Hit Version
"Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies was produced by Jeff Barry, and the song was originally released on the album Everything's Archie. The album is the product of a group of studio musicians managed by Don Kirshner. Ron Dante's lead vocals were accompanied by those of Toni Wine (who sang the line "I'm gonna make your life so sweet"), and Andy Kim. Together they provided the voices of the Archies using multitracking.
When the song was initially released, Kirshner had promotion men play it for radio station execs without telling them the name of the group (due to the somewhat disappointing chart performance of the Archies' previous single, "Bang-Shang-a-Lang", which went to number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts). Only after most of the DJs liked the song were they told that it was performed by a cartoon group. The Archies' hit wound up as one of the biggest (and most unexpected) number-one hits of the year, one of the biggest bubblegum hits of all time, both in America and in Great Britain, thanks partly to association with the hit CBS-TV Saturday morning cartoon series.
The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" was the 1969 number-one single of the year. A week after topping the RPM 100 national singles chart in Canada on September 13, 1969 (where it spent three weeks), it went on to spend four weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 from September 20 and eight weeks at the top of the UK singles chart. The song lists at number 63 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time. It also peaked at one in the South African Singles Chart. On February 5, 2006, "Sugar, Sugar" was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, as co-writer Andy Kim is originally from Montreal, Quebec.
The song is said to have been earlier offered to The Monkees, although songwriter Jeff Barry denies this. Don Kirshner has said that Mike Nesmith put his fist through the wall of the Beverly Hills Hotel refusing to do "Sugar, Sugar". However, Monkees archival expert Andrew Sandoval has suggested that the band may instead actually have been offered a tune called "Sugar Man", but with the passage of time the parties involved simply mis-remembered it as being "Sugar, Sugar", in large part because it made a better anecdote.
Studio musicians on this song: Ron Frangipane - keyboard, Chuck Rainey - bass, Gary Chester - drums, Dave Appell - guitar, Harry Amanatian - guitar, Ray Stevens - handclaps
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