release of his fifth album (Fifth), which produced a surprise US Top 10 hit (#6 in the fall of 1971), "Do You Know What I Mean" and a Top 40 follow-up, a cover version of the Motown standard, "Can I Get A Witness" (#39). Michaels recorded two more albums for A&M before signing a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1973. His Columbia recordings failed to generate much interest, and Michaels went into semi-retirement from the music industry by the end of the decade.