I couldn't finish this, partly because I couldn't place his accent. It's quite possible that Mr. Gardner was changing his vowel sounds just because he could.
Al Gardner doesn't seem to have left a very large internet footprint behind him. "Little Reuben" did not reach the Billboard Hot 100, so it was only a local hit in Toronto and perhaps a couple of other places.
A search on YouTube turned up three other singles bearing the name Al Gardner. The Discogs entry for him only lists the first one plus "Little Reuben", and they're usually pretty thorough, so I'm not sure whether the other two were by a different Al Gardner.
The last two of these were linked to the Northern Soul movement in Britain during the early 1970s. They were supervised by Jack Ashford, who was one of the Funk Brothers, the Motown in-house band. As of this writing, Ashford is their last surviving member.
Created January 20, 2026.