Background
Almer was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Almer was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Almer attended a music conservatory in Minnesota, and became fascinated with the jazz of John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Ahmad Jamal. He attended Los Angeles City College.
Almer wrote, co-wrote, or produced numerous songs performed by other artists in the 1960s and 1970s, including The Purple Gang, the Garden Club, Dennis Olivieri, and The Beach Boys. At age 17, he quit high school and moved to Chicago to become a jazz pianist. In the early 1960s he relocated to Los Angeles, where his musical interests shifted to popular and rock.
Claudia Ford, wife of Association producer Curt Boettcher, claimed that Almer wrote "Along Comes Mary" as a slow song.
Boettcher helped Almer arrange the tune, sang the vocal on the demo, and accelerated the tempo. That version, as provided to the Association, became the group"s breakthrough single from their debut album, which Boettcher produced.
The two also co-wrote "Message of Our Love," another song on the same album. After the success of "Along Comes Mary", Almer was featured alongside Frank Zappa, Graham Nash, Roger McGuinn, and Brian Wilson on Inside People’s: The Rock Revolution, a 1967 Columbia Broadcasting System television News feature presented by Leonard Bernstein.
Almer"s sole commercial release under his own name was a 45 rpm single, "Degeneration Gap", on Warner Brothers in 1969.
In 1970 he produced the Dennis Olivieri album Come to the Party. The two collaborated in the early 1970s on several projects, including an aborted album of re-recorded Beach Boys songs with topical lyrics for Agricultural and Mechanical. He co-wrote the Beach Boys singles "Marcella" and "Sail On, Sailor". Almer invented a waterpipe called the Slave-Master, described by Jack South. Margolis and Richard Clorfene in A Child"s Garden of Grass as "the perfect bong".
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Almer wrote songs for Washington, District of Columbia"s annual Hexagon satirical revue.
He also wrote several "fake books," consisting of simplified arrangements of popular songs. area in 1977, and lived there for the remainder of his life. Almer died on January 18, 2013, aged 70, from a combination of illnesses, including atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Shortly after, Along Comes Tandyn, an album of vintage recordings of his songs, was released in 2013 on Sundazed Records. In the liner notes, Parke Puterbaugh, a former senior editor of Rolling Stone, called Almer “one of the lost and hidden voices of the "60s," adding that Almer "left behind a body of work that"s ripe for rediscovery.”.
A member of Mensa International, he moved to the Washington, District of Columbia
