DESCRIPTION:
The Summits - Hanky Panky (Harmon Records) 1963, 45 rpm! A Direct Recording!

The Summits originally recorded Hanky Panky, written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich as the flip-side to "He's An Angel", and even though Barry & Greenwich had already recorded the song and decided to release it themselves that same year, as The Raindrops, The Summits version was released first. "Hanky Panky" became popular with garage rock bands. Tommy Jackson, later, Tommy James, heard it being performed by one such group in a club in South Bend, Indiana. "I really only remembered a few lines from the song, so when we went to record it, I had to make up the rest of the song. I just pieced it back together from what I remembered."
James' version was recorded at a local radio station, WNIL in Niles, Michigan, and released on local Snap Records in 1964, selling well in the tri-state area of Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. However, lacking national distribution, the single quickly disappeared. James moved on, breaking up The Shondells, and finishing high school.
In 1965, an unemployed James was contacted by Pittsburgh disc jockey "Mad Mike" Metro. Metro had begun playing The Shondells' version of "Hanky Panky" and the single had become popular in that area. James then decided to re-release the song, traveling to Pittsburgh where he hired a local band he ran into, The Raconteurs, to be the new Shondells (the original members having declined to re-form).
After appearances on TV and in clubs in the city, James took a master of "Hanky Panky" to New York, where he sold it to Roulette Records. "The amazing thing is we did not re-record the song. I don't think anybody can record a song that bad and make it sound good. It had to sound amateurish like that. I think if we'd fooled with it too much we'd have fouled it up." It was released promptly and took the top position of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in July 1966.