1st Thread

The story of "Bring Back Howdy Doody"

Both sides here are versions of a song originally titled "Bring Back Howdy Doody," written by Steve Dworkin and Gary Willet.

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Track 1 is a directional reversal of the recording -- there titled "Pow Wow" -- found on the flipside of the 1910 Fruitgum Company's 1969 hit "Indian Giver." As that flipside, in a move typical of producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz's attempts to ensure promotional focus on their chosen "plug" sides, was itself a reversed version of the original recording, the reversal here only restores the track to its natural direction (and hence our jokey retitling of "Wow Wop").

Track 2 is another version of the same song, which in this case was released under the original title of "Bring Back Howdy Doody."

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Co-creator Steve Dworkin tells the story behind these differing versions:

Steve Dworkin:

In 1969 I was a staff writer/producer at Super K Productions. I had written "Bring Back Howdy Doody" as a joke, not expecting Kasanetz and Katz to go with it. At one point, K and K sent my partner Gary Willet and myself into the studio to record as many "bad" records as we could in one day, including "Bring Back Howdy Doody." The session was to be used as a tax writeoff.

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Gary and I recorded it entirely by ourselves, at A-One Studios in New York, with him on keyboards, me on drums and lead vocals, and both of us on backing vocals. Believe me, had we known the track was going to be released we would have made it a lot better!

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I was in the office when the first pressings of "Indian Giver" came in. I flipped it over, because Super K was known for putting nonsense or private jokes on their B-sides. I recognized it right away as our recording of "Bring Back Howdy Doody." Of course, we were a little pissed that we weren't even given writing credit.*

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Shortly afterward, Gary and I were attempting to leave Super K, because we had gotten an offer from another company. Some DJs had been playing "Pow Wow," and when they heard it was a song about Howdy Doody they added it to their playlist. When K and K heard about this, they went into the studio with a group who had recorded an album for them as Lt. Garcia's Magic Music Box, and recorded "Bring Back Howdy Doody." This was then released on the Bell label, under the name The Flying Giraffe. I thought it should have been done in a little bit more of a progressive style, since the kids who listened to bubblegum didn't know Howdy Doody. I was not, however, involved in this recording.

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When the Flying Giraffe record came out, Bell sent us a box of them. Through a cousin who worked at NBC, I was able to get Buffalo Bob Smith's address, and sent him a copy of the record along with a letter telling him that all the kids who grew up with Howdy Doody were now in their late teens and early twenties, and would probably love to see him out there again.

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The record got some airplay, but it wasn't a hit. I did get a nice handwritten, two-page letter from Buffalo Bob, which made it all worthwhile, and soon after he starting touring colleges.

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After I left Super K, I tried to get financial backing to go into the studio to record a heavier version of "Bring Back Howdy Doody," a la Steppenwolf or perhaps Three Dog Night. I wasn't able to get it done, but that's the way it should have gone if it was to appeal to the people who grew up with Howdy Doody.

Phil X. Milstein

1410 Fruitgum Co: Pow Wow / Pow Wow (Reversed Version)

The Flying Giraffe: Bring Back Howdy Doody

1966

James Darren: Because You're Mine {1965}

Ron Dante

The voice behind the Archies talks about a long career singing and producing great pop music.

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by Jay S. Jacobs

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Copyright ©2000 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.

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Let me know a bit about how you got started in music.

I grew up in a singing type of family. My dad sang all over the place. His brother sang, you know, just for their own enjoyment… at weddings and things. But there was a lot of singing going on in our home. My dad was a big pop music fan. He had all the latest 78s of the hit records of the fifties. So I would listen to all of his records and see him enjoying it and I think I just naturally gravitated to singing. When I was about eleven, I broke my arm, and I needed an exercise for my wrist. The doctor recommended a guitar, because I was a big Elvis fan. I started to play, and before you knew it I was singing with my guitar and writing songs.

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Your first hit was "Leader of the Laundromat," a parody of the girl-group classic "Leader of the Pack," which you did with a band you called the Detergents. How did that come about?

Two of my friends, Danny Jordan and Tommy Wynn, we were all staff writers at Don Kirshner’s publishing company. Danny’s uncle was a guy named Paul Vance, who was a very successful songwriter in the fifties and sixties. He wrote "Catch a Falling Star" for Perry Como. He wrote "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" for Brian Hyland. He was very talented. He came up with this idea to do a parody of "Leader of the Pack." He asked Danny to bring in a couple of friends. Danny and I blew on over and we ended up singing on this parody. It became a career for a couple of years. We went out and toured on the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars singing "Leader of the Laundromat."

