If you live in Australia, New Zealand or Patagonia, your winter is still doing its thing. For most of the Northern Hemisphere, these are the Dog Days of summer. But I live in Minnesota. I haven’t used the air conditioner in three weeks, and I can’t keep my window open at night. The lows for the next ten nights are expected to range from 54 F to 63 F (12 C to 17 C). Is summer over here? Not really. Not until Wednesday, when teacher workshops begin at my school for the full faculty. I even have things to do today (Saturday) for that inevitable event.
But the title of this post doesn’t refer to my dismay at the demise of Summer 2008. It merely recognizes that this is my last post for the caithiseach-vinyl year that relates to the music of the summer of 1970. I mentioned two posts ago (plus the Vinyl Record Day post) that music at night, on WLS in Chicago, got me through that rough summer. I thought I would wait until today to state that I have never witnessed a conglomeration of listenable tunes to match what I heard in 1970. The hits cascaded onto the charts all year long.
Out of curiosity, I recently took a census of my compressed Top 40 music files, sorted by year. I wanted to see where I was most deficient. With just one song each, 1891 and 1893 are going to need some boosting. 1966 and 1967 are looking good at 233 and 234 tunes, respectively. Those numbers show how the charts have changed, because I own all of the hits of 2006 and 2007, and they come in at 156 and 167.
I figured that, in some cases, the totals would give me an idea of how much I liked the year’s music. I was right; before some concentrated buying this week, I owned just 22 hits from 2004. I am up to 43 now. 2001 had made it into my collection just 19 times, but I’m up to 55 there.
Sure enough, the year that I worked hardest to collect has been 1970. The census tallied 237 songs owned out of 254 (including charting B sides, give or take one). I get the impression I should dig hard and finish off that year as well.
I have always had the indefinable belief that 1970 produced the largest body of quality hit songs of any calendar year. Go ahead and debate me; you’re likely to (and welcome to) say “But what about ____ from 19XX? Huh? What about that?” Often a milieu—the songs they played when you were in love, or graduating from high school—makes a period’s music resonate forever. But 1970? The year I turned 10? Sure, my mom died, and I needed something to hold onto, but I’ve had more fun in other years, and the music doesn’t compare. I had my first requited love interest in July 1977, and when I looked at the charts, apart from a few songs that meant something then, the Top 40 wasn’t that solid. But 1970 . . . wow.
The Guess Who: “No Time.” Brook Benton: “Rainy Night in Georgia.” CCR: “Travelin’ Band”/“Who’ll Stop the Rain.” Simon & Garfunkel: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Cecelia.” Edison Lighthouse: “Love Grows.” John Lennon: “Instant Karma!” Norman Greenbaum: “Spirit in the Sky.”
I’ll stop there, on March 7, and just tell you that the year kept getting better. I’ll also share a theological discussion from Good Fellow Camp, summer 1970:
Louie and caithiseach: “Bob, last year you didn’t cuss. Why do you cuss so much?”
Bob: “I dunno. I like to.”
Louie and caithiseach: “You’ll go to hell for cussing.”
Bob: “No I won’t! The guy who sang ‘Spirit in the Sky’ cusses.”
Louie and caithiseach: “You don’t know that for sure, and even if he does, singing that song doesn’t mean he’ll go to heaven for sure.”
Bob: “Oh, shit.”
Ah, 1970. The #1 hits while I was visiting Aunt Eileen (and Uncle Jim, and cousins Bob and Jim) were “The Love You Save” by the Jackson 5, “Mama Told Me (Not to Come) by Three Dog Night, and “(They Long to Be) Close to You” by that girl drummer and her brother. WLS played them a lot, but there was a bunch of other great stuff as well, including the Jeff Barry offerings I discussed in previous posts. So, how do I limit this final roundup? By isolating the songs I replayed in my mind most between 1970 and 1987, when I started buying CD reissues.
By doing that, I can get at a few singles I would have bought if I had been at home. There are some really spectacular songs that I probably would have left in the store, like “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon & War and “War” by Edwin Starr. But there were two songs that would not leave my mind, didn’t show up on oldies radio, and actually enticed me to purchase them as 45s before I got them on CD.
One song was “Tighter, Tighter” by Alive and Kicking (Roulette 7078). Tommy James, whose songs I had always liked, co-wrote the song and involved himself in the production. I didn’t know that then, but I’ll allow myself to be impressed that I noticed something about the song that worked for me. He wrote the song with Robert King, who also co-wrote “Draggin’ the Line” and “Early in the Morning” with Tommy.
Pepe Cardona and Sandy Toder sang the leads on “Tighter, Tighter,” and the organ player, Bruce Sudano, joined Brooklyn Dreams and married Donna Summer. If I carried out these degrees of separation as far as possible, I would be here until January, and I don’t know if I’ll still be blogging then. (You get to decide.)
The other song was “Are You Ready?” by Pacific Gas & Electric (Columbia 45158). When Bob and I played our “Name That Tune” game at night, Bob came up with the idea of calling them PG&E so we could spit out the name faster. This was one rockin’ band, with an incredible guitar solo and amazing lead vocals by Charles Allen, who died in 1990. The gospel-sounding backing vocals came from the Blackberries. Allen wrote the song with John Hill; these two also have a writing credit for a version of the folk song “Stack-O-Lee.” Lloyd Price took it to #1 in 1959 as “Stagger Lee.” The PG&E version, slow and bluesy, was used in the 2007 Quentin Tarrantino film Death Proof.
Each act was a One-Hit Wonder in Top 40 terms, but Alive and Kicking reached #69 (as the more hip-soundin’ Alive ‘N Kickin’) with “Just Let It Come” later in 1970. (What an innuendo-laden sequence that was.) Allen’s bunch reached #93 with “Father Come on Home” (dang) in 1970, and #97 with “Thank God for You Baby” (as PG&E) in 1972.
“Tighter, Tighter” reached the Top 40 on July 4, 1970 and peaked at #7. “Are You Ready?” climbed aboard on June 20 and reached just #14. I heard both of them a lot, though the WLS charts show that “Tighter, Tighter” peaked higher and faster than it did nationally, despite its later start, and “Are You Ready?” fell a bit short of its national peak and dropped more quickly.
If you take “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me,” “The Love You Save,” “Close to You,” and these two songs, you have a lot of my nighttime rotation in July/August, 1970. Sure, there are better songs out there, but as one microcosm in the music universe, they hold up pretty well.
Shifting gears a bit, here’s something for the musicians and songwriters out there. I made a discovery one day that would never have happened if I didn’t own “Are You Ready?” on vinyl, or even if all vinyl played at the same speed.
I tossed the single on the turntable, which was set by accident to 33. I listened for a bit, and I decided that the slowed-down guitar of “Are You Ready?” made for a great slow bluesy underpinning. The part is not unique, but played at that tempo, it offers musical options you might not associate with it at full speed. So, apart from the two hits, I’ll post the slow groove for the heck of it.
I won’t be going back to the summer of 1970 this year, but next time, I’ll inspect a couple of other summer songs from later years at Good Fellow Camp. See you Wednesday!
Alive and Kicking, Tighter, Tighter
Pacific Gas & Electric, Are You Ready?
