Who recorded it first

Different Drum

Not a Linda Ronstadt / Stone Poneys original — The Greenbriar Boys recorded it first, in 1966, for Vanguard

Ask who did “Different Drum” first and almost everyone answers Linda Ronstadt, whose Stone Poneys single has been on the radio since late 1967. The song was already on record by then: the New York bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys cut it for their Vanguard album Better Late Than Never! in 1966, with John Herald singing lead. Michael Nesmith wrote it in 1964, before he joined The Monkees, and shared it with Herald in 1965; the television show’s producers turned the song down at a date no account fixes, and no Monkees recording of it was ever released. Ronstadt found the song on the Greenbriar Boys record and built her vocal on Herald’s — the bluegrass version is not a footnote to the hit, it is the hit’s source.

The record

Who recorded it first

Record
“Different Drum”
First recorded by
The Greenbriar Boys, lead vocal John Herald
First released on
Better Late Than Never! — Vanguard VSD-79233, US, 1966
Written by
Michael Nesmith, 1964

Released Issued in 1966 as side one, track three of the Greenbriar Boys’ Vanguard LP Better Late Than Never! (VSD-79233), running 2:59, with John Herald on lead vocal — an album cut on a bluegrass record rather than a pop release.

Charted Did not chart. No Billboard placing is recorded for it; Vanguard was a folk label and the track had no pop-radio push behind it. One later write-up says the song was also pulled as a 45 with some local play, but no discography reachable here confirms a Greenbriar Boys single.

How we know

Wikipedia’s entry for the song ↗ has Nesmith writing it in 1964 and sharing it with John Herald in 1965, and says Herald’s group recorded it the following year — the song appearing on the Greenbriar Boys’ 1966 album Better Late Than Never! The session month is nowhere documented; every source reachable here gives a bare year.

The MusicBrainz recording entry ↗ attaches the Greenbriar Boys performance to exactly one release — Vanguard VSD-79233, United States, 1966 — at 2:59, side one track three. Nothing earlier is registered.

John Herald’s entry ↗ notes that Ronstadt recreated his vocal when the Stone Poneys cut the song — the hit was learned from the bluegrass record, not from Nesmith.

The band’s own entry ↗ is the most direct statement of it: the 1966 album, it says, included the first recorded version of Nesmith’s song, which the Stone Poneys then recorded again in 1967.

The Stone Poneys’ entry ↗ is the anchor for the hit’s dates: Nick Venet signed the trio to Capitol in the summer of 1966, and their version reached the Billboard pop chart on 11 November 1967, staying 17 weeks in the Hot 100 and peaking at No. 13.

Wikidata ↗ keeps the 1966 Greenbriar Boys recording and the 1967 Stone Poneys recording as two separate entities under one Nesmith composition.

AmericanaUK’s “Versions: Different Drum”
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Fact-check

Setting the record straight

“Different Drum” is credited wrongly twice: once to the singer who had the hit, and once — by people correcting the first error — to The Monkees. Neither made the first record.

The beliefCover, 1967

The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt

Their Capitol single, produced by Nick Venet and released in September 1967, entered the Hot 100 on 11 November 1967 and peaked at No. 13. It is the version everybody knows and Ronstadt’s first hit — but the song had been on record since 1966.

The originalFirst recording, 1966

The Greenbriar Boys

The New York bluegrass band recorded it for Vanguard with John Herald on lead vocal; it appeared on Better Late Than Never! (VSD-79233) in 1966 as side one, track three. No earlier recording of the song is documented anywhere.

The second mistakeNever recorded it

The Monkees

Nesmith wrote the song before the show and offered it to the production team, who turned it down. He played a deliberately terrible comic version on the December 1966 episode “Too Many Girls”, but no Monkees studio recording of it was released.

The writerWrote it 1964

Michael Nesmith

Nesmith wrote and copyrighted the song, and it is his composition on every version — but he did not record it himself until 1972, on And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’, six years after the Greenbriar Boys.

Written by Michael Nesmith in 1964, first recorded by The Greenbriar Boys on Vanguard in 1966, and made famous by the Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt in 1967.

