A country rock band formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The band’s name was inspired by 1950s film serials featuring the character Commando Cody and from a feature version of an earlier serial, King of the Rocket Men, released under the title Lost Planet Airmen. The band’s founder and leader, George Frayne, took the stage name Commander Cody.

Frayne put together the first band while still a student. This band included Frayne on piano plus John Tichy (lead guitar), Steve Schwartz (guitar), Don Davis (bass), Don Bolton (aka the West Virginia Creeper) (pedal steel) and Ralph Mallory (drums). But it was actually more of a 'happening' than a straight musican band and also featured the Tap Dancing Green Sisters, Pat the Hippie Strippie and, of course, the Galactic Twist Queens with a supporting cast of anywhere between 5 and 50 hippies and a supporting kazoo section.

After graduation in 1968, Frayne continued to appear with the band and their new singer/harp player, Billy C. Farlow, at weekends. The band’s style was basically a mixture of country music, rockabilly and blues, with a foundation of boogie-woogie piano. It became legendary for marathon live shows, but many felt that the spirit of those performances was never fully captured in the band’s recordings. In addition, they were among the very first country-rock bands to take their style less from folk-rock and bluegrass and more from hardcore bar-room country and to incorporate Western swing into their style along with rockabilly and rhythm and blues. Other bands, such as Asleep at the Wheel, would later follow a similar pattern.

After several years spent playing in local bars, Bill Kirchen (guitar, vocals) persuaded core members of the band (Frayne, Tichy, Bolton, Farlow) to migrate to San Francisco, where they packed a local dive called Mandrake's every night and got a recording contract with Paramount Records.

The band became an 8-piece after raiding Charlie Musselwhite's rhythm section for Paul 'Buffalo' Bruce Barlow on bass and Lance Dickerson on drums. Other core members at this time included Andy Stein on saxophone and fiddle.

The group’s first album release, titled Lost in the Ozone, arrived in late 1971 and yielded the group’s best-known hit, a version of the country song Hot Rod Lincoln, which reached the top ten on the Billboard singles chart in early 1972. The band's 1974 live recording, Live from Deep in the Heart of Texas features cover art of armadillos by Jim Franklin, and the band released several moderately-successful albums through the first half of the decade.

After appearing in the Roger Corman movie Hollywood Boulevard, Frayne disbanded the band in 1976 following a long European tour. Retaining his stage name of Commander Cody, Frayne had a mostly-obscure solo career, touring and releasing albums sporadically from 1977 to the present day. Some later albums were released under the Lost Planet Airmen name, though seldom were original group members involved.

Recent releases have been under the name The Commander Cody Band. In addition to Frayne, current members of the band include Steve Barbuto on drums, Mark Emerick on guitar and Rick Mullen on bass.