Are You Ready? guitar part
Showing posts with label WLS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WLS. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Summer of Steed, Part 1
The second floor of my Aunt Eileen’s house in Gary, Indiana wasn’t a proper second floor. The ceiling rose and fell to match the contours of the roof, including alcoves for windows and slopes to keep the snow or rain from overburdening the rafters. White stucco walls blended into the white stucco ceiling not at sharp angles, but with smooth curves that gave the ceiling the feel of an upside-down ski slope. I slept in the alcove by the window facing Kentucky Street for most of July and August of 1970.
Sending me to Aunt Eileen was easier for my dad than making me fend for myself while he worked. My mom was dead, and Aunt Eileen was her sister. My teenage cousins, Bob and Jim, shared their room with me, and in the nighttime darkness, Bob played WLS at a low volume until we all fell asleep.
Probably to keep me from thinking too much, Bob developed a game where we would guess song titles as soon as we could from their intros. They call it Name That Tune on TV, but we called it . . . well, we didn’t call it anything. I held my own in the game, and this week, I am going to talk about two related songs, one that figured prominently in the summer, and another that came along in the autumn when I was back home and often sleeping in yet another house that was not ours.
The first song got a lot of airplay while I was at Aunt Eileen’s. “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” by Robin McNamara (Steed 724) joined the Top 40 ranks on July 18, 1970, peaking at #11, and it must have captured someone’s imagination at WLS, because I heard it every night during August. The song had a groove I couldn’t get out of my head during the day, which turned out to be a good thing. I loved the part where Robin called out: “Now just the girls sing it,” and all of the male voices disappeared. The singers turned out to be the cast of Hair, of which Robin was an original member. I knew about Hair, but I was not offered a chance to see it that year.
It was a good thing I remembered the song, because, by the time I got back home and could buy records, “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” had disappeared from the bins. I never heard the song, except in my memory, from October, 1970 until the mid-1980s, when Rhino came out with the delicious Have a Nice Day series. I never heard it in stereo until I grabbed Volume 2 of the Rhino set. And oh, I played that song over and over the first few days I had it.
That was when I connected it to Saturday’s song, another Steed single that I did manage to buy. That was also when I connected it to Jeff Barry, my musical hero. I was pleased rather than surprised to find Jeff had produced and co-written the tune, as he had Saturday’s song.
Falling asleep on sweltering August nights under the rafters of a house in Gary was a lot more pleasant because of that radio and this song. Anytime I play it, it transports me back there. I can’t escape that memory. I think I’m glad about that.
Robin McNamara is a Boston area native, and you can learn much about his past and his present at his website. There, among other things, you can find a clip of Robin singing “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” on TV, complete with a couple of pairs of hands clapping between the camera and Robin. Watch for a flub when one pair of hands expects a nonexistent clap.
Saturday brings a single by a guy with an amazing voice. See you then!
The site is buggy today, so I can't post a poll. Check back when you can. Thanks.
Robin McNamara, Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me
Sending me to Aunt Eileen was easier for my dad than making me fend for myself while he worked. My mom was dead, and Aunt Eileen was her sister. My teenage cousins, Bob and Jim, shared their room with me, and in the nighttime darkness, Bob played WLS at a low volume until we all fell asleep.
Probably to keep me from thinking too much, Bob developed a game where we would guess song titles as soon as we could from their intros. They call it Name That Tune on TV, but we called it . . . well, we didn’t call it anything. I held my own in the game, and this week, I am going to talk about two related songs, one that figured prominently in the summer, and another that came along in the autumn when I was back home and often sleeping in yet another house that was not ours.
The first song got a lot of airplay while I was at Aunt Eileen’s. “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” by Robin McNamara (Steed 724) joined the Top 40 ranks on July 18, 1970, peaking at #11, and it must have captured someone’s imagination at WLS, because I heard it every night during August. The song had a groove I couldn’t get out of my head during the day, which turned out to be a good thing. I loved the part where Robin called out: “Now just the girls sing it,” and all of the male voices disappeared. The singers turned out to be the cast of Hair, of which Robin was an original member. I knew about Hair, but I was not offered a chance to see it that year.
It was a good thing I remembered the song, because, by the time I got back home and could buy records, “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” had disappeared from the bins. I never heard the song, except in my memory, from October, 1970 until the mid-1980s, when Rhino came out with the delicious Have a Nice Day series. I never heard it in stereo until I grabbed Volume 2 of the Rhino set. And oh, I played that song over and over the first few days I had it.
That was when I connected it to Saturday’s song, another Steed single that I did manage to buy. That was also when I connected it to Jeff Barry, my musical hero. I was pleased rather than surprised to find Jeff had produced and co-written the tune, as he had Saturday’s song.
Falling asleep on sweltering August nights under the rafters of a house in Gary was a lot more pleasant because of that radio and this song. Anytime I play it, it transports me back there. I can’t escape that memory. I think I’m glad about that.
Robin McNamara is a Boston area native, and you can learn much about his past and his present at his website. There, among other things, you can find a clip of Robin singing “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” on TV, complete with a couple of pairs of hands clapping between the camera and Robin. Watch for a flub when one pair of hands expects a nonexistent clap.
Saturday brings a single by a guy with an amazing voice. See you then!
The site is buggy today, so I can't post a poll. Check back when you can. Thanks.
Robin McNamara, Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Dancing with the Stars
My collection of 45s didn’t grow much between 1967 and 1973. Uncle Tom stopped buying me 45s, and I started accepting that the radio was a good source of tunes. During this stretch of time, I had to love a song beyond measure before I would buy the single.
A couple of times, I was kept from buying 45s I wanted because I was summering at Good Fellow Camp in Porter, Indiana. That’s the camp that prevented me from seeing Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, but it’s also the camp that gave me very much-needed opportunities to explore life outside of my home.
What happened in these two cases was that, by the time I got home, a song I had enjoyed at camp had sold out and was not being restocked at Zayre, which was about the only place I could find 45s in the pre-mall days. When I was eleven, a single that was not in stock at Zayre was a single I would never find. In the case of today’s song, it meant I would never hear the song again.
The two weeks I spent at Good Fellow Camp in June, 1971 turned out to be a huge turning point in my world. It was my third year of camping, and I was far enough past the death of my mother to exert my personality a bit. Even so, the two expressions of who I was capable of being still surprise me by their daring. I took more risks that first week of camp than I tended to take in a year. I throw myself out there much more often now, but when I was eleven I had no perspective on the value of leaving my comfort zone.
One of my risks involved music, but the other one led to it, so I have to talk first about learning to swim.
After my first swimming lesson at age seven ended in disaster (lake plus boat plus short kid equals wake flattens kid), I didn’t take another stab at a deep pool until I was nine, at camp. There, the instructor was gentle, and all of us Beginners appreciated that but rarely tried to progress. I know I didn’t, especially after an ultra-pale kid named Brian splattered his hot dog from lunch all over the shallow end. He made this barking sound, then . . . never mind.
When I was ten, I fought the pool to a draw. I could hang onto the side and kick, as long as my head did not go under the surface.
When I went to camp in 1971, I had a new stepmother-to-be, and she was not kind about my fear of deep water. Never mind that I was a tree-climber after her heart, and that I loved to play baseball; I caught real hell for not being a swimmer.
