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Of all the major folk-rock bands, the Lovin' Spoonful owed the most to jug band music, whether indirectly in a sense of good-time fun and instrumental eclecticism, or quite directly in an updated version of the jug band sound. Of all their big hits, "Daydream" was the one that tapped into the jug band ethos the most. If it had been performed acoustically with a ragtime arrangement on washboard, kazoo, banjo, violin, and the like, as early jug band recordings from the 1920s and 1930s were, it could have passed for a bona fide jug band song. It wasn't arranged that way, though, which enabled it to become a huge #2 hit in 1966. First, the guitar was electric, if a little muted, as heard in the opening accented triplets. The rhythm was clip-clop in a jug band fashion, but steady and brisk enough to avoid shambling laziness. What put the song over the most, though, was the instantly hummable, sunny melody, sung in appropriate good-hearted easygoing fashion by composer John Sebastian. And the lyric was a perfect match for the tune and arrangement, musing as it did on the joys of, indeed, daydreaming. There might have been a lot of pop in that tune and arrangement; Sebastian has even recalled the song had its genesis as an attempt to rewrite the Supremes' "Baby Love," though it turned out into something quite different. But there were also a lot of jug band traits that survived, like the solo of jaunty whistling and the almost rural, countryish riff following the end of the verses. It was the electronic era, however, and it's nice the way the electric guitar notes softly swell and ebb, like the waves of thoughts pulsing through the brain during an actual daydream.