With Jay Traynor singing lead, they first hit the Billboard charts in 1962 with the tune "She Cried", which reached #5 (later covered by The Shangri-Las, Aerosmith, and others).

Slacks and a public service announcement for the Ad Council, featuring a backing track by Brian Wilson and Phil Spector.

[citation needed] In 1969, they recorded an album of their favorite oldies called Sands of Time, which included "This Magic Moment", which was originally done by the Drifters.

(Around the same time the band recorded "This Magic Moment", Jay and the Americans member Sandy Yaguda produced a Long Island teen sextet called The Tuneful Trolley.

Their late-1968 Capitol LP, Island In The Sky — a hybrid of Beach Boys and Beatlesque psych-pop—was reissued in 2008 in the UK on Now Sounds.)

From 1970 to 1971 Jay and the Americans' touring band included Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (of later Steely Dan fame) on backup bass guitar and electric organ.

[5] Becker and Fagen also contributed string and horn arrangements to the 1970 Jay and the Americans album Capture the Moment.

With the name purchase, former members Deanne, Howard Kane, and Marty Sanders reunited, and recruited a sound-alike singer from Chicago, coincidentally nicknamed "Jay."

After leaving the group, John Traynor recorded a handful of songs on the Coral label, including "I Rise, I Fall" in 1964.