You would think I would feed off the motivation of wanting to stick it in her face when I came home a swimmer, but I found her tactic demoralizing. When I came home not just floating but actually swimming after two weeks away, I had a different emotion to thank: I had fallen in love with my swimming instructor.
You know how that goes: you have a preteen crush on someone, and you see the person sometime later, and you are horrified at your poor taste. But I assure you, Beverly, the Good Fellow Camp swimming instructor that year, was a keeper. I was no dummy—she was six years older than I was, and there was no way she would want to have an eleven-year-old boyfriend. I kept my thoughts to myself, but it probably clued her in that I made constant eye contact with her when we were in the pool.
She had long blond hair, and she was wearing a bikini 90% of the time when I interacted with her. At first, she cupped water in her hands and had me blow bubbles in the water. Once, I kissed her hand. I don’t know if she caught on.
For Beverly, I would have done anything. And so, I let her erase my fears of the water, and I floated. Then I kicked. Then I swam.
On Tuesday, the second lesson day, I put my head underwater without panicking for the first time in my life. When I got back to Cabin 6, I was elated. A perky song was playing on my counselor’s radio: WLS was spinning “Do You Know What Time It Is?” by the P-Nut Gallery (Buddah 239). Alby, my counselor, was the first nurturing counselor I’d had; the previous two had been rough-and-tough types who hadn’t clicked too well with me. Alby really showed what a good guy he was this day.
When I stepped through the door and heard the song, I started doing a dance, which involved clapping my hands and stomping my right foot as I spun on my left. A couple of the boys were there as well, and they started clapping with me. I was the only one dancing, though.
As the week wore on, my spirit never wavered, and the guys demanded that I do my dance whenever WLS played “Do You Know what Time It Is?” The song peaked at #62 nationally, but in Chicago, it entered the WLS Top 30 at #21 on May 31, two weeks before it entered the Billboard Hot 100. On June 14 and 21, it ranked #9 and #8. It was in heavy rotation, which should have been a good thing on Thursday night, because that was when the boys called for a dance contest.
That could mean a lot of things in that social circle. Was I annoying them with my dancing? After the first time, I did it only by request. Other boys did the dance when I did. Did they want to show me up? These concerns barely crossed my mind, because we were all having great fun with the song.
After dinner, all the boys of Cabin 6 skipped other activities to attend the contest. Three others participated; they came up with something original and danced to whatever song WLS played. Then it was my turn, presumably to do my dance to “Do You Know What Time It Is?” But the song didn’t come on. Alby let me wait out two songs, but we agreed that I would have to dance to the third song. And the third song was the P-Nut Gallery tune. Thanks, WLS.
The vote made me a winner. Alby spent part of the day Friday making a plaque for me: “Best Dancer, Cabin 6.” We always had a bonfire and awards ceremony on Friday night. I was hoping it would impress Beverly when Alby handed me my award.
As it turned out, after two years without recognition, I got a number of awards: I received four certificates for my Nature studies, and I was named Most Enthusiastic Athlete, which I cinched by winning the running long jump. I didn’t win any Red Cross swimming awards, though, so all I could do was look at Beverly in the firelight while she doled out certificates to far better swimmers.
When she finished, she started talking about how she had never seen anyone progress as fast as one of the Beginners. She found it amazing, in fact, that someone could be afraid to get his face in the water and then finish the week by almost swimming a full lap. I still didn’t get it, until she said my name and called me the Most Improved Swimmer. I saw real pride in her eyes, and she gave me a hug.
So, what did I do at summer camp? I learned to swim, I allowed myself to cut loose and dance in front of people I barely knew, and I dealt maturely with a young lady I absolutely adored.
I stayed a second week and got even better at swimming. When they asked at home how my two weeks had gone, I said that I had learned to swim. Such was the disconnect between camp and home. And the record was off WLS, and it wasn’t available at Zayre, and I never saw Beverly again, and I never heard “Do You Know What Time It Is?” again.
Not, that is, until I was digging through some records in a vinyl shop in Douglas, Michigan. I wasn’t looking for it, but there it was: 28 years later, I bought that single. Instead of having to replay it from memory, I owned the 45. I consider my intention to buy the 45 sufficient cause to include it in this blog about my childhood 45s. Who knows if it would have survived the Great Meltdown?
When I bought the Buddah Box 3-CD collection, one song I was after was “Back When My Hair Was Short” by Gunhill Road. At the time, I didn’t know that the P-Nut Gallery song was a Buddah release, or I might have been irritated that they included a number of non-charting releases but ignored a song that made the Chicago Top Ten. Now, it annoys me. It’s not a spectacular song, but I really would like to have clean copies of all of my memory songs.
The guy singing this song is Tommy Nolan. The group seems to have been assembled to take advantage of the craze surrounding the return of the Howdy Doody show. The song’s writers and producers, Bobby Flax and Lanny Lambert, wrote nearly 80 songs together, including “White Lies, Blue Eyes,” a #28 hit in early 1972 for Bullet. Flax and Lambert did considerable work for Big Tree and Buddah Records.
I find the song to be an interesting hybrid, because it is aimed at kids, but it’s a song about a TV show that the parents of 1971 children had watched. If anyone were going to get the point of the song, it would be the 30-somethings of the early 1970s, not their children, who were just getting a taste of what Howdy Doody had meant to their parents.
I don’t know if I would have paid much attention to the song if I hadn’t stumbled into it while I was buzzing over my good swimming lesson and having Beverly cradling my face in her hands. At that moment, I could have danced to any tune.
Next time, I’ll bring you music by a no-name who actually scraped into the bottom of the charts, and I’ll try to figure out why he stayed there instead of climbing higher. See you Wednesday!
P-Nut Gallery, Do You Know What Time It Is?
A couple of times, I was kept from buying 45s I wanted because I was summering at Good Fellow Camp in Porter, Indiana. That’s the camp that prevented me from seeing Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, but it’s also the camp that gave me very much-needed opportunities to explore life outside of my home.
What happened in these two cases was that, by the time I got home, a song I had enjoyed at camp had sold out and was not being restocked at Zayre, which was about the only place I could find 45s in the pre-mall days. When I was eleven, a single that was not in stock at Zayre was a single I would never find. In the case of today’s song, it meant I would never hear the song again.
The two weeks I spent at Good Fellow Camp in June, 1971 turned out to be a huge turning point in my world. It was my third year of camping, and I was far enough past the death of my mother to exert my personality a bit. Even so, the two expressions of who I was capable of being still surprise me by their daring. I took more risks that first week of camp than I tended to take in a year. I throw myself out there much more often now, but when I was eleven I had no perspective on the value of leaving my comfort zone.
One of my risks involved music, but the other one led to it, so I have to talk first about learning to swim.
After my first swimming lesson at age seven ended in disaster (lake plus boat plus short kid equals wake flattens kid), I didn’t take another stab at a deep pool until I was nine, at camp. There, the instructor was gentle, and all of us Beginners appreciated that but rarely tried to progress. I know I didn’t, especially after an ultra-pale kid named Brian splattered his hot dog from lunch all over the shallow end. He made this barking sound, then . . . never mind.
When I was ten, I fought the pool to a draw. I could hang onto the side and kick, as long as my head did not go under the surface.
