Keyboardist Richard Thompson replaced Giguere in 1970, with whom the band recorded their final two albums Stop Your Motor (1971) and Waterbeds in Trinidad!

The current lineup includes Alexander, Yester and longtime members Jordan Cole, Del Ramos, Bruce Pictor and Paul Holland.

Eventually, at a Monday night hootenanny at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour in 1964, an ad hoc group called the Inner Tubes was formed by Kirkman, Alexander and Doug Dillard, whose rotating membership contained, at one time or another, Cass Elliot, David Crosby and many others who drifted in and out.

The new band spent about five months rehearsing before they began performing around the Los Angeles area, most notably a regular stint at The Ice House in Pasadena (where Giguere had worked as lighting director) and its sister club in Glendale.

[3] Eventually, the small Jubilee label issued a single of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", a song originally recorded by Joan Baez and later popularized by Led Zeppelin, but nothing happened.

The Men were first managed by Doug Weston, owner of the Troubador, before switching to actor Dean Fredericks, who remained on board when the Association was formed and helped get them the Valiant deal.

[3] Alexander first heard the song when he was hired to play on a demo version and persuaded Almer to give the Association first dibs on it, with Jim Yester on lead vocals.

The band changed producers, dropping Boettcher in favor of Jerry Yester (brother of Jim and formerly of the Modern Folk Quartet and later, a member of the Lovin' Spoonful).

The first fruits of this pairing were the single "Windy", written by Ruthann Friedman, topping the Billboard Hot 100 on July 1, 1967, and staying there for four consecutive weeks, preceded by the album Insight Out, which reached No.

[6] In 1968, after turning down a cantata composed by Jimmy Webb that included the now-classic "MacArthur Park", the group produced its fourth album, Birthday (March 1968), with Bones Howe again at the controls.

Despite all this, the band remained a popular concert draw, and on April 3, 1970, a Salt Lake City performance was recorded for The Association Live.

The Association replaced him with keyboardist Richard Thompson (not to be confused with the English singer-songwriter/guitarist), who had contributed to previous albums and began playing live with the group for some July 4 & 5 appearances in Atlantic City.

For their 1972 tour, the group expanded, bringing in first session bass player Wolfgang Melz, and then Mike Berkowitz on drums, to add more musical versatility on stage and free up Brian Cole and Ted Bluechel to concentrate on singing.

In late 1972, the remaining quintet of Alexander, Bluechel, Yester, Ramos and Thompson brought in new members Maurice Miller (vocals, drums, percussion, formerly of Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band) and David Vaught (vocals, bass, fresh from a stint in the band Rosebud and later a member of the Lopez Beatles, who later played in the first lineup of Roger McGuinn's Thunderbyrd in 1976 and who died on March 20, 2013, from pancreatic cancer) and continued touring.

In 1975 the band signed with RCA Records where they released two singles, "One Sunday Morning" (produced in Canada by Jack Richardson) and "Sleepy Eyes".

During the spring of 1977, Brown left to concentrate on session work and keyboardist Ric Ulsky joined, leaving Jim Yester as sole guitarist in the lineup.

Yester was replaced by lead guitarist Cliff Woolley and the group had two keyboardists for a short time in 1977–78, Ulsky and David Morgan, before Morgan was succeeded by guitarist/singer John William Tuttle (son of makeup artist William Tuttle; John died on August 17, 1991, at age 41 of a perforated ulcer in Van Nuys, California).

In September 1979 the surviving key members Kirkman, Alexander, Giguere, Bluechel, Yester and Ramos combined with Richard Thompson and seasoned studio bassist and arranger Ray Pohlman to reunite the Association at the Ambassador Hotel's Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles for an HBO special called Then and Now (Kirkman was working for HBO at the time).

During the latter part of the tour, Mike Peed joined on keyboards in place of Ulsky but left himself in November 1984, turning it over to Donni Gougeon (from Joshua Perahia's band ).

But by the end of the year, there was a mass exodus as Kirkman (who had already turned in his notice in September), Bluechel, LaManno and Brian Puckett all departed.

They recorded a few new tracks and some covers of popular 1960s songs for a few compilation albums on the Hitbound label made through RadioShack's Tandy Corporation in the mid-1980s, including their first cover of "Walk Away Renée" that was recorded in collaboration with their original producer, Curt Boettcher, for the Mike Love and Dean Torrence 1983 cassette tape Rock 'n' Roll City, two Christmas covers contributed to another Radio Shack album, Scrooge's Rock 'n' Roll Christmas (that was also a 1984 TV special), and an album of 1960s tunes called New Memories (1983).

Over the years the group were sometimes visited by former members: Bluechel and Alexander sat in on a few of their 2001 shows, while Paul Holland guested on their DVD, Pop Legends Live!, which came out in 2005.

In 2007 David Jackson (bass, guitar, formerly of Hearts & Flowers and Dillard & Clark) came into the group for a brief stint when Del Ramos was ill, then Jim Yester returned to sub for Werner.

[7] The Association continued to tour, mostly on bills with similar styled acts of the late 1960s, like the Grass Roots, the Buckinghams, Tommy James and Gary Puckett.

In late 2011, Ramos was sidelined due to illness, so guitarist Godfrey Townsend (from the Happy Together and Hippiefest back-up bands) subbed for him.

[citation needed] In 2013 Alexander, Giguere, Ramos and Yester became part of the Where the Action Is[9] tour that included Mary Wilson of the Supremes, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Mitch Ryder.

Since 2014, founding members Jim Yester and Jules Alexander have been leading the current line-up of the Association, which includes Bruce Pictor, Paul Holland, Del Ramos, and Jordan Cole.

For the appearances in Red Rock, Oklahoma, and Bangor, Maine, the lineup consisted of Alexander, Del Ramos, Cole, Pictor, Holland and Wilson.

In 2018 the first (unofficial) biography of the band – The Association Cherish – written by British author Malcolm C. Searles, was published via Dojotone Publications in the UK detailing the group's 50-year career.

[15] In March 2020 Russ Giguere's autobiography (co-written with Ashley Wren Collins), Along Comes The Association: Beyond Folk Rock and Three-Piece Suits, was released.