The Banana Splits are a fictional musical group of four animal characters; Fleegle, a dog; Bingo, a gorilla; Drooper, a lion; and Snorky, an elephant; played by actors in costume miming to music created for them, who starred in their own successful television series The Banana Splits Adventure Hour.
Jimmy Radcliffe provided his songs ("I'm Gonna Find a Cave", "Soul", "Don't Go Away Go-Go Girl", "Adam Had 'Em" and "The Show Must Go On") but did not contribute vocals to Splits recordings.
One song, "Wait Til Tomorrow", later appeared on a various artists bubblegum hits CD, sourced from the Hollywood Library bootleg.
[1][2][3] The melody comes from the public domain song “Shortnin' Bread.” In 1988, "I'm Gonna Find a Cave" was covered by Girl Trouble for the Sub Pop 200 compilation The Mr. T Experience recorded "Don't Go Away Go-Go Girl" for the 1993 Banana Splits tribute album Banana Pad Riot on the Skull Duggery Label.
Both were issued in art sleeves featuring drawings of the characters; advertisements promoting these discs on the back of contemporary Kellogg's cereal boxes showed slightly different artwork and had a copyright date of 1968, even though those 45rpm Extended Play records were released in 1969.
In the prototype artwork for the second disc used in the cereal box ad, it is more clear that the Banana Buggy is driving atop the surface of a 45 RPM record.
The earliest pressings had a dark green color and had no copyright notice, which on some copies was added on a small yellow sticker.
Later pressings are a lighter shade of green and have a copyright notice printed directly in the lower left corner of the front cover.
Song titles in italics are not by the Banana Splits; they are from Here Come the Beagles, the soundtrack album from the Total TV cartoon series.