When I went to camp in 1971, I had a new stepmother-to-be, and she was not kind about my fear of deep water. Never mind that I was a tree-climber after her heart, and that I loved to play baseball; I caught real hell for not being a swimmer.
You would think I would feed off the motivation of wanting to stick it in her face when I came home a swimmer, but I found her tactic demoralizing. When I came home not just floating but actually swimming after two weeks away, I had a different emotion to thank: I had fallen in love with my swimming instructor.
You know how that goes: you have a preteen crush on someone, and you see the person sometime later, and you are horrified at your poor taste. But I assure you, Beverly, the Good Fellow Camp swimming instructor that year, was a keeper. I was no dummy—she was six years older than I was, and there was no way she would want to have an eleven-year-old boyfriend. I kept my thoughts to myself, but it probably clued her in that I made constant eye contact with her when we were in the pool.
She had long blond hair, and she was wearing a bikini 90% of the time when I interacted with her. At first, she cupped water in her hands and had me blow bubbles in the water. Once, I kissed her hand. I don’t know if she caught on.
For Beverly, I would have done anything. And so, I let her erase my fears of the water, and I floated. Then I kicked. Then I swam.
On Tuesday, the second lesson day, I put my head underwater without panicking for the first time in my life. When I got back to Cabin 6, I was elated. A perky song was playing on my counselor’s radio: WLS was spinning “Do You Know What Time It Is?” by the P-Nut Gallery (Buddah 239). Alby, my counselor, was the first nurturing counselor I’d had; the previous two had been rough-and-tough types who hadn’t clicked too well with me. Alby really showed what a good guy he was this day.
When I stepped through the door and heard the song, I started doing a dance, which involved clapping my hands and stomping my right foot as I spun on my left. A couple of the boys were there as well, and they started clapping with me. I was the only one dancing, though.
As the week wore on, my spirit never wavered, and the guys demanded that I do my dance whenever WLS played “Do You Know what Time It Is?” The song peaked at #62 nationally, but in Chicago, it entered the WLS Top 30 at #21 on May 31, two weeks before it entered the Billboard Hot 100. On June 14 and 21, it ranked #9 and #8. It was in heavy rotation, which should have been a good thing on Thursday night, because that was when the boys called for a dance contest.
That could mean a lot of things in that social circle. Was I annoying them with my dancing? After the first time, I did it only by request. Other boys did the dance when I did. Did they want to show me up? These concerns barely crossed my mind, because we were all having great fun with the song.
After dinner, all the boys of Cabin 6 skipped other activities to attend the contest. Three others participated; they came up with something original and danced to whatever song WLS played. Then it was my turn, presumably to do my dance to “Do You Know What Time It Is?” But the song didn’t come on. Alby let me wait out two songs, but we agreed that I would have to dance to the third song. And the third song was the P-Nut Gallery tune. Thanks, WLS.
The vote made me a winner. Alby spent part of the day Friday making a plaque for me: “Best Dancer, Cabin 6.” We always had a bonfire and awards ceremony on Friday night. I was hoping it would impress Beverly when Alby handed me my award.
As it turned out, after two years without recognition, I got a number of awards: I received four certificates for my Nature studies, and I was named Most Enthusiastic Athlete, which I cinched by winning the running long jump. I didn’t win any Red Cross swimming awards, though, so all I could do was look at Beverly in the firelight while she doled out certificates to far better swimmers.
When she finished, she started talking about how she had never seen anyone progress as fast as one of the Beginners. She found it amazing, in fact, that someone could be afraid to get his face in the water and then finish the week by almost swimming a full lap. I still didn’t get it, until she said my name and called me the Most Improved Swimmer. I saw real pride in her eyes, and she gave me a hug.
So, what did I do at summer camp? I learned to swim, I allowed myself to cut loose and dance in front of people I barely knew, and I dealt maturely with a young lady I absolutely adored.
I stayed a second week and got even better at swimming. When they asked at home how my two weeks had gone, I said that I had learned to swim. Such was the disconnect between camp and home. And the record was off WLS, and it wasn’t available at Zayre, and I never saw Beverly again, and I never heard “Do You Know What Time It Is?” again.
Not, that is, until I was digging through some records in a vinyl shop in Douglas, Michigan. I wasn’t looking for it, but there it was: 28 years later, I bought that single. Instead of having to replay it from memory, I owned the 45. I consider my intention to buy the 45 sufficient cause to include it in this blog about my childhood 45s. Who knows if it would have survived the Great Meltdown?
When I bought the Buddah Box 3-CD collection, one song I was after was “Back When My Hair Was Short” by Gunhill Road. At the time, I didn’t know that the P-Nut Gallery song was a Buddah release, or I might have been irritated that they included a number of non-charting releases but ignored a song that made the Chicago Top Ten. Now, it annoys me. It’s not a spectacular song, but I really would like to have clean copies of all of my memory songs.
The guy singing this song is Tommy Nolan. The group seems to have been assembled to take advantage of the craze surrounding the return of the Howdy Doody show. The song’s writers and producers, Bobby Flax and Lanny Lambert, wrote nearly 80 songs together, including “White Lies, Blue Eyes,” a #28 hit in early 1972 for Bullet. Flax and Lambert did considerable work for Big Tree and Buddah Records.
I find the song to be an interesting hybrid, because it is aimed at kids, but it’s a song about a TV show that the parents of 1971 children had watched. If anyone were going to get the point of the song, it would be the 30-somethings of the early 1970s, not their children, who were just getting a taste of what Howdy Doody had meant to their parents.
I don’t know if I would have paid much attention to the song if I hadn’t stumbled into it while I was buzzing over my good swimming lesson and having Beverly cradling my face in her hands. At that moment, I could have danced to any tune.
Next time, I’ll bring you music by a no-name who actually scraped into the bottom of the charts, and I’ll try to figure out why he stayed there instead of climbing higher. See you Wednesday!
P-Nut Gallery, Do You Know What Time It Is?
Friday, May 23, 2008
An Oldie, 1970 Style
My perspective on what constitutes an “oldie” has changed over time. When I was 11, the Chicago “oldies” station, WIND, played songs from ten to fifteen years before. That pretty much took things back to the beginning of the Rock Era, so there was nowhere else to go. Now, if you play fifteen-year-old songs, you’re talking Nirvana. To me, that doesn’t seem like an oldie.
I got a very fresh perspective on oldies today, Friday, May 23. My Spanish students were making videos of skits they had written as a final project. One pair included a long sequence that pictures them throwing a baseball around. They chose “Peace of Mind” by Boston for the audio. I found it a perfectly rational choice.
Today, the film’s director stopped by to check on his grade, and he mentioned that he and his partner had wanted to learn the song so they could play it themselves to impress me further. The other guy couldn’t get the acoustic guitar licks down, so they just used the recording. “It’s a pretty good song,” this student said.
The way he said it made me realize he had just discovered “Peace of Mind.” That reminded me of the day my brother Jeff, listening to Aerosmith in 1988, said, “I heard they had a few hits a long time ago.” And, no kidding, someone once said in my presence, “That’s the band Paul McCartney was in before Wings.”
For the first but not last time this year, I am going to visit the summer of 1970. The song I am presenting today isn’t from the summer; it was an “oldie” by then. In 1970 parlance, that means it had spent several months out of the rotation on WLS. Its final week in the Top 40 was February 21, 1970. It had reached #10 in its ten-week chart run, but I hadn’t paid it much attention, because my mind was focused elsewhere in the weeks following my mother’s death in January.
