This press release just in:
ANDY KIM, CO-WRITER OF “SUGAR SUGAR,” IS SWEET ON COLLECTORS’ CHOICE MUSIC Hi. In 1974, the same year that the live-action sitcom was cancelled, Hanna-Barbera turned The Partridge Family into cartoon characters. The original plan was to update "The Jetsons," but CBS pushed for them to revise the cartoon with the Partridge Family instead. That’s why it’s set in 2200 A.D. Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, Brian Forster, Suzanne Crough, and Dave Madden all worked on the project at some point. The only holdouts were unfortunately the most glaring holdouts…Shirley Jones and David Cassidy refused to participate. The character of Shirley Partridge was voiced by Joan Gerber, and Keith Partridge was played by Chuck McClenan. As with most Hanna-Barbera projects, Hoyt Curtin was the musical director and penned some pretty good gum tunes for McClenan to sing. In addition to the new songs, they recorded an updated version of "Take Good Care of Her" from "The Partridge Family Notebook" album, with McClenan singing Cassidy’s lines. Pretty weird! These songs were never issued in any form, but I’ve rescued them from my old VHS tapes. I’m sharing the mp3’s at my blog, http://mondodaddykin.blogspot.com/ Check it out! Hi. In 1970, after his phenomenal success with The Monkees and The Archies via television, Don Kirshner set his sights on the motion picture industry to launch his latest bubblegum band. "Toomorrow" was a movie, a band, an album, two singles…and a flop! Kirshner recruited a 21-year-old Australian singer and actress named Olivia Newton-John to front the band, which also included Vic Cooper, Ben Thomas, and Karl Chambers. The plot is pretty wild. A space center called Alphoid Galactic Control has assigned an alien (played by John Williams) to observe Earthlings in search of a cure for "the sterility of sound in space." When he hears the music of Toomorrow, he kidnaps the band and their positive sounds and whisks them into outer space to save the day. I actually think it’s pretty groovy. The film bombed, but has since become a cult classic. The music is pretty good pop in my opinion. Despite the project’s failure, the sun is going to shine…toomorrow! I’m sharing mp3’s of the music at my blog, http://www.mondodaddykin.blogspot.com/ Check it out! Hi. Remember The Harlem Globetrotters cartoon from 1970? Kirshner Records released an album to coincide with the Saturday morning cartoon by Hanna-Barbera. The series was so popular that it made superstars out of the already famous basketball legends. Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal became household names in 1970. Enter Don Kirshner, who will make a bubblegum band from any known substance. The Globetrotters album is unique in that it transcended the kiddie market, and produced a huge beach-music hit with "Rainy Day Bells." Yes, this is the hit version that appears on The Beach Music Anthology box set among many other beach compilations. The other songs are a lot of fun as well. Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield penned half of the album, and the other half was written by gum legends like Jeff Barry, Ron Dante, and Jamie Carr. Good stuff! At my blog, http://www.mondodaddykin.blogspot.com/ , I’m sharing mp3 files of the album, including a couple of bonus tracks! Take care, more gum later… Calling all fans of The Archies and Ron Dante! Did you know there is a wealth of unreleased material from The Archies at their peak period? About 95% of the songs played on "Archie’s Funhouse" (the third season of the TV cartoon) were unreleased pop gems penned primarily by Neil Goldberg, working under Jeff Barry at the time (1970-71). Along with the dance-of-the-week numbers, we’re talking close to 50 rarities. When I first heard these on TV, I was about 10 years old. I had no concept of the value of a "non-LP B-side." It’s like a treasure hidden away for the truest fans. That’s what I equate the "Funhouse" songs and the dances to, and why I consider it the Holy Grail of Archies music. This is not some lame later incarnation of the band, but the same awesome musicians that gave us "Sugar Sugar." To Beatles fans (which I am one of the biggest in the whole wide universe), it’s the equivalent of finding several unreleased studio albums lying in a warehouse…they’re in their PRIME and Ron Dante’s voice shines like the sun itself. Well, you may ask, "How can I hear these?" I put together a VHS video compilation of these clips that I sell on eBay (just look under my member name, daddykin, for availability). Then, I culled the audio of the songs off the videotapes and transferred it to a CD that I call "The Riverdale Archives." I share this CD with you freely at my blog, http://www.mondodaddykin.blogspot.com/ Please check it out. You won’t be disappointed. daddykin Hi. It’s an honor to be enrolled in Kim Cooper and David Smay’s Bubblegum University. Their Bubblegum Book was a huge influence on me in starting my own blog, MONDO DADDYKIN. I have collected bubblegum records for years, and their book, along with blogs like Bubblegum Fink, has inspired me to share a lot of these albums with you on MONDO DADDYKIN. While my blog consists of many elements like TV soundtracks and kiddie records to name a couple, my