Context

Why the cover swallowed the original

The Greenbriar Boys did not lose this song to a better record. They lost it to a bigger distribution system. Better Late Than Never! was a bluegrass LP on Vanguard, a folk label selling to a folk audience, and the track sat at number three on side one with no pop radio behind it. The following year Capitol put the same song through a Los Angeles session-player operation — Nick Venet producing, Don Randi’s harpsichord, strings conducted by Sid Sharp — and pushed it out in September 1967 as a 45 with a 21-year-old singer’s name added to the label copy. One of those two machines can put a song into a hundred markets in a week.

The detail that undoes the usual story is how Ronstadt got to it. She was not handed the song by Nesmith and she did not find it on a Monkees record, because there wasn’t one. She found it on the Greenbriar Boys album, and John Herald’s Wikipedia entry notes that her vocal recreated his. The hit everyone remembers is a careful reading of a bluegrass performance that almost nobody heard — which is why “Ronstadt’s song” is the wrong description twice over.

The chronology, and what is still soft in it
  • 1964 — Michael Nesmith writes “Different Drum”, two years before The Monkees goes on air.
  • 1965 — Nesmith shares the song with John Herald of The Greenbriar Boys.
  • Undated — the Monkees production team turns the song down. Accounts record the rejection but none of them dates it, so it cannot be placed against the 1965 hand-off to Herald.
  • 1966 — Vanguard issues Better Late Than Never! (VSD-79233) with “Different Drum” as side one, track three, running 2:59. This is the first recording.
  • December 1966 — Nesmith performs a joke version of the song on The Monkees episode “Too Many Girls”. No Monkees studio recording of it was released.
  • 12 June 1967 — Capitol releases the Stone Poneys’ Evergreen, Volume 2, which carries their version.
  • September 1967 — Capitol issues it as a single billed to the Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt. It enters the Billboard Hot 100 on 11 November 1967 and peaks at No. 13.
  • 1972 — Nesmith records his own version, with an extra verse, for And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’.
  • Still soft: accounts differ on whether Nesmith wrote the song in 1963, 1964 or 1965, and at least one write-up dates the Greenbriar Boys session to 1965 rather than 1966. The release year is not in doubt — Wikipedia, Wikidata and the MusicBrainz release entry all put the record out in 1966 on Vanguard — and no source anywhere places a recording of the song ahead of it.
She didn’t get it from Nesmith. She got it off a bluegrass record.

The original recording artist

The Greenbriar Boys

Active 1958–1970 · Bluegrass band, New York City · Vanguard Records

The Greenbriar Boys formed in New York in 1958 out of the Washington Square Park sessions, and became the northern city band that southern bluegrass had to take seriously — the first northern group to win the Union Grove Fiddlers’ Convention. The lineup that mattered ran through guitarist and lead singer John Herald (1939–2005), banjo player Bob Yellin and mandolinist Ralph Rinzler, later Frank Wakefield. They recorded for Vanguard, and in 1966 put Michael Nesmith’s new song on Better Late Than Never!, slowing it down and letting Herald’s voice catch on the turns. The band broke up in 1970; Herald spent the rest of his life as a solo singer in upstate New York, and died at his home in West Hurley in 2005.

Popularly credited as the original

The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt

Formed Los Angeles, 1965 · Folk-rock trio · Capitol Records

Linda Ronstadt, Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards formed the Stone Poneys in Los Angeles in 1965 and were signed to Capitol by producer Nick Venet in the summer of 1966. Their “Different Drum” is a genuinely great record and nobody’s copy of anything: Venet overruled Ronstadt’s idea of an acoustic reading and built a baroque-pop arrangement around Los Angeles session players, with Don Randi’s harpsichord as the hook. It was the single that made Ronstadt — the label added “featuring Linda Ronstadt” in small type, and within two years she was solo. The only thing wrong with the credit is the chronology.

The songwriter

Michael Nesmith

1942–2021 · American songwriter, guitarist and Monkee

Michael Nesmith was born in Houston in 1942 and died in Carmel Valley, California, in 2021. He wrote “Different Drum” in 1964, before the Monkees existed, and later said the words had nothing to do with his own life — he was newly married with a pregnant wife. He pitched it to the television show’s producers, who turned it down as not a Monkees tune — no account dates that rejection, so it cannot be ordered against his 1965 hand-off of the song to John Herald. He performed a deliberately terrible comic version on the episode “Too Many Girls” in December 1966. He did not record it properly himself until 1972, on And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’.