The song, “Jingle Jangle” by the Archies (Kirshner 5002), reached my ears on a hot August evening (you expected me to say “night”), and finally it registered with me as a song I would enjoy from then on.
1970 was a year of understandable turmoil in my world. As soon as school ended, my dad sent me to visit his sister in Loogootee, Indiana, a stone’s throw from Shoals, where his parents lived. My Aunt Jenny and her husband, Uncle Eddie, lived on a farm with their three sons. I learned about chickens, piglets, electric fences, and walking behind horses without letting them know you’re there. One of the boys owned “Sugar, Sugar,” so there was good music. I was there when the radio stopped playing “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and segued into the next Creedence hit, “Up Around the Bend.”
Then it was back to Gary to visit my mom’s mom for a while. I got terribly homesick while I was there, even though Grandma made me the best breakfasts I have ever had and was marvelous company. I was still there when Father’s Day rolled around, and I didn’t hear any music at all during that stretch.
The music scene picked up for me again at the end of July and into August, when I moved about ten blocks to the home of Aunt Eileen, her husband, Uncle Jim, and my cousins Jim and Bob. The boys slept upstairs on a wide-open second-floor; Bob’s bed sat in a cubbyhole with a window that overlooked Kentucky Street. It was all very cozy.
One week in August, I’ll go into the music Bob and I heard on WLS at night. He left the radio on when the lights went out, something I had never thought of before. He developed a game in which we competed to see who could name the songs first as they came on. Though Bob is five years older than I am, I did a pretty good job of guessing the tunes. Good enough that he recalled my prowess when I visited his house seventeen years later.
Among the songs WLS played a lot that won’t be part of the blog were “The Love You Save,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “Hitchin’ a Ride.” Songs I associate particularly with that time were “Ball of Confusion” and the “Overture from Tommy” by the Assembled Multitude. I won’t forget “Big Yellow Taxi” by the Neighborhood, because Bob thought they were singing “Take down a bank, put up a parking lot.”
WLS had a very tight playlist, so I can recall just two oldies playing during those after-hours radio sessions. One was “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal, from 1965. I had never heard it before, so I thought it was new. Of course, they didn’t play it again. The other “oldie” was “Jingle Jangle.”
I remembered that song well, but it hadn’t given me as much joy as “Sugar, Sugar.” On that August evening, though, I recognized it from the first guitar chord, and I heard the song for the “second first” time. I could see that it had the same upbeat attitude as “The Love You Save,” a song I adored. My friends and I were amazed that a local group, the Jackson Five, had become so big. At this time, I was staying 19 blocks from the Jacksons’ former Gary home. Now, hearing “Jingle Jangle” from the perspective of having heard “ABC” and “The Love You Save” all spring and summer, I found merit in its cheeriness.
That one summer play as an “oldie” affected me enough that I bought the single when I got home later in August. I can see from looking at the label that, on one occasion in 1970 or 1971, I did another of my record censuses in which I wrote numbers on the labels so I could tell how many 45s I had. I may have alphabetized the records by this time, because “Jingle Jangle” was single number 3.
The song is a Barry/Kim composition, whereas the flip, “Justine,” is credited solely to Jeff Barry. Jeff is listed on the record as producer, with Don Kirshner as production supervisor. Donnie Kirshner’s career is pretty well-known, but maybe not to everyone: He was a key figure in the Brill Building heyday of the early 1960s, and his connections made him a natural choice to develop music for the Monkees. He brought Jeff Barry on board for that project, then they both moved on to create the Archies. He developed Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert for late-night TV around 1973, and he signed the band Kansas to his Kirshner label.
The recording was unusual for an Archies record. Ron Dante says the tune was originally meant to feature Toni Wine as the lead vocalist, so the track was recorded in her range. She sings the intro in her “Veronica” voice, but thereafter her voice comes to the fore only in counterpoint in the choruses.
What Ron did to get around the key difficulties was sing the verses in a whispery falsetto. By contrast, Jeff Barry used his deepest bass to sing “Oh, come on” in the bridge. Andy Kim is in there on the choruses, along with any number of his and Jeff’s usual suspects. I don’t have an exact list of who sang on “Jingle Jangle.”
Whenever I hear the song now, it transports me to my cousins’ bedroom in the Glen Park section of Gary. It’s dark, my cousin Bob has fallen asleep, and I am processing the changes in my world while the music flows through me. I have never been one (perhaps because I predate the video era) to like a song just because it’s paired with a great video. But sometimes my mind creates its own videos, and those images can put a decent song over the hump into the “essential” category. The decision by WLS to slip “Jingle Jangle” back onto the airwaves for one last play made all the difference for that song’s legacy in my memories.
After “Sugar, Sugar” and “Jingle Jangle,” I know some cynicism remains about the validity of cartoon bands. To counteract the sweetness of those two songs, I want to include the most serious of the Archies tunes. “A Summer Prayer for Peace” was not released in the United States, but it hit #1 in South Africa. Ron and Jeff went into the studio alone and put it together. With summer approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, save in Minnesota and perhaps Winnipeg, I’d like to repost this “oldie” that I used in a February essay. As I said then, you have to update the population numbers, but everything else is far too relevant.
Next week I will be celebrating the birthday of a jazz saxophonist you probably don’t know. He takes us back to the early caithiseach 45s after these past two weeks of Barry/Kim music. I’ll see you Wednesday!
Archies, Jingle Jangle
Archies, A Summer Prayer for Peace
I got a very fresh perspective on oldies today, Friday, May 23. My Spanish students were making videos of skits they had written as a final project. One pair included a long sequence that pictures them throwing a baseball around. They chose “Peace of Mind” by Boston for the audio. I found it a perfectly rational choice.
Today, the film’s director stopped by to check on his grade, and he mentioned that he and his partner had wanted to learn the song so they could play it themselves to impress me further. The other guy couldn’t get the acoustic guitar licks down, so they just used the recording. “It’s a pretty good song,” this student said.
The way he said it made me realize he had just discovered “Peace of Mind.” That reminded me of the day my brother Jeff, listening to Aerosmith in 1988, said, “I heard they had a few hits a long time ago.” And, no kidding, someone once said in my presence, “That’s the band Paul McCartney was in before Wings.”
For the first but not last time this year, I am going to visit the summer of 1970. The song I am presenting today isn’t from the summer; it was an “oldie” by then. In 1970 parlance, that means it had spent several months out of the rotation on WLS. Its final week in the Top 40 was February 21, 1970. It had reached #10 in its ten-week chart run, but I hadn’t paid it much attention, because my mind was focused elsewhere in the weeks following my mother’s death in January.
The song, “Jingle Jangle” by the Archies (Kirshner 5002), reached my ears on a hot August evening (you expected me to say “night”), and finally it registered with me as a song I would enjoy from then on.
1970 was a year of understandable turmoil in my world. As soon as school ended, my dad sent me to visit his sister in Loogootee, Indiana, a stone’s throw from Shoals, where his parents lived. My Aunt Jenny and her husband, Uncle Eddie, lived on a farm with their three sons. I learned about chickens, piglets, electric fences, and walking behind horses without letting them know you’re there. One of the boys owned “Sugar, Sugar,” so there was good music. I was there when the radio stopped playing “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and segued into the next Creedence hit, “Up Around the Bend.”
