During its first year of existence the group mostly played dances and parties in Marin County and its repertoire was largely a mix of compositions by both Champlin and Cain--the latter’s tending towards pop music while the former’s taking a decidedly more R&B-approach--and covers of songs by artists like James Brown, Lou Rawls, and The Beatles.
A single would be taken from these sessions (“Sing Me A Rainbow”/“Fat City”) and released in March 1967, receiving airplay in the Bay Area but not cracking the national charts.
[8] As the psychedelic music scene flourished south in San Francisco, the Sons began regularly playing Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium and Chet Helms’ Avalon Ballroom in the city.
These would become powerful and lasting influences on the band, soon leading them to largely abandon the mainstream pop style they had adopted for Trident and turn towards more lyrically and musically complex psychedelic rock and jazz.
Palmer and Haggerty’s jazz abilities, Cain’s creative horn arrangements, and Champlin’s increasingly inventive compositions came together to forge a sound that was distinctive from the rest of the Bay Area rock bands.
During the late 1960s, The Sons of Champlin performed regularly at the San Francisco venues, the Avalon Ballroom, Winterland, the Fillmore West, The Matrix, Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park and the Chateau Liberté,[9][10][11][12][13] in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
[14] In 1968, the Sons of Champlin signed with Capitol Records, releasing first in December a single, “Jesus Is Coming”, which was given away for free to anyone who wrote the band, and then their double-album debut Loosen Up Naturally in April 1969.
Their double album soon became an underground hit on FM stations on the West Coast, and cuts like “Get High” and the 15 minute-long “Freedom” would become the group’s signature songs and staples on their setlist.
In February 1970, The Sons broke up and Bill Champlin moved to Santa Cruz, where he joined Moby Grape guitarist Jerry Miller in a short-lived project called The Rhythm Dukes.
[15] Haggerty and Palmer briefly played together in a loose configuration known as the Nu Boogaloo Express, which featured Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Dave Getz on drums and Mike Finnigan on organ.
When the group reformed again in the summer it featured a new rhythm section, with drummer Bill Vitt and bassist David Schallock (from Big Brother and the Holding Company) replacing Bowen and Strong, respectively.
The day after signing the contract, the band, on tour with the Grateful Dead in New York, got word that bassist David Schallock’s mother, father, and younger brother were murdered in their Mill Valley home by a man with schizophrenia.
Replacing their horn section in November 1975, the Sons attempted to reinvent their image again, this time dropping from their setlist the old songs and long jams of the psychedelic heydays and focusing on honing a more polished pop and disco sound.
On August 6, 1977, the Sons of Champlin played what was billed as their last gig at the Kirkwood Meadows ski resort opening for Elvin Bishop and Dave Mason.
The reunion comprised Champlin, Terry Haggerty, Geoffrey Palmer, Tim Cain, David Schallock and James Preston with Huey Lewis and the News drummer Bill Gibson sitting in as well as the Freaky Executives Horn Section, who provided the brass.
Beginning in 2002, The Sons put out several CDs, Hip L'il Dreams and Secret (both produced by Gary Platt,[18] Bill Champlin [19] & Tom Saviano [20]), among them, and have also remastered much of their back catalog.