initial focus is the records made by TV-inspired bubblegum groups like The Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and many others you may remember. My nickname is The Daddykin (after Veronica Lodge’s father, "Daddykins"!). Mondo Daddykin means "all things daddykin," referring to my posts which all had some kind of impact on me in my record collecting journey. My following posts will give you an idea of the bubblegum stuff you’ll find at my blog, http://www.mondodaddykin.blogspot.com/ Kim, thank you very much for the invitation. It is truly an honor to be here! daddykin The Partridge Family Since you’ve tried everything else, why not a fierce, impeccable pop concept album about jism pressure? Cassidy’s excuse is ambition. On previous outings, Farrell sped up David’s voice to make the star (then in his late teens) sound adolescent. The effect was that of a constipated chipmunk fleeing a series of catgut holocausts. The son of Broadway dynamo Jack Cassidy and Hollywood musical-comedy star Shirley Jones, David fit poorly the then-emerging model of instant pop star, since nothing was above his station, and had every expectation of a long career once the TV show closed. A song-cycle about star-isolation and busted love affairs was a rare perfect fit of commerce and art. Finally, there’s the scarcely believable, yet unmistakable intent that post-Beatles preteens might respond to a sophisticated, cleverly-wrought whole. The beautiful boy’s sore heart, expressed with magnificent brio in “Rainmaker,” “One Night Stand” and “I Woke Up In Love This Morning” provided kids with tantalizing glimpses of adult miseries they couldn’t wait to have for their very own. (Ron Garmon, from the book Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed) by Steve Fuji If I tell someone I by James Porter The Jackson Five were pioneers in ways no one really thinks about. When the Motown label released “I Want You Back” in the waning months of the sixties, the group was probably regarded as nothing more than five cute kids whom Diana Ross supposedly discovered, just another one of those novelty child acts that pop up every few years. As it turned out, they wound up with a #1 hit, bringing “The Motown Sound” up-to-date for the seventies. They spawned a host of imitators by Tom Walls Latin America has always assimilated Anglo-American popular music in some way; it has imitated it, repackaged it and has given it an indelible Latin stamp. Roberto Jord
Four albums by last of the Brill Building artists (How’d We Ever Get This Way/Rainbow Ride and Baby I Love You/Andy Kim) to be reissued on two CDs on July 18
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Andy Kim has sold millions of records, but most people are under the impression he sold mere hundreds of thousands. The reason is simple. Although Kim had many hits under his own name (“How’d We Ever Get This Way,” “Baby I Love You,” “Rock Me Gently” and “So Good Together,” to name a few), he co-wrote (with Jeff Barry) the Archies’ mega-hit “Sugar Sugar,” which sold 6 million 45 RPM units. Ron Dante provided the magic voice. Yet the fans never saw the scaffolding behind the scenes. The Archies, after all, consisted of Archie, Jughead, Reggie, Betty and Veronica, right?
Collectors’ Choice Music on July 18 will re-release four Andy Kim LPs via two loaded CDs: How’d We Ever Get This Way mates with Rainbow Ride to document Kim’s 1968-69 output, while Baby I Love You is conjoined with the eponymous Andy Kim. All albums except for Andy Kim (which was on Uni Records) were originally released on Steed Records, which was founded in 1967 by songwriter/producer Barry as a division of Jeff Barry Enterprises. Distribution was through Dot Records. It was another era, to be sure.
Andy Kim, the man with the magic pipes, was born Andre Youakim in Montreal and at age 16 arrived in New York, where he played a song for his Brill Building hero Jeff Barry. Thus began one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, which in turn led to Kim’s hit singles and albums for Steed, which are widely regarded as the last, glorious gasp of the Brill Building sound.
PARTRIDGE FAMILY 2200 A.D.!! Songs From The 1974 Cartoon Series!
The Sun Is Going To Shine…TOOMORROW!!
THE GLOBETROTTERS- BASKETBALL AND BUBBLEGUM!!
THE ARCHIES- THE RIVERDALE ARCHIVES!!
MONDO DADDYKIN NOW ENROLLED AT B.U.!!
The Partridge Family – Sound Magazine
Sound Magazine
(Bell, 1971)
Released just before The Partridge Family’s second season left the egg, Sound Magazine, like predecessors The Partridge Family Album and Up To Date was produced by Wes Farrell, written by songwriters then resident in popdom’s upper ether (Rupert Holmes, Bobby Hart, Tony Romeo) performed by L. A. session wizards like Hal Blaine (drums) and Michael Melvoin (keys), backup sung by the Love Generation and, not quite incidentally, vocalized by TV mom Shirley Jones and her brilliantly lovelorn son, David Cassidy. Here, then, is product–that base, yet tasty, ore upon which the record industry built its fortunes. Presold to a gigantic preteen audience, there is no conventional rock critic excuse at all for this album’s emotional sweep and delicacy. So much the worse for convention and rock criticism.Is It Live or Is It Bubblegum?
Black Bubblegum
Roberto Jord