Then it was back to Gary to visit my mom’s mom for a while. I got terribly homesick while I was there, even though Grandma made me the best breakfasts I have ever had and was marvelous company. I was still there when Father’s Day rolled around, and I didn’t hear any music at all during that stretch.
The music scene picked up for me again at the end of July and into August, when I moved about ten blocks to the home of Aunt Eileen, her husband, Uncle Jim, and my cousins Jim and Bob. The boys slept upstairs on a wide-open second-floor; Bob’s bed sat in a cubbyhole with a window that overlooked Kentucky Street. It was all very cozy.
One week in August, I’ll go into the music Bob and I heard on WLS at night. He left the radio on when the lights went out, something I had never thought of before. He developed a game in which we competed to see who could name the songs first as they came on. Though Bob is five years older than I am, I did a pretty good job of guessing the tunes. Good enough that he recalled my prowess when I visited his house seventeen years later.
Among the songs WLS played a lot that won’t be part of the blog were “The Love You Save,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “Hitchin’ a Ride.” Songs I associate particularly with that time were “Ball of Confusion” and the “Overture from Tommy” by the Assembled Multitude. I won’t forget “Big Yellow Taxi” by the Neighborhood, because Bob thought they were singing “Take down a bank, put up a parking lot.”
WLS had a very tight playlist, so I can recall just two oldies playing during those after-hours radio sessions. One was “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal, from 1965. I had never heard it before, so I thought it was new. Of course, they didn’t play it again. The other “oldie” was “Jingle Jangle.”
I remembered that song well, but it hadn’t given me as much joy as “Sugar, Sugar.” On that August evening, though, I recognized it from the first guitar chord, and I heard the song for the “second first” time. I could see that it had the same upbeat attitude as “The Love You Save,” a song I adored. My friends and I were amazed that a local group, the Jackson Five, had become so big. At this time, I was staying 19 blocks from the Jacksons’ former Gary home. Now, hearing “Jingle Jangle” from the perspective of having heard “ABC” and “The Love You Save” all spring and summer, I found merit in its cheeriness.
That one summer play as an “oldie” affected me enough that I bought the single when I got home later in August. I can see from looking at the label that, on one occasion in 1970 or 1971, I did another of my record censuses in which I wrote numbers on the labels so I could tell how many 45s I had. I may have alphabetized the records by this time, because “Jingle Jangle” was single number 3.
The song is a Barry/Kim composition, whereas the flip, “Justine,” is credited solely to Jeff Barry. Jeff is listed on the record as producer, with Don Kirshner as production supervisor. Donnie Kirshner’s career is pretty well-known, but maybe not to everyone: He was a key figure in the Brill Building heyday of the early 1960s, and his connections made him a natural choice to develop music for the Monkees. He brought Jeff Barry on board for that project, then they both moved on to create the Archies. He developed Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert for late-night TV around 1973, and he signed the band Kansas to his Kirshner label.
The recording was unusual for an Archies record. Ron Dante says the tune was originally meant to feature Toni Wine as the lead vocalist, so the track was recorded in her range. She sings the intro in her “Veronica” voice, but thereafter her voice comes to the fore only in counterpoint in the choruses.
What Ron did to get around the key difficulties was sing the verses in a whispery falsetto. By contrast, Jeff Barry used his deepest bass to sing “Oh, come on” in the bridge. Andy Kim is in there on the choruses, along with any number of his and Jeff’s usual suspects. I don’t have an exact list of who sang on “Jingle Jangle.”
Whenever I hear the song now, it transports me to my cousins’ bedroom in the Glen Park section of Gary. It’s dark, my cousin Bob has fallen asleep, and I am processing the changes in my world while the music flows through me. I have never been one (perhaps because I predate the video era) to like a song just because it’s paired with a great video. But sometimes my mind creates its own videos, and those images can put a decent song over the hump into the “essential” category. The decision by WLS to slip “Jingle Jangle” back onto the airwaves for one last play made all the difference for that song’s legacy in my memories.
After “Sugar, Sugar” and “Jingle Jangle,” I know some cynicism remains about the validity of cartoon bands. To counteract the sweetness of those two songs, I want to include the most serious of the Archies tunes. “A Summer Prayer for Peace” was not released in the United States, but it hit #1 in South Africa. Ron and Jeff went into the studio alone and put it together. With summer approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, save in Minnesota and perhaps Winnipeg, I’d like to repost this “oldie” that I used in a February essay. As I said then, you have to update the population numbers, but everything else is far too relevant.
Next week I will be celebrating the birthday of a jazz saxophonist you probably don’t know. He takes us back to the early caithiseach 45s after these past two weeks of Barry/Kim music. I’ll see you Wednesday!
Archies, Jingle Jangle
Archies, A Summer Prayer for Peace
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
It Never Got Better Than This
I love many kinds of music, and many songs that have nothing in common with each other. To be honest, the reactions of my easy-listening friends and my head-banger friends to music that doesn’t suit them disappoints me a bit. I don’t understand how people can develop such a rut that they can’t skip to another groove.
I am going to discuss a song that nearly everyone, regardless of age, level of musical sophistication, self-perceived musical superiority or affiliation with Rolling Stone can sing from memory. Everyone knows this song because there has never been a better pop song.
The song is “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies (Calendar 1008).
Any Major Dude, whom I respect as a champion of spectacular music, has not included this song in the Perfect Pop series on his blog. Maybe he won’t. But I can make a case, both technical and personal, for “Sugar, Sugar” as the definition of popular music, perhaps even populist music. From its misunderstood origins to its effect on the careers of its writers, the song has earned smirks from writers who could not stop humming it. I’m going to get militant as I tell you why a memorable pop song is not by nature a pop song to be avoided.
I start with the genesis of the song. Ronnie Dante says that Jeff Barry had encouraged Andy Kim to come up with something for the Archies to record. Andy got the idea for the first bit and presented it to Jeff over the phone. They developed the tune together, with Jeff providing the keyboard hook and some lyrics I’ll get to shortly.
Other writers and producers had created bubblegum music. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Chewy, Chewy” come to mind. Are they perfect pop songs? No. Why do I say “Sugar, Sugar” reaches that level?
Jeff Barry aimed a lot of his 1960s songs at young teens. In this respect, he was considerably ahead of his peers in understanding the intellectual power, and the purchasing power, of that demographic. Whereas the Ohio Express songs seek to combine a catchy melody with inane lyrics, Jeff’s songs were vibrant enough to energize the young and vital enough to impress music historians. It’s no accident that “Have I ever told you how good it feels to hold you” has been honored by the Library of Congress, while “I got love in my tummy and I feel like lovin’ you” has not.
The difference is that Jeff did not try to capitalize on the innocence of youth; he celebrated it. He still does. If you lament that children are now singing “Shawty need a refund, needa bring that nigga back/Just like a refund, I make her bring that ass back,” you are not alone, and it’s not age that makes one sad about where lyrics have gone.