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Do you remember the first time that you heard your music, on the radio or in a club or something like that? What happened, and what was it like?

Actually, I recorded for Paul Vance as a solo artist in 1964-1965. (I did) a song called "Don’t Stand Up In A Canoe" which was kind of an "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" type of record. I remember hearing it on the big New York station one day. For a week they played it or two weeks. It was the culmination of my whole career, to hear myself on the radio. That’s what I wanted all my life.

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You did a lot of songwriting for Don Kirshner. What were some of the hits that you wrote for other musicians?

To tell you the truth, I was never a hit songwriter. I became a hit singer, and hit producer, but my songwriting… it’s very tough to become a hit songwriter. It takes a lot of luck and pizzazz and a lot of connections, and at that point in my career I was more of a singer and performer than I was a writer. But I did sign to his company and I wrote songs for Jay and the Americans, Johnny Mathis, the McCoys, James Darren, Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Gene Pitney recorded my songs. Bobby Vee. All these great sixties artists. I got a lot of my songs recorded. It was a very wonderful time because I got to meet all the artists that I was such a big fan of. But really, the songwriting was a means to an end for me, to get my voice on record and to become a hit singer. That’s really what I was after.

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Then came the Archies. How did you get involved doing music for the show, and how did it feel to be known as the voice for a cartoon?

It was a great gift at the time. I was a studio singer. I had developed into a singer of commercials. So I did tons of jingles. Every week I would do ten or fifteen commercials. I did backgrounds for all the record companies that were doing their records in New York City at the time. When I heard about the Archies sessions, a friend of mine was playing on it. He said they don’t have the voice of Archie yet. They don’t have the lead voice for all this music they’re doing for this new TV series based on the cartoon. I went up and auditioned for my old friend Don Kirshner, who was the music supervisor. My other buddy, Jeff Barry, was the line producer. I kind of gave them a few different sounds, and they locked into one specific sound that I made and said you’ll be the voice of Archie. I knew it would get a big push, because Don Kirshner was like PT Barnum. He could promote anything. It became the number one show in its timeslot. We did two songs a show, plus the theme. So I got to hear my voice every Saturday morning. The records got really big promotion from Kirshner and… at the time… RCA Records.

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VH-1 Classic has been showing a video of you performing "Sugar Sugar" in the 70s. Do you know where that came from?

I think that came from a Cleveland show Upbeat. I think I did that for them. Or, I did the Larry Kane show in Houston, Texas. One of those two shows. They were teen shows that played music, and I remember going to the show and singing "Sugar Sugar" four or five times, playing different instruments. I never saw the composite they put together, but obviously they put one together of me and it looks like there are like four or five of me in the band. I did it in about 1970, and it was a real kick to do that and I love that video. I think it looks amazing.

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Pop singer Ken Sharp just recorded "Melody Hill" with Carnie Wilson on backing vocals, and Jellyfish used to play "Sugar & Spice" live. How does it feel to hear other people redoing your songs?

It’s fine. It’s a kind of bittersweet thing to hear your songs, the things you made famous, recorded by other people. It’s interesting to see their take on the vocals. I’ve heard four or five versions of "Sugar Sugar" over the years, and it’s always interesting to me. I thought that there was obviously only one way to sing it. Yet, when I heard Wilson Pickett’s version, or Andy Kim had a version, Tommy Roe had a version, and they were all very different. Everybody has a different vocal take on it. Honestly, I think I caught the best version of it. (Laughs) I just got the generic feel for it. I was the first one to record the song and I think I was the right voice at the right time for that song.

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The Archies music has never really come out on CD in any decent compilations, I have an old CD called 20 Greatest Hits that only has ten songs on it and has a really bad, obviously fake drawing of the Archies on it. Everything else in the world seems to come out on CD, why has it been so hard to get good Archies disks, and is that going to change?

Yes, there are many plans. There has been a rights battle over the years between Archie comic book people and Don Kirshner and the Filmation people, who had the original cartoon. Nobody was really sure who had the right. Lately, I think they’ve come around. Fuel 2000 is a record label and they put out Absolutely the Best of the Archies. I hear that’s a pretty good compilation. A company called RKO Unique has put out two versions of Archies albums with my picture on the cover. If you’re ever on the Internet you can check them out. They’re in the stores too. They’re pretty good, they’re the original Jingle Jangle album and the original Everything’s Archie album. There are plans to put out the final three or four albums that I did through RKO Unique/Boardwalk. They just bought the Boardwalk label. Look for that.

