The Avant-Garde was an American psychedelic pop

Psychedelic pop

Psychedelic pop is a psychedelic musical style inspired by the sounds of psychedelic folk and psychedelic rock, but applied to a pop music setting...

 group formed by Chuck Woolery

Chuck Woolery

Charles Herbert "Chuck" Woolery is an American game show host. He has had long-running tenures hosting several different game shows. He was the original host of Wheel of Fortune from 1975–81, the original incarnation of Love Connection from 1983–94, and Scrabble from 1984–90...

 and Elkin "Bubba" Fowler in 1967. They released three singles on Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 in 1967 and 1968, backed by different session musician

Session musician

Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...

s on each release: "Yellow Beads", "Naturally Stoned" (which hit #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in mid 1968), and "Fly With Me". Despite the success of "Naturally Stoned", the group disbanded after "Fly With Me" and never released a full album.

After The Avant-Garde, Fowler went on to a career as a folk singer. Columbia released his LP And Then Came Bubba in 1970, and he played guitar on albums by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 and Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...

. Woolery became a country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 artist on Warner Bros. Records

Warner Bros. Records

Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...

 and later Epic Records

Epic Records

Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...

, charting twice but never releasing an album. He has since become a game show

Game show

A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...

 host, appearing on Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble

Scrabble (game show)

Scrabble is an American television game show that was based on the Scrabble board game. The show was co-produced by Exposure Unlimited and Reg Grundy Productions. It ran from July 2, 1984 to March 23, 1990, and again from January 18 to June 11, 1993, both runs on NBC. A total of 1,335 episodes were...

, Love Connection

Love Connection

Love Connection is an American television game show, hosted by Chuck Woolery, in which singles attempted to connect with a compatible partner of the opposite gender. The show debuted in syndication on September 19, 1983 and ended on July 1, 1994, after more than 2,000 shows. Reruns continued to air...

, Greed

Greed (game show)

Greed is an American television game show that aired on Fox from November 4, 1999 until July 14, 2000. The game consisted of a team of contestants who answered a series of multiple-choice questions for a potential prize of up to $2 million...

, and Lingo. "Naturally Stoned" was also used as the theme to a short-lived reality television

Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...

 series on GSN that starred Woolery, entitled Chuck Woolery: Naturally Stoned.