When Jeff was asked by Don Kirshner to write for the Archies, Jeff did so with a goal of bridging the gap between kiddie pop and adult pop. Jeff risked his stature as a serious producer/writer when he took on this task. He and Andy Kim succeeded with “Sugar, Sugar,” above all other Archies tunes. Andy got it started, and Jeff knew this was a keeper.
The risk paid off commercially, but the intelligentsia, in the throes of psychedelia and Beatlemania, among other –ias, branded Jeff as a simplistic writer. A number of years later, one critic of this ilk asked Jeff why he didn’t write for adults. Jeff replied that recently he had heard a line by Rod McKuen: “I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you.” The critic replied that Jeff should have written lines like that.
“Fuck you,” Jeff replied. “I wrote that. It’s from ‘Sugar, Sugar.’”
That is part of why “Sugar, Sugar” is a perfect pop song. It’s not about laughing all the way to the bank, like High School Musical 2. It’s about making music that neither shuts out kids nor sends their parents screaming from the room. Compare “Pour a little sugar on me, honey” with “Pour some sugar on me,” and tell me that the lyric Def Leppard echoed is really more adult than the Archies original.
The “Sugar, Sugar” recording session shows another level of sophistication that people tend not to hear. For the first fifteen or so unnumbered takes, Jeff couldn’t get his drummer, Gary Chester (born Cesario Gurciullo, 1924-1987), to match what Jeff was feeling for the song. Unlike the session for Andy Kim’s “Baby, I Love You,” Jeff persevered. He wound up standing in front of his drummer, swaying to the beat in his head to keep the tempo surprisingly slow. Jeff had no use for the frenetic pace of a kiddie tune here.
As the end of the second chorus approaches, Ron Dante sings “You are my candy, girl, and you got me . . . wanting you.” After “me,” he sucks in his breath, the way people do when someone attractive walks by. I asked whose idea that was, and Ron said it was Jeff’s. It is such a subtle touch that kids would never hear it, yet adults know what it implies. No need to say what “wanting you” means; the lyric stays kid-friendly and the breathing provides the subtext. I didn’t hear it as a kid, but I hear it now, every time, and I nod in approval of the tactic.
Did that mean Jeff controlled the song too much? Ron Dante himself came up with the “Whoa-oh-oh” part that leads out of the second verse. At that point the song crosses into soul music; counterpoint shouts of “honey” crop up, and after Toni Wine sings the low “Betty” version of “I’m gonna make your life so sweet,” she belts the high, Aretha-like “Veronica” version of the same phrase. She told me she crafted that pair of singing personalities.
Now, with a pretty good track ready for release, it was up to the kids to buy it once they heard it, right? Ron Dante said that, after two very kid-oriented singles, this third Archies release met with radio resistance simply because of the artist name. At last someone played it, and the listener response was so intense that the song could not be denied airplay. The result was a single that entered the Top 40 on August 16, 1969, spent four weeks at #1 starting September 20, and logged 22 weeks in the Hot 100. “Sugar, Sugar” was the RIAA Record of the Year for 1969. That consumer-driven success is what makes me call it a populist song as well as a popular one.
I have given you bio information on Jeff Barry and Andy Kim before, but I owe you Ron Dante and Toni Wine. Ron Dante, born Carmine Granito in 1945, sang the Archies hits, as well as “Tracy” by the Cuff Links. He also sang (but not the lead) on “Leader of the Laundromat” by the Detergents, a parody of “Leader of the Pack.” Everyone involved with the parody knew it would be subjected to a lawsuit for royalties by the writers of the original hit, among whom was Jeff Barry.
Ron Dante moved on from the Archies to production work for all of Barry Manilow’s records through about 1981. He sang background on “Mandy” and a number of other hits. He still performs regularly.
Toni Wine, born in 1947, wrote “A Groovy Kind of Love” when she was about 18, and she wrote “Candida” for Tony Orlando after she left the Archies. She and Robin Grean sang the backing vocals on “Candida” and “Knock Three Times”; don’t let Joel Whitburn fool you on this one. Ellie Greenwich didn’t participate in the Dawn recordings, but you can hear her on the Archies songs. Toni tours with Tony Orlando now.
While I’m at it, I should note that Gary Chester played drums on “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” as just the tip of his session-work iceberg.
And now it gets personal. As soon as “Sugar, Sugar” leapt onto WLS in August, 1969, I fell in love with it, along with the rest of the country. At home, I was the daytime caregiver for a very sick mother, and this song kept up my spirits. This one, and “Honky Tonk Women,” of all things.
I didn’t ask anyone to take me to the store to buy the 45, but I didn’t have to. I got a copy of it on the back of a cereal box. Four Archies tunes were featured on a cereal; I believe it was Sugar Crisp. I bought the cereal, hoping to get the right record (the songs weren’t named; you had to play them to know what you had), and on the third try, I had my song.
By 1969, though, my stereo tonearm had been snapped in two by rambunctious siblings, and finally the wires pulled loose. I bought a little record player from a neighbor for a dollar. Its drawback was that it played only 33 1/3 rpm records. So I played my Archies cereal box record at LP speed and imagined that it was playing faster. It was better than nothing. I would still have asked for the actual vinyl single, but it seemed sacrilegious to own such a cheery 45 when I was walking my mom to the toilet every couple of hours. I didn’t turn off the radio, though.
And yet, Mom rallied in late 1969. On November 12, she and I were watching the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, sitting together on the sofa, when Glen and the Lennon Sisters started singing “Sugar, Sugar.” My mom started swaying to the music, but I thought it was a ridiculous performance. If you wanted sacrilege, there it was. I snapped, “They should sing their own songs.”
My mom looked at me, her mouth open in shock, and I stomped off to my room. Fifty-nine days later, she died. And, you know, sometimes you can’t go back and apologize for screwing up a perfectly decent evening. She never asked me about it, and though I tried to make myself explain what had been going through my mind, I never could. That’s too bad, because she would have gotten it, after all those years of nurturing my musical tastes.
The day she died, “Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley was #11, heading for #6. “Sugar, Sugar” had slipped out of the Hot 100 on December 20. That was a huge and unwelcome change in the radio landscape for me, but I still had my cereal box cutout, and I still played it at LP speed. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have left.
Saturday I’ll look at another Archies song, one that is evocative for different reasons. Thanks for reading. See you then.
Archies--Sugar, Sugar
I am going to discuss a song that nearly everyone, regardless of age, level of musical sophistication, self-perceived musical superiority or affiliation with Rolling Stone can sing from memory. Everyone knows this song because there has never been a better pop song.
The song is “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies (Calendar 1008).
Any Major Dude, whom I respect as a champion of spectacular music, has not included this song in the Perfect Pop series on his blog. Maybe he won’t. But I can make a case, both technical and personal, for “Sugar, Sugar” as the definition of popular music, perhaps even populist music. From its misunderstood origins to its effect on the careers of its writers, the song has earned smirks from writers who could not stop humming it. I’m going to get militant as I tell you why a memorable pop song is not by nature a pop song to be avoided.
I start with the genesis of the song. Ronnie Dante says that Jeff Barry had encouraged Andy Kim to come up with something for the Archies to record. Andy got the idea for the first bit and presented it to Jeff over the phone. They developed the tune together, with Jeff providing the keyboard hook and some lyrics I’ll get to shortly.
