#TwoForTuesday: Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart are mostly associated with The Monkees, for whom they wrote many of their hits (“Last Train To Clarksville,” “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone,” and others). They also wrote songs for Paul Revere and the Raiders, Fats Domino, and Jay and the Americans, and were themselves a recording act. In the mid-1970’s they joined Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones and performed as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. In all, they wrote over 300 songs and sold 42 million records as a partnership, according to The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll.

Today’s first song is “Come a Little Bit Closer,” which was a hit for Jay and the Americans in 1964. It reached #3 on the Hot 100 and #4 on the Cash Box survey that year. This is a “live” performance on what I believe is Where The Action Is!

The second is their hit from 1968, “I wonder What She’s Doing Tonight.” It reached #7 on the Hot 100 that year.

Tommy Boyce lived in the UK for a while, then moved to Nashville, where he battled depression and suffered a brain aneurysm, from which he never fully recovered. He committed suicide in 1994. Bobby Hart is still around; the website for his autobiography, Psychedelic Bubble Gum: Boyce &U Hart, The Monkees, and Turning Mayhem Into Miracles, is here. You might also enoy this article on the Forgotten Hits website, “The Music of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.” I have not been successful in locating a page that lists all of the songs they wrote and for whom, but I’m still looking.

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, your Two for Tuesday, August 25, 2015.