The Excels rock and roll band. Front row: Carl Holm, Ken Forrest, and Terry Quirk. Back row: Steve Contardi and Clark Sullivan. Carl played electric bass, Forrest electric organ and “band comedian”, Quirk guitar, sax, and vocals, Contardi drums, and Sullivan vocals and lead guitar. This photo is from the summer of 1965 in Detroit. A person named Steve Seymour remembered the Excels on his web site. Much of the following information is from Seymour’s article. Seymour wrote, “Like their name suggests, the Excels’ achievements may have been superior to those of any other rock band to come out of the Upper Peninsula in the 1960s.” Seymour’s web page features an interview with vocalist Clark Sullivan about how the group formed from a chance meeting at Jim Boerner’s music store in Marquette. “It was June of 1963 when I met Carl Holm and Dick Manning, both from Iron River, at the store. Through Carl’s persistence, the idea of forming a group took hold. Manning was a lead guitarist and gave music lessons at Boerner’s, while Holm was a bass player, still in high school. With the addition of drummer John Zelinski, also from Iron River, the group was formed.” The band’s name was inspired by a striking robin’s egg blue Ford Galaxie 500 XL convertible that the Carl and John Zelinski’s car pulled up behind at the corner of 4th Street and Adams Street in Iron River.

The photo on the left shows an earlier version of the band in the Holm family living room, with Carl on bass, Zelinski on drums, and Manning on lead guitar. The photo at the right shows a later Excels group at the Iron County Armory, with Carl at the lower left, Richard Manning above him, Clark Sullivan at the top right, and Johnny Zelinski.

Here are two photos of the later band rehearsing in the living room at Carl’s home in 1964. On the left, Carl Holm and Clark Sullivan are playing their guitars. On the right is a view from their back looking at Steve Contardi playing drums in the corner of the room.

The Excels played throughout the U. P. and Wisconsin in the summer and fall of 1963, but then Manning had to leave due to schooling and Zelinski had to quit to play in his dad’s polka band. Seymour wrote, “With future bookings already scheduled, drummer Steve Contardi and Terry Quirk (guitar, sax, vocals) joined as replacements. Contardi, who handled all the band’s bookings, was from Stambaugh, while Quirk was another Iron River resident. Later they added keyboard player Ken Forrest from downstate Taylor.”

During the early months of 1964, with Sullivan, Quirk and Contardi enrolled at Northern Michigan University and Holm still a junior in high school, the Excels started getting lots of exposure.

Sullivan recalled, “We would have jam sessions on campus that would turn into full blown ’events.’ With many of the students from different parts of Michigan and different parts of the country, we started getting booked at various venues throughout lower Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio... Once we had all the members, things started coming together for us in a big way. We had the opportunity to play the Pony Tail Club in Harbor Springs which had the reputation of bringing in national talent such as Bobby Vinton and Jan & Dean. Thousands of kids on summer break made this club their home, so this venue gave us exposure to other parts of the state.” Sullivan recalled a memorable engagement at the Henry Ford estate in Grosse Point for the Ford family: “We played for the younger people, while Myron Floren of Lawrence Welk fame played for the old folks.”

The Excels decided to try for a recording contract so they headed to Detroit in the fall of 1964. “Our first stop was Motown Studios, where we met the Supremes,” Sullivan remembered. Although the Excels were impressed meeting one of the world’s greatest acts, the group agreed that their “Beach Boys’ harmony sound” would not be a good fit with Motown, which had an all- black stable of artists at the time.

However, Ollie McLaughlin, an influential black disc jockey on Ann Arbor’s WHRV radio and owner of Carla Records, showed interest in the Excels and asked them to send him a demo tape. In a few days the band recorded Run Girl Run and It Isn’t So on a small, two-track machine and shipped them off to McLaughlin. “Much to our surprise, he liked them and offered us a recording contract,” Sullivan remembered. Excited to be recording, the Excels travelled to Detroit to properly record their two demo songs at United Sound Studio in the early summer of 1965. “We were quite new to this recording business, so this first session was a learning experience, as the sound on this record is quite raw,” Sullivan noted. The songs, however, were not issued until 1970.

Excels at the Teen Chalet in Gaylord, Michigan, in 1965 Carl Holm, Terry Quirk, Steve Contardi, and Clark Sullivan	Carl Holm and the Excels at Daniel’s Den in Saginaw, Michigan They opened for the Newbeats and Paul Revere & The Raiders

While the group was building on successful dates in the Lower Peninsula, travel was putting a strain on Carl, who had enrolled in Michigan Tech in Houghton in the fall of 1965, while the others were NMU students. With his grades suffering, he reluctantly decided to quit the group in March 1966. In an April 15, 1966, letter Mom wrote about how relaxed Carl has been since getting out of the band.

After Carl left the Excels had several personnel changes, first to replace him, then to replace Forrest who was drafted, and later to replace Contardi who left when he graduated. In this era, the Excels recorded four more singles: Gonna Make You Mine, Girl and Goodbye Poor Boy in the summer of 1966, I Wanna Be Free and Too Much Too Soon in the fall of 1966, Little Innocent Girl and Some Kind of Fun in 1967, and California on My Mind and Arrival of Maryin 1968. These songs made an impression on the charts - some times reaching the top at local Michigan stations, some times getting play as far away as Florida - but the band never made it big nationally.

In 2017, the Excels were inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Internet Hall of Fame.

Updated: 28 Oct 2014, with information posted by Carl on FaceBook

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