The Rascals Once Upon a Dream

Once Upon a Dream was the Rascals fourth album, and the first to drop the word "Young" from their moniker; but it's more than a name change. Released in February of 1968, the quartet took the easy, textured feel of its previous single, "Groovin," and the deeply felt influence of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, and put their own spin on it by adding their trademark blue-eyed soul and jazz influences to the mix of psychedelia. While the influence of the Beatles cannot be underestimated on the emerging sound of the Rascals, their own maturity as songwriters and recording artists can't either. Self-produced, the Rascals had help from arranger-conductor Arif Mardin and engineer Tom Dowd, as well as Adrian Barber, who engineered the various sound effects in the intros, outros, and inside the tracks themselves. Once Upon a Dream was conceived of and recorded as an album, whereas their previous trio of full-lengths had been collections of singles with other tracks (man