The original quintet line-up, which grew out of a band called the Ridgerunners, included: Record label A&M Records, owned by Herb Alpert, responded to the new popularity of folk and rock music by adding new artists starting in 1965 to its existing line-up of middle-of-the road material turned out by Alpert's Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba Band, and Brasil '66.

In addition to We Five, Alpert's label released albums by Boyce and Hart, the Garden Club, Chris Montez, and The Merry-Go-Round.

[4] We Five's first album produced a major hit with the title tune, Stewart's re-arrangement of the Ian & Sylvia song "You Were on My Mind".

[6] The group's second single was an arrangement of the popular song "Let's Get Together," written by Chester Powers, who performed under the name Dino Valenti.

In February 1966, We Five was nominated for a Grammy for Best Performance By A Vocal Group (for "You Were on My Mind"), against the Beatles among others, but they lost the award to the Anita Kerr Quartet.

[8] After completing their second album, Make Someone Happy, later in 1966, lead singer Beverly Bivens decided to leave the group.

That same year, the band turned down an opportunity to record John Stewart's song "Daydream Believer", which went on to be an international hit for The Monkees.

[9] The group would record two albums with Debbie Burgan singing lead, Return of the We Five (1969) for A&M and Catch the Wind (1970) for Vault.

[11] Pete Fullerton left the music business in 1970 to minister to the homeless and needy: he is the founder of the California-based organization "Truck of Love".

[14] In 2009, after many years of seclusion, Beverly Bivens sang at the opening of an exhibition, mounted by the Performing Arts Library & Museum in San Francisco, of the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid-sixties to early seventies.

[15] Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution, a reminiscence by Jerry Burgan incorporating the birth of folk rock and the original band's subsequent collapse, with co-author Alan Rifkin and a foreword by Sylvia Tyson, was published in April 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield.