Woodstock's best unrecorded band finally went into the studio

Rolling Stone once called Orleans the best unrecorded band in America. By then the group had been playing the clubs and college circuit of the Northeastern United States for months, crossing paths with future names such as Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits and Hall & Oates. It had taken a few years of friendship to get there.

The roots lay in the late 1960s, when drummer Wells Kelly met John Hall, an in-demand session player. Hall and his wife Johanna had a song, "Half Moon", that appeared on Janis Joplin's Pearl. Larry Hoppen, from Bay Shore on Long Island, had been a founding member of Boffalongo, the Ithaca group that had Kelly and his brother Sherman, who wrote "Dancin' in the Moonlight". In December 1971 Hall asked Kelly to join a new group in Woodstock. Kelly agreed, on condition he play piano.

Hoppen came aboard, and the band was christened Orleans by Kelly in late January 1972. The name reflected the music they were playing, inspired in part by Louisiana artists such as Allen Toussaint and the Neville Brothers. For months they played as a trio, often swapping instruments during the show. Around Halloween of 1972, Larry's 18-year-old brother Lance joined on bass.

The debut album appeared in the fall of 1973 on ABC Dunhill Records, recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with producers Roger Hawkins and Barry Beckett. Jerry Marotta would join as drummer in 1976. Success came in the middle of the decade: "Dance with Me" reached number six in 1975, and "Still the One", from the album Waking and Dreaming, number five in 1976.

A third hit, "Love Takes Time", followed at number 11 in 1979. The band's story is one of small rooms and shared instruments, where friendships built the lineup before the charts ever did. Those two top-ten songs remain the clearest proof that the long apprenticeship paid off.