The Archies

The two dozen songs on Sugar, Sugar… come from the first four long-players issued in conjunction with the CBS-TV animated program The Archie Show and the expanded Archie Comedy Hour. The project was spearheaded by pop music mogul Don Kirshner. Having scored notable success with early Monkees sides, he found another batch of recording studio pros to provide material and audibly animate the Archies. Among the primary contributors were Ron Dante (vocals/guitar), Andy Kim (vocals), and Jeannie Thomas (vocals), who was replaced by Toni Wine (vocals). The Archies (1968) was the prefab combo's debut and despite an appearance in the album charts, this package yields only the churning midtempo "Truck Driver," the pseudo-affective and hormone-driven ballad "Seventeen Ain't Young," and the infectious bubblegum frolic "Bang-Shang-A-Lang"…

The Archies were perhaps the most popular animated band in the late '60s, with a cartoon that aired every Saturday morning and one chart-topping single, "Sugar, Sugar." With songs written by big shots like Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, the smooth vocals of Ron Dante, and a cadre of talented studio musicians helping guide the way, the Archies weren't only popular, they made a lot of good records too. While most of the albums are probably easy to find in thrift stores around the U.S., Goldentone did people who want all the albums in one handy place a favor with the release of 2016's Sugar, Sugar: The Complete Albums Collection. Housed in a heavy-duty box with the original album covers reproduced, there are none of the skips and smells associated with beat-up old albums. Just great bubblegum mixed with the occasional weird moment and even, as the decade wore on, a little bit of social commentary.

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 (1968) is their debut studio album.