Where did Loving Spoonful get their name?

Answer 1

The core of The Lovin' Spoonful were John Sebastian, who was born on March 17th, 1944 in New York, and Zalman Yanovsky, who was born on 19th December 1944 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They first met as guests invited to Cass Elliot's house to watch The Beatles' U.S. TV debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. They played guitar together through the night and discussed the possibility of forming a rock group. At the time, Sebastian was a Greenwich Village folkie and sometime member of the Even Dozen Jug Band and Yanovsky was a guitarist with the Nova Scotia folk group, The Halifax Three. When they disbanded in June 1964, Yanovsky was briefly involved in the Mugwumps (with Denny Doherty, Cass Elliot and James Hendricks). This was a short-lived and unsuccessful venture, which soon disbanded, and, of course Doherty and Elliot went on to form one half of The Mamas and The Papas

With Yanovsky at loose ends again, the seeds for a rock group with John Sebastian were sewn in January 1965. Joe Butler (drums) and Steve Boone (bass) were recruited to fill out the ensemble. They decided on the name, "Lovin' Spoonful", which was taken from a phrase in Mississippi John Hurt's song, "Coffee Blues".