Rich formed his own band called "The Hi-Tones" in 1965 then re-named it "The Mantiques" a year later. Three years later, re-named again to "Charisma" by Roulette Records, NY, NY in 1969.

Rich continued to developing the sound and tightness of the band by rehearsing as often as possible in his family home basement and booking as many gigs as possible. He finally got the right combination of hard working band members together.

A recording contract emerged after Rich visited 1650 Broadway NY, NY and handed out a 2 song reel-to-reel tapes of the band at the then hub of the music industry. He and his band where soon visited by the owner of a 1650 Broadway NY music production company, Alouette Productions, Inc. who received the tapes and came to see The Mantiques playing a show in Boston that lead to a record deal with Roulette Records.

Charisma recorded two albums of a three album contract. The recording deal was derailed before the 3rd album was recorded due to the discovery of organized crime and corruption within the record Co. and the bands management. (It was very common in those days ... Little did we know!)

The band had a large following locally and in all of the New York and New England area. Roulette's world wide releases of the albums sold better in Europe than the US. Charisma went on to play concerts including the Fillmore East, NY East Village, College tours and night clubs in the US.

This project was initiated by Blue-Eyed-Soul-Legend, Grayson Hugh, a prolific brilliant composer, vocalist and instrumentalist. Grayson offered to record a song of Rich's choosing with him playing all the parts and Rich adding drums in his home studio. Rich had followed and been a fan of Grayson since being privileged to perform with him in various bands in our home state of Connecticut. Rich jumped at the opportunity!

Grayson really liked the charts and after some time learning the tune, asked if Rich would be interested in hearing a few new ideas he had for the arraignment. Rich liked his ideas and said "Let's do it!"

Grayson wrote an arrangement that Rich really loved and then suggested Rich ask a few mutual musician friends and colleagues if they would be interested in joining us in this project rather than he play all the parts. Their friends all agreed to do it and it snowballed into a remote band rather quickly. However there was nothing quick about an undertaking such as this.

In search for the original composition of "Don't Bag it", Rich could not find the original manuscript and score sheets. He contacted his Palm Beach Atlantic University class mate of 1980, Glen Rovinelli, who was the librarian and sax player in his big band as well as collector and creator of arrangements for others. As luck would have it Glen still had the original song sheets in his files and sent the transcripts of the song.

Due to Covid-19 precautions and the in-person potential for transmission, each instrumentalists' section of the composition for this production was recorded remotely in each musicians home studio. They each learned and recorded their parts and emailed to Grayson and Rich for evaluation. After each musician forwarded multiple takes to choose from, they then compiled and laboriously edited all of the individual tracks at Tape-Works Studio in Hartford, Connecticut. There were many hours of cutting, pasting, adjusting and setting to a common click track to create the full song.

All of those involved would have preferred to record this song together in person, live in the studio but at least there was opportunity to get ONE live take. After completing the editing process of all the parts in the studio, Rich added live drums to finish the instrumentation and proceeded to the final mix.