The Sherwoods

The Sherwoods were a rock ‘n’ coll combo who operated around New York City’s pop music scene in the late ‘50s and early-to-mid-‘60s. Biographical details of the group are meager, but its core songwriters seem to have been Joe Renda, Frank DiGiacomo, and Zacharie Clements – all classmates from White Plains, NY. New York City’s record industry, though irrevocably losing ground to Los Angeles as the center of pop music commerce, was still a powerhouse in the early ‘60s. With some talent and ambition, one could manage steady work, as the Sherwoods did, backing local singers (Tony Reno (2) and Johnny Schilling), nailing down some songwriting credits (for black vocal group the Shells and, strangely, for French entertainer Henri Gabriel Salvador), and turning out a handful of somewhat dated, if fun, instrumentals, vocals, and R&B/twist-style 45s along the way. Highlights of the Sherwoods’s discography include 1963′s rockin’ “Monkey See, Monkey Do” and their last 45 record as a group, 1965’s “Shotgun”-derivative “Ice Cream.” But it’s the terrific “El Scorpion,” released on the tiny Maggie label in 1961, that stands out. Of the three songwriters, it was Renda who remained most active in the music industry, founding the Ren-Vell studios in White Plains in the mid-‘60s and thereafter – a bizarre 1981 album of disco-novelty-rock (featuring members of Kiss) as Crazy Joe and the Variable Speed Band notwithstanding – working behind-the-scenes as an area producer and studio operator. DiGiacomo seems to have disappeared from the pages of music history, and Clements later became a teacher and motivational speaker.