Carousel II, Glad To Be Alive
The story of the long-forgotten premier Detroit wedding band, Carousel II.
A yearningly romantic suite of lushly arranged lounge music, Glad To Be Alive is the first and only album from the long-forgotten premier Detroit wedding band, Carousel II. Originally self-released in 1978, the album arrived on the back of twelve years of hard work and hustle. Underappreciated at the time, in the forty-three years since it was first released, Glad To Be Alive has aged like a fine wine, revealing a startling emotional depth and resonance within the band's rose-tinted reflections on love.
The Carousel II story begins in the Detroit metropolitan area’s largest suburb, Warren, Michigan, with two Polish brothers, Chet and Ron Penkala. Raised in a musical family, Chet and Ron spent their youth attending music classes. Chet, who would become the lead vocalist, keyboardist and primary arranger in Carousel II, began learning trumpet at age eleven, followed by guitar and eventually piano, after joining a University choral group during his college years. Ron, on the other hand, chose saxophone, clarinet, bass and percussion.
By 1966, Chet was playing the trumpet in a five-piece party band, Larry and the Carousels, who renamed themselves The Carousels after cycling through a few membership iterations. They were, first and foremost, a wedding band. As he recalls it, they played their fair share of house parties, New Year's Eve, St. Patrick's Day and Halloween events, and the occasional festival but never crossed over into the Detroit bar circuit. “Musically, we played just about every style, from foxtrots to Latin to rock to polka,” Chet says.
In the early 1970s, The Carousels went through another series of lineup shifts. They eventually settled on Chet on trumpet, guitars, keyboards and lead vocals, Ron on sax, bass, percussion and vocals, and three other members, Mike Brown (drums, percussion, marimbas), Brad McElroy (guitar, lead and background vocals) and Gary Sucaet (cordovox, piano, organ, vocals). “To avoid any confusion with any of the folks they’d previously played with, they became Carousel II. “As a group of five musicians, we got along very well,” Chet remembers. “It was more like a family than a job, and we were all very proud of that.”
Although they primarily worked playing covers from adult contemporary stars such as Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond and Kenny Rogers, Carousel II had songwriting aspirations. Chet, in particular, was in awe of the sense of melody and harmony displayed by pop acts like The Beatles and The Bee Gees. After a time, they began to perform some of their originals, 'Love Affair', 'Wish', and 'Because of You' while playing background music at private functions. These songs laid the foundations for the Glad To Be Alive album. "From every job we did, we took five dollars a man, twenty-five dollars, and put it in a pot to fund the recording," Chet remembers.
Once they had some funds together, Carousel II headed into Lorio Recording Studios in Warren, Michigan, with the engineer Ron Truski and recorded the eleven songs found on Glad To Be Alive. The plan was never to sell themselves as rockstars, but they felt that their tunes, in particular, 'January 8, 1976', ‘Love Affair' and 'Going To Boston' were good enough to be used in television commercials or perhaps a romantic movie.
After the recording was complete, Chet's cousin Ted created the cover art for Glad To Be Alive and helped them put together the collage on the back, before Carousel II pressed up one thousand records. They sent out promotional copies to several record labels and publishing companies, sold what they could in the Detroit metropolitan area, and gave away a number to clients who hired them for events, all to minimal fanfare.
In 1984, Carousel II dissolved due to several personal and family issues. The remaining copies of Glad To Be Alive were mostly lost to the sands of time, and life moved on for the band members. Thirty-six years on, Carousel II’s singular opus has been given a second life, thanks to its first official digital reissue via Frederiksberg Records
“Revisiting Glad To Be Alive is very exciting because it was written and recorded during a special time in our lives,” Chet reflects. “All of our parents were alive and enjoyed our songs and music, and friends and family were all there to support us in our efforts. A lot of those folks, aunts, uncles and special friends are gone now. For all those important people, the album says a lot about playing during a special time in our lives. Just the recognition of our songs makes it all worthwhile.”
Glad To Be Alive by Carousel II is out now through Frederiksberg Records.