SEE YOU IN SEPTEMBERThe Happenings

"See You in September" was written by Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards in 1959, which was a Top 30 hit that summer as recorded by The Tempos; when remade by The Happenings in 1966 the song reached #3. Sid Wayne would recall the song's inception: "I was in the habit of going from my home on Long Island every day to the Brill Building on Tin Pan Alley to meet with different songwriters there. We'd eat at Jack Dempsey's or The Turf Restaurant and then we'd go up to one of the publishers' offices and work in the piano room. We'd sit around saying to each other, 'What do you want to write today? A hit or a standard?'" At 11 a.m. on a Friday in June 1959 Wayne met up with Sherman Edwards: "He said, 'What do you want to write?' 'I'd like to write a song called See You in September,"' I said. We talked it back and forth and I think I may have contributed part of the opening music, but with Sherman it didn't matter because he could throw me back half the lyric - that's how he worked. I think probably by two in the afternoon we got the song finished. It needed to be written; it was like boiling inside of us."

By 4:30 p.m. that day Wayne and Edwards had reworked their composition, simplifying it so as to appeal to the teen demographic, and proceeded to make the rounds of publishers to pitch the song which, after one rejection, met with an enthusiastic reception from Jack Gold, owner of the local Paris label, who by 8 p.m. had telephoned The Tempos in their hometown of Pittsburgh. The group flew in to New York City the next day: Saturday. Sid Wayne - "By Monday the record was cut , test pressings were Thursday, and by Friday the song was played on WNEW in New York. The thing took off like wildfire....Five hundred dollars to split between the two of us ...was a damn good week's pay in 1961."

Bob Miranda of The Happenings recalls that he and the other members of the group considered the original version of "See You in September" a great song but not a great record. "We always looked for that. If you want to revise something and put your own sound to it, I think you should look for a great song that was not a great record." Recorded in the spring of 1966, The Happenings version of "See You in September" was produced by Bob Crewe for the B.T. Puppy label. The song's arrangement - by Herb Bernstein - recalled both the recordings of The Tokens - who owned B. T. Puppy - and The Four Seasons. Breaking out in Boston, where the track reached the Top Ten that June, "See You in September" entered the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1966 to reach the Top Ten the second week of August 1966. Despite peaking at #3 the first week of September 1966, the single had enough staying power to remain in the Top Ten throughout the rest of the month.