Other writers and producers had created bubblegum music. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Chewy, Chewy” come to mind. Are they perfect pop songs? No. Why do I say “Sugar, Sugar” reaches that level?
Jeff Barry aimed a lot of his 1960s songs at young teens. In this respect, he was considerably ahead of his peers in understanding the intellectual power, and the purchasing power, of that demographic. Whereas the Ohio Express songs seek to combine a catchy melody with inane lyrics, Jeff’s songs were vibrant enough to energize the young and vital enough to impress music historians. It’s no accident that “Have I ever told you how good it feels to hold you” has been honored by the Library of Congress, while “I got love in my tummy and I feel like lovin’ you” has not.
The difference is that Jeff did not try to capitalize on the innocence of youth; he celebrated it. He still does. If you lament that children are now singing “Shawty need a refund, needa bring that nigga back/Just like a refund, I make her bring that ass back,” you are not alone, and it’s not age that makes one sad about where lyrics have gone.
When Jeff was asked by Don Kirshner to write for the Archies, Jeff did so with a goal of bridging the gap between kiddie pop and adult pop. Jeff risked his stature as a serious producer/writer when he took on this task. He and Andy Kim succeeded with “Sugar, Sugar,” above all other Archies tunes. Andy got it started, and Jeff knew this was a keeper.
The risk paid off commercially, but the intelligentsia, in the throes of psychedelia and Beatlemania, among other –ias, branded Jeff as a simplistic writer. A number of years later, one critic of this ilk asked Jeff why he didn’t write for adults. Jeff replied that recently he had heard a line by Rod McKuen: “I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you.” The critic replied that Jeff should have written lines like that.
“Fuck you,” Jeff replied. “I wrote that. It’s from ‘Sugar, Sugar.’”
That is part of why “Sugar, Sugar” is a perfect pop song. It’s not about laughing all the way to the bank, like High School Musical 2. It’s about making music that neither shuts out kids nor sends their parents screaming from the room. Compare “Pour a little sugar on me, honey” with “Pour some sugar on me,” and tell me that the lyric Def Leppard echoed is really more adult than the Archies original.
The “Sugar, Sugar” recording session shows another level of sophistication that people tend not to hear. For the first fifteen or so unnumbered takes, Jeff couldn’t get his drummer, Gary Chester (born Cesario Gurciullo, 1924-1987), to match what Jeff was feeling for the song. Unlike the session for Andy Kim’s “Baby, I Love You,” Jeff persevered. He wound up standing in front of his drummer, swaying to the beat in his head to keep the tempo surprisingly slow. Jeff had no use for the frenetic pace of a kiddie tune here.
As the end of the second chorus approaches, Ron Dante sings “You are my candy, girl, and you got me . . . wanting you.” After “me,” he sucks in his breath, the way people do when someone attractive walks by. I asked whose idea that was, and Ron said it was Jeff’s. It is such a subtle touch that kids would never hear it, yet adults know what it implies. No need to say what “wanting you” means; the lyric stays kid-friendly and the breathing provides the subtext. I didn’t hear it as a kid, but I hear it now, every time, and I nod in approval of the tactic.
Did that mean Jeff controlled the song too much? Ron Dante himself came up with the “Whoa-oh-oh” part that leads out of the second verse. At that point the song crosses into soul music; counterpoint shouts of “honey” crop up, and after Toni Wine sings the low “Betty” version of “I’m gonna make your life so sweet,” she belts the high, Aretha-like “Veronica” version of the same phrase. She told me she crafted that pair of singing personalities.
Now, with a pretty good track ready for release, it was up to the kids to buy it once they heard it, right? Ron Dante said that, after two very kid-oriented singles, this third Archies release met with radio resistance simply because of the artist name. At last someone played it, and the listener response was so intense that the song could not be denied airplay. The result was a single that entered the Top 40 on August 16, 1969, spent four weeks at #1 starting September 20, and logged 22 weeks in the Hot 100. “Sugar, Sugar” was the RIAA Record of the Year for 1969. That consumer-driven success is what makes me call it a populist song as well as a popular one.
I have given you bio information on Jeff Barry and Andy Kim before, but I owe you Ron Dante and Toni Wine. Ron Dante, born Carmine Granito in 1945, sang the Archies hits, as well as “Tracy” by the Cuff Links. He also sang (but not the lead) on “Leader of the Laundromat” by the Detergents, a parody of “Leader of the Pack.” Everyone involved with the parody knew it would be subjected to a lawsuit for royalties by the writers of the original hit, among whom was Jeff Barry.
Ron Dante moved on from the Archies to production work for all of Barry Manilow’s records through about 1981. He sang background on “Mandy” and a number of other hits. He still performs regularly.
Toni Wine, born in 1947, wrote “A Groovy Kind of Love” when she was about 18, and she wrote “Candida” for Tony Orlando after she left the Archies. She and Robin Grean sang the backing vocals on “Candida” and “Knock Three Times”; don’t let Joel Whitburn fool you on this one. Ellie Greenwich didn’t participate in the Dawn recordings, but you can hear her on the Archies songs. Toni tours with Tony Orlando now.
While I’m at it, I should note that Gary Chester played drums on “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” as just the tip of his session-work iceberg.
And now it gets personal. As soon as “Sugar, Sugar” leapt onto WLS in August, 1969, I fell in love with it, along with the rest of the country. At home, I was the daytime caregiver for a very sick mother, and this song kept up my spirits. This one, and “Honky Tonk Women,” of all things.
I didn’t ask anyone to take me to the store to buy the 45, but I didn’t have to. I got a copy of it on the back of a cereal box. Four Archies tunes were featured on a cereal; I believe it was Sugar Crisp. I bought the cereal, hoping to get the right record (the songs weren’t named; you had to play them to know what you had), and on the third try, I had my song.
By 1969, though, my stereo tonearm had been snapped in two by rambunctious siblings, and finally the wires pulled loose. I bought a little record player from a neighbor for a dollar. Its drawback was that it played only 33 1/3 rpm records. So I played my Archies cereal box record at LP speed and imagined that it was playing faster. It was better than nothing. I would still have asked for the actual vinyl single, but it seemed sacrilegious to own such a cheery 45 when I was walking my mom to the toilet every couple of hours. I didn’t turn off the radio, though.
And yet, Mom rallied in late 1969. On November 12, she and I were watching the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, sitting together on the sofa, when Glen and the Lennon Sisters started singing “Sugar, Sugar.” My mom started swaying to the music, but I thought it was a ridiculous performance. If you wanted sacrilege, there it was. I snapped, “They should sing their own songs.”
My mom looked at me, her mouth open in shock, and I stomped off to my room. Fifty-nine days later, she died. And, you know, sometimes you can’t go back and apologize for screwing up a perfectly decent evening. She never asked me about it, and though I tried to make myself explain what had been going through my mind, I never could. That’s too bad, because she would have gotten it, after all those years of nurturing my musical tastes.
The day she died, “Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley was #11, heading for #6. “Sugar, Sugar” had slipped out of the Hot 100 on December 20. That was a huge and unwelcome change in the radio landscape for me, but I still had my cereal box cutout, and I still played it at LP speed. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have left.
Saturday I’ll look at another Archies song, one that is evocative for different reasons. Thanks for reading. See you then.
Archies--Sugar, Sugar
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