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Your next band was the Cuff Links, and despite the fact that you were a one-man band, the record label made up extensive fake bios for a whole group. Whose idea was that and how did you feel about it that they were trying to make them out to be someone other than you?

I didn’t mind it at all. I did the deal… it was with Paul Vance again. The "Laundromat" guy. He came up with this song "Tracy." He called me when the Archies were really taking off. He said would you do me a favor? Come in and sing this song. He said it had to be a song I liked. I listened to "Tracy" and I just loved the song. So I said, if it does become I hit, I’ll do an entire album, because I’d love to sing an entire album of your songs. Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss songs. There were two songwriters and producers on it. Sure enough, "Tracy" took off and sold like 900,000 copies at the time. So I did do the album. I didn’t pay too much attention, I didn’t know they put together a group and sent it on the road. By the time I found out, it was already old news. I was very happy to have "Tracy" out at the time, because "Sugar Sugar" and "Tracy" were both in the top 10 at the same time. That was a great feeling to know that I'd spent my early years trying to get hit records and now I had two. Unfortunately, my name wasn’t on either one. So again, it was a double-edged sword. God gave me what I wanted, but not quite the way I wanted it.

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I could never understand how "Early in the Morning" didn’t become a smash hit. I know Gene Pitney released it as a single, but it didn’t do too well. Was the Cuff Links version released as a single?

No, we didn’t release it. Girl names were very popular with the Cuff Links. We released "Tracy,"
"When Julie Comes Around"…

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That’s a great song too…

… then "Run Sally Run."

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"Tracy" was used on Ally McBeal a couple of years ago. What did you think of that?

It was the coolest thing in the world. Because Ally McBeal was one of the top 10 shows in the country. Everybody watched it at some point. So to have my voice singing behind Tracey Ullman’s guest appearance was a real, real kick. I can’t tell you how many e-mails and phone calls I got over that play. It was a great thing. It really brought me up to this generation, too, with "Tracy." Now when I sing "Tracy" at these concerts and summer fairs that I’ll be doing, a lot of people watched Ally McBeal and know that song.

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Again, with the exception of a few singles, the Cuff Links work is hard to find on CD. Have you ever discussed with a label like Varese Vintage the idea of releasing the two Cuff Link albums as a single CD, or maybe doing a Best of CD that collects songs from all of your bands and solo work, like the Tony Burrows CD?

Nobody’s talked to me about that lately. I know you can buy a version of it from Japan on Amazon.com. But nobody’s talked to me about putting out the Cuff Links album, which is a very good idea, actually.

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Did you ever want to make any of those bands a fulltime gig, or were you enjoying the variety of playing in all different situations with different people?

They offered me the job of doing the Archies after we had it. But it was more of a cartoon children’s thing. I was hoping to become more of an Elton John type of guy. Somebody with a little more credibility than the cartoon group… the preteen and the teen market. So I didn’t jump at the opportunity. It never crossed my mind. I segued from singing commercials to doing these pop records, and then I segued into production. All through the seventies and early eighties, most of my time was spent producing other people. Also, I was living in New York City, I was married, I really wanted to have a family, so I didn’t want to go on the road much. I chose an occupation that kept me in the studios of New York, instead of on the road in the middle of the country.

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Speaking of the teen marketing, a friend of mine has a very strong childhood memory of reading a little thing in Archie Comics about you that read, "Girls, he’s a real ladies man. And boys, he’s a real he-man." Did you ever think it was weird the way you were marketed?

I thought that was horrible. I really didn’t think that was an appropriate approach for me. The people who were doing these things, I didn’t even know they were doing them. People were just taking my picture and putting words under them. In 16 magazine they put down stories about my likes and dislikes that had nothing to do with me. But, that’s part of the machinery. Once it gets going, it has a life of its own. You have to take the good and the bad. The good part of it is that a lot of people get to know you. The bad part is that they don’t get the real facts. You don’t get the real image of who I am and who I was. But, all in all, I’d do it again.

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In the early seventies after all of those hits, you recorded a lot as a solo act, but except for a minor hit with "Let Me Bring You Up" the solo stuff didn't really take off. Why do you think that may have been?

I just think my focus was not on being an artist after the first couple of albums I did solo. I segued back into singing commercials regularly, every day, and producing other people.

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What were some of the commercial jingles that you did?

