Notes

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Leslie West - guitar
Larry West - bass
Peter Sabatino - vocals
Roger Mansour - drums
Jerry Storch - organ

Most famous for featuring Leslie West on guitar in his pre-Mountain days,
the Vagrants were extremely popular in their home base of Long Island, NY in the mid-'60s,
and recorded some decent singles without approaching a national breakout. Like fellow
New Yorkers the Rascals, the Vagrants prominently featured a Hammond organ, and often
played soul-influenced rock. The Vagrants were far more guitar-based than the Rascals,
however, as well as projecting a more garagey, less mature outlook; their later material
lands somewhere between the Rascals and Vanilla Fudge.

One of the few rock bands signed to the folkie Vanguard label, the Vagrants cut some fair
singles between 1965 and 1968 that suffered from a lack of identity: a Zombie-ish number
here, a punk stomper there, a soul-rock thing here. "I Can't Make a Friend," which shows
up on some garage compilations, is the most well-known of their initial efforts, but the
group took their closest swipe at stardom after Felix Pappalardi helped them sign to Atco.

A rock version of Otis Redding's "Respect" (which surfaced on the Nuggets compilation) was a
hit in some Eastern regions, but couldn't compete with Aretha Franklin's rendition, also
released in 1967. After a couple of other singles on Atco, the group broke up in late 1968,
when West formed Mountain (which also included Pappalardi). Much of the Vagrants' material
was reissued in the mid-'90s.