PsychepediA

From: Delevan, NY, USA

Official Website

The Free Design is considered by many to have been one of the more underrated pop-psych acts that should have made it to the big time, but for whatever reason never did. Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, the talented group issued a collection of slick, well-crafted LPs and singles that can be compared to the likes and production level of the Association, Mamas & The Papas and Cowsills. All core group members were siblings with the sir name Dedrick, consisting of Chris (vocals, guitar, trumpet, recorder), Bruce (vocals, guitar, trombone), Sandy (vocals, keyboards) and Ellen (vocals, percussion). It should also be noted that Robert Papaleoni (drums) also played regularly with the Dedrick's, but was never really considered an official member.

The Dedrick clan was born into a musical family (their father Art was a trombonist and arranger for Vaughn Monroe) and raised in the small town of Delevan, NY that is located about 50 miles southeast of Buffalo. The formation of the band can be traced back to Chris' journey to New York City in 1966 to attend the Manhattan School of Music. It didn't take too long before he was able to convince his brother Bruce and sister Sandy to join him and form a folk trio coined the Village Fare, which gained local notoriety by performing in the hip Greenwich Village coffee houses, including the now legendary Bitter End. Chris soon began writing his own material and with the help of his father, the trio cut a pleasant-sounding demo that garnered them an offer from the very well known and mainstream RCA Records; however, they eventually decided to sign with producer Enoch Light's rather obscure, but very high quality Project 3 label as the Free Design.

During the autumn of 1967, the group released their debut single, the light and poppy 'Kites Are Fun', which cracked into the Top 40 Billboard Adult Contemporary chart (hit #33), but only bubbled under to #114 on the Hot 100 chart. This was unfortunately to be their career highest charting record. Their debut LP, also titled Kites Are Fun, was issued in early 1968 and includes the outstanding track 'Make The Madness Stop', which in hindsight should have been promoted as a single. Shortly thereafter, the ensemble was featured under an alias (the Groovies) singing backing vocals on a Project 3, Tony Mottola jazz album, with a few of the tracks being written by Chris Dedrick. Later that year, younger sister Ellen joined the band after graduating high school and made her first appearance on their late '68 LP You Could Be Born Again.

The summer of 1969 saw the release of a third album titled Heaven/Earth, but commercial success continued to elude them despite the continued high quality sound of their songs. Later that year, the outfit provided backing vocals on an Enoch Light & The Light Brigade LP titled Spaced Out, which mainly features unique and airy Beatles and Burt Bacharach covers. By this time, the group was also making frequent national television, adult daytime talk show appearances on the The Mike Douglas Show, The Dick Cavett Show and The Pat Boone Show, but this exposure didn't seem to significantly aid in boosting their popularity. In an effort to sell more records, the band then decided to issue a children's LP (Sing For Very Important People) in early 1970, but this change in direction didn't help matters and may have made things worse by confusing their already selective audience.

In the spring of '70, the ensemble returned to an adult contemporary focus with the release of the LP Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love that contains the excellent single 'Bubbles'. It wasn’t until 1972 that they issued their next album (One By One), which also didn't sell that well and prompted Project 3 to drop them from their contract. Later that year, they managed to release a final LP on the Ambrotype label titled There Is A Song and continued to play together for another three years before finally disbanding in 1975. The group, minus Ellen, did reunite briefly in 2001 to issue another LP titled Cosmic Peekaboo, but this effort also made little commercial impact.

Artist information sources include: The book, 'Fuzz, Acid and Flowers Revisited' by Vernon Joynson and an article by Jason Ankeny at All Music Guide.