Artist Biography by Steve Huey

Sugar, Sugar Lyrics: Sugar, ah honey honey / You are my candy girl / And you've got me wanting you / Honey, ah sugar sugar / You are my candy girl / And. Jeff Barry was going to produce this fictitious animated group called The Archies. We went into the studio. Jeff and Andy Kim wrote “Sugar, Sugar.” Ronnie was Archie, and I was Betty and Veronica.

Most '60s bubblegum groups were faceless studio concoctions, made up of hired professionals and given nominal group identities after the fact. The Archies made no pretense of being a real band in the first place -- their music, including the smash hit 'Sugar, Sugar,' was 'performed' by the animated TV cartoon characters spun off from Archie comics. In reality, of course, they were a studio concoction made up of hired professionals (most notably lead singer Ron Dante), but in this case, they weren't technically faceless.

The Archies were created by promoter Don Kirshner, who was coming off a major success as the creator of the Monkees. In late 1967, Kirshner was hired as music supervisor for CBS' new Saturday morning cartoon The Archie Show, which was to feature a new original song every week. He immediately brought on producer Jeff Barry, who with Ellie Greenwich had formed one of the preeminent songwriting teams of the girl-group era (Greenwich also sang on several Archies records). Kirshner's original choice for lead singer was Kenny Karen, but Barry brought in Ron Dante, an experienced session singer who'd fronted the Detergents' novelty parody 'Leader of the Laundromat'; Dante had met Barry at a Neil Diamond session, and had previously cut promos for Kirshner. Dante won the job, and Barry hired Jeannie Thomas as the group's female vocalist. When the TV show debuted, it was a hit, and the first Archies single, 'Bang Shang-a-Lang,' nearly made the Top 20 in late 1968.

Shortly thereafter, Barry hired songwriter/backing vocalist Andy Kim, and replaced Thomas with Toni Wine. Barry and Kim co-wrote 'Sugar, Sugar,' which became a breakout smash in 1969; it topped the charts for four weeks, sold over three million copies in the U.S. alone, and wound up as Billboard's number one song of the year. Zeus poseidon and hades pictures. Meanwhile, the TV show was expanded to a full hour, and Dante enjoyed a simultaneous Top Ten hit during 'Sugar, Sugar's run, thanks to his lead vocal on the Cufflinks' 'Tracy.' The follow-up, 'Jingle Jangle,' reached the Top Ten, but from there the Archies' chart success tailed off quickly. Their last Top 40 hit came in the spring of 1970 with 'Who's Your Baby?'; the same year, Donna Marie replaced Toni Wine.

However, by the end of 1970 Barry left the Archies to pursue other projects, and stories detailing the group's breakup named their primary personnel for the first time. Their final Barry-produced single was released in early 1971, although 'A Summer Prayer for Peace' became a hit in South Africa later that summer. Ron Dante embarked on a short-lived solo career before moving into record production, and found substantial success as Barry Manilow's producer throughout the '70s; he also returned to singing on commercial jingles. Andy Kim went on to score a substantial solo hit in 1974 with 'Rock Me Gently.'

In 2008, Ron Dante revived the Archies name, brought in two vocalists to play Betty and Veronica (Danielle van Zyl and Kelly-Lynn), and released The Archies Christmas Party album on the Fuel 2000 label. Right around that time, Dante, who by now owned the rights to the original recordings, oversaw the reissue on CD of all the band's original albums. In 2016, Goldenlane Records reissued all five Archies albums under the title Sugar, Sugar: The Complete Albums Collection.

CBR – Privacy PolicyWe respect your privacy and we are committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at oursite. The following discloses the information gathering and dissemination practices for this Website.This Privacy Policy was last updated on May 10, 2018. Legal OwnershipCBR (the “Website”) is owned and operated by Valnet inc.

(“us” or “we”), a corporationincorporated under the laws of Canada, having its head office at 7405 Transcanada Highway,Suite 100, Saint Laurent, Quebec H4T 1Z2. Personal Data CollectedWhen you visit our Website, we collect certain information related to your device, such as yourIP address, what pages you visit on our Website, whether you were referred to by anotherwebsite, and at what time you accessed our Website.We do not collect any other type of personal data. If you are accessing our website through asocial media account, please refer to the social media provider’s privacy policy for informationregarding their data collection. Log FilesLike most standard Web site servers, we use log files.

This includes internet protocol (IP)addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type,date/timestamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’smovement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. Is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.I wrote a little bit about 'Sugar, Sugar' in a Comic Book Legends Revealed installment many years ago, but I never actually got into the origins of the song itself, so I figured I'd write a little bit about it, since it is such a fascinating song. As one of the musicians on the song, Toni Wine, later recalled, 'What group never appeared together, never went on the road together, never interviewed together, as the group, and had a #1 song?' That would, of course, be The Archies, the fictitious rock band from The Archie Show.

The concept of the Archies was conceived by Don Kirshner, a music manager who had gained a great deal of fame from being the guy that was brought in by the producers of The Monkees to manage the band itself. Kirshner was a big believer in the idea of studio musicians. He wanted to be able to control every aspect of the production of the song and with studio musicians, that was possible.

That alienated The Monkees, of course, as they wanted to play their own instruments. Mike Nesmith, in particular, was a very talented guitar player but Kirshner would only bring them in after the fact to lay vocal tracks down on the songs that he acquired for them to sing. Wine, 'It just was a very easy session. Donnie Kirshner wanted to bring The Archies to life, which he did. And Jeff Barry was going to produce this fictitious animated group called The Archies. We went into the studio. Jeff and Andy Kim, who had hits on his own as a writer and singer, Jeff and Andy wrote 'Sugar, Sugar,' Ronnie was Archie, and I was Betty and Veronica.

We went in, we did the record. It was a fun session, it was a blast, and at the session we just knew that this was something, and something huge was going to happen. We didn't really know how huge, but it was huge.

In fact, a friend of mine had been in town, Ray Stevens, who's an incredible songwriter, singer, producer, musician, and we were going to just grab a bite to eat, so I told him to meet me at the studio, pick me up, and then we'll go eat. And he wound up handclapping on 'Sugar, Sugar.' CBR Senior Writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over a dozen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed).He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia!

And one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post and Gizmodo.He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website,.Follow him on Twitter at and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!