Philip Rubin

co-founder and special effects guitar

Rubin was active from the founding of the band in 1965 until the fall of 1967, and joined the band for occasional gigs in the summers of 1968 and 1969.

Founders:

* Philip Rubin, special effects guitar, 1965-1969

* Marvin Coopersmith, lead guitar, 1965 on

* J. Howard Duff, guitar, and vocals, 1965 on

* Richard Lester, lead singer 1965-1970 (d. 1996)

Other Members:

Glenn Horowitz, drums

Jack Whelan, drums

Steve Wryzinski, bass guitar

Alan Eric “Ricky” Rackin, bass guitar (of Richard & the Young Lions fame; deceased)

​Jeffrey Knapp, poetry (deceased)

​Pat Moast, bass guitar

Jean-Paul LaMond, drums

Russ Frame, keyboards

Janette Greene, keyboards

Benjie Williams, keyboards

Joey Kramer, drums (soon after to be with Aerosmith)

Jan Criss, bass guitar (deceased)

Philip Rubin, from Newark and then Union, New Jersey, was a co-founder in 1965 of The Institution. He left the band in 1969 to attend Brandeis University (joined later by Marvin Coopersmith and overlapping with Jon Landau) and began playing with groups in the Boston area, and joining The Institution for a couple of years over the summers. During his time in the band, he played four guitars: a 1965 Watkins Rapier, followed by a blonde 1965 Fender Telecaster, which was replaced by a 1957 Les Paul Special (refinished in 1969 by Dan Armstrong), and briefly a 1932 National Steel, Style O. He went on to a career in science, starting at Haskins Laboratories, where he was known for his technological and theoretical developments related to understanding the biological and embodied bases of speech and language and their disorders. This included the development, with colleagues, of pioneering sound and speech synthesis, and signal processing systems, and contributions to the modeling of speech production as a complex, dynamical system. Eventually he became CEO and Chair of the Board of Haskins, a Professor Adjunct in the Dept. of Surgery, at the Yale University School of Medicine, and then led the White House neuroscience initiative, including the Obama BRAIN Initiative, and eventually directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy science division, and served as a senior advisor to President Obama. After leaving the White House, he continued to have leadership and service roles in the areas of behavioral and social science, neuroscience, computer science, electrical engineering, and research innovation and ethics.

Marvin Coopersmith, from Union New Jersey, was a co-founder and the lead guitarist of The Institution, which broke up in 1970. However, Coopersmith, Rich Lester, J. Howard Duff, and Jean-Paul LaMond, successfully formed, gigged, toured, and recorded, through the ‘70s and ‘80s, in various musical aggregations of the core team. This included The Institution II and Praisegod Bearbones. Coop played a gorgeous, late-60s Les Paul Custom Black Beauty.

J. Howard Duff, from Union, New Jersey, was a co-founder, of The Institution. J. is a blues, rock, and gospel vocalist and guitarist who currently hails from Ridgeland, South Carolina, where he has been a local since 1998, performing in countless venues throughout the Lowcountry and recording for Nice Jacket Records. He remains active and has played with or opened shows for the likes of Twisted Sister, Blackfoot, The J. Geils Band, Black Flag, Bruce Springsteen, Rick Derringer, Roy Buchanan, and many more. In the mid 80s, his band, Partners in Crime, scored a top 10 punk rock EP with their release “No Big Deal”. He moved back into his blues and gospel roots when he and Dawn, his artist/vocalist wife, relocated to South Carolina in the late 1990s. Since then he has released several projects on the Nice Jacket label, his latest being “The Blues & Back” and “Thunder and Lightning”. He went on to “Red, White & Blues”, formed by Fred Warren and Duff in 2016 to play blues and swing. Members included Duff (lead guitar, vocals), Warren, (guitar), Allyn Perdue (bass), and Ed Switela (drums). See, also, “J. Howard Duff Stills Sings For The Sake Of The Song”, from The Jersey Sound, Dec. 9, 2024, and J. Howard Duff Cements His Legacy, The Jersey Sound, May 22, 2026, an article about “Legacy”, a 44 song double CD. Note that links to some of Duff’s songs can be found in the Music section.

Richard Lester, from Union, New Jersey, was the lead singer of The Institution. Rich died of cancer in 1995 at the age of 47. A tribute CD, “From The Bottom of My Heart (Vol. 1)”', features rare performances by Lester accompanied by various New Jersey musicians, starting with The Institution in 1965, through some of his final solo sessions (you can listen to tracks from this CD in the Music section. Duff commented on Rich and The Institution, saying: “We had a lot of original songs. Between 1965 thru 1970 we probably wrote 20 or more. The primary songwriter was Rich Lester. The boy could write lyrics with the best of them, and (at the time) having to lean on me (J. Howard) and Marvin (Coopersmith) to put music to his melodies allowed both of us to get writing credits!”