Biography

The Videls were a Rhode Island-based trio, Peter Andreoli, Vincent Poncia, Jr., and Norman Marzano, who met in Providence and cut records initially for the local Rhody record label. They came to national attention when one of the Rhody releases, "Mister Lonely," got picked up by the JDS label based in New York. It became a modest hit in the spring of 1960, rising to No. 73 nationally. This was to be the peak of their chart success, but it led to releases for Kapp and other labels. The Videls never charted another single, but two of their members became reasonably successful songwriters and charted regularly for much of the rest of the '60s. Andreoli, who changed his last name to Anders, and Poncia, found much greater success during the early '60s as songwriters in association with Phil Spector, co-authoring such future classics by the Ronettes as "Do I Love You?" and "(The Best Part Of) Breaking Up." This led to their signing to Red Bird, where they scored under the alias the Tradewinds, with "New York's a Lonely Town," which made the top 40. They later hit again in a small way as the Tradewinds with the single "Mind Excursion," and even got a full LP release out of it on the fledgeling Kama Sutra label. Later still, as the Innocence, they got a top 40 single out of "There's Got to Be a Word." Anders and Poncia were mainstays of the early Buddah-Kama Sutra label for most of the '60s, not only cutting hits as the Tradewinds and the Innocence but also contributing to the success of the Critters (who, ironically, were managed by Charles Koppelman and Don Rubin, a pair of similar refugees from an early-'60s outfit, the Ivy Three). They formed their own label, Map City, at the end of the '60s. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi