Beverly Bivens
We Five's first single, from their debut album of the same name, was a reworked version of Sylvia Tyson's song "You Were On My Mind". It became one of the first folk-rock hits, reaching number three in the "Billboard" "Hot 100" in August 1965. Tyson (then Sylvia Fricker) says that she was unaware that her song had been covered until she heard We Five's version on a car radio while driving on Highway 101 in California. One consequence of We Five's success was that Tyson's song, which, until then, had been unavailable in sheet form, was published by Witmark of New York, with a photograph of Bivens and We Five on the cover. However, with the so-called "British invasion" at its height, We Five's recording had only limited international success, having been covered reluctantly, though successfully, in Britain by Crispian St. Peters.
Beverly Bivens
The two albums featuring Bivens were re-released as a compilation compact disc by Collectors' Choice Music in 1996 and a further compilation, including some previously unreleased recordings, including jingles for Coca-Cola, was issued in 2009 by Big Beat under the title of "There Stands The Door: The Best Of We Five". Because of her short period of contemporaneous fame, Bivens has remained a rather elusive figure, but one whose voice has plainly been cherished by many who heard her in the mid-1960s. Although Mike Stewart appears to have been the "engine" of We Five, putting in extra hours to attend to arrangements of the group's material, George Yanok's notes for "Make Someone Happy" were perhaps revealing in that they concentrated on Bivens' centrality to We Five virtually to the exclusion of the other members: according to Yanok, she was "totally honest, gifted and possessed". Yanok also observed that We Five's music was about "fun" and that it was "unfortunate that that 'fun', in this age ["i.e." 1967], has become equated with frivolity and dismissed as trivia".