I sang for McDonalds. I sang on the huge Coke commercial on the top of the mountain, "I’d Like To Teach the World To Sing." I was the voice of Campbell’s Soup, General Tires. I was the voice of Tang. I must have done over a thousand commercials in my career. Everything you can name I probably sung once. Or twice. I’ve done a dozen of those McDonalds’ commercials. Dr. Pepper, I was the voice of "I’m A Pepper, You’re a Pepper."

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I saw on the internet that you also recorded the "Spiderman Theme" which I had never heard before. Was that really you?

Yes, but it really was the theme for a record called Spiderman. Which is Tales from Beyond, or something like that. It was a radio show on record with four or five songs that I was the voice of Spiderman on.

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I know of about eight bands that you recorded with. Do you have any idea how many there have been totally?

You know, I’ve forgotten over the years. Because, a lot of the stuff I did, people put out on me without me even knowing. I would go into the studio, take a flat fee and let them put the records out. I know of about fifteen. I’d bet there’s about thirty groups that I was over the years. Most of them, they renamed my groups, so whatever they said they were going to call it, they didn’t call it. People put out my demos, I was a big demos singer for all the songwriters in New York City. Sometimes the demos were better than the final records that they put out. So they put out my demos and they called it a group name.

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By the early seventies, you had moved from being a pure performer into production. Your best-known work was probably with a then unknown pianist named Barry Manilow. How did you hook up with him, and what were the years working with him at the height of his popularity like?

Barry and I met doing a commercial. On that session singing were myself, Barry Manilow, Melissa Manchester and Valerie Simpson from Ashford and Simpson. It was a really good group. Barry and I hit it off. He knew of my credits and he told me he was working with a new artist that was just putting out some records, Bette Midler. I’d just seen her the night before on The Tonight Show. I thought she was going to be a big star. I said, let me hear some of your songs. So in the following days, we got together and he played me some of his songs. I felt I could make him a star. I just knew it. I had the contacts, I had the talent to get his voice on tape. We went in and did the first demos he really did under his own name. I got him the record deal and about a year and a half later we had "Mandy." We worked together until about 1981. About six-seven years, we did ten albums. Those years were great years. Easy… just the happiest years recording in the studio. It’s just a pleasure to work with the guy. He’s a real professional. Easy going and a really good singer.

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You have also produced people like Pat Benatar and Cher. What did you do with them, and who else have you worked with?

With Benatar, the record company brought me to her because she was singing in nightclubs in New York City and she was doing big ballads. They asked me to go down and take a look at her. I looked at her and I said I think I can turn her into a rock and roll singer. I took her into the studio and I recorded a song called "Heartbreaker" and another song called "You Better Run." I even did another song on that tape, an old Roy Orbison song called "Crying." Which consequently somebody else and had a hit with…

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Right, Don McLean…

Yeah. But I had an incredible vision for her and it worked. Chrysalis put her out and she became a big star. I worked Cher on the Take Me Home album, the one where she’s wearing kind of a strange outfit on the cover. She was a delight to work with. A real professional. Showed up early and stayed late. And sang great in the studio. I really like Cher. I worked with Dionne Warwick on "I’ll Never Love This Way Again." Produced different people, like for TV specials I worked with Ray Charles and John Denver. I worked with the girl from Fame, Irene Cara. I produced an album for her called Anyone Can See. Assorted new people that were getting big shot from record companies. Another dozen people off and on. I did a lot of production. It seems to me I was doing two or three albums a year.

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Do you have a favorite song you recorded?

"Sugar Sugar" has to be the top of my list. It meant so much to me to break through and establish myself as a hit singer. "Sugar Sugar" is top of my list, and I love it very much. But they’re all my babies. I love them all.

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How about anything you would just as soon forget?

"Yippy-Yay-Kay-Kay-Aye." One of the songs from the first Archies album. Kind of a country song I wasn’t into. I didn’t like that Jeff Barry song.

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Was there anything you would have liked to have sung but couldn’t?

Just one is tough. "Happy Together." Or "Good Vibrations." I would have loved to have sung that.

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A couple of years ago, you did an album called Favorites, where you recorded a bunch of people’s songs. How did you decide to do that, and how did you decide which songs you were going to record?

The record company RKO Unique gave me the opportunity to put out a Favorites themed album. I was producing videos and audios for maybe sixty or seventy 60s groups for a series called Legends Live, which is an audio-video series. I got to record all these groups… The Grass Roots, the Association, Lou Christie, Brian Hyland, Al Wilson. After working with all these people I realize I Liked their songs. So I recorded a bunch of sixties songs. I’m getting ready to do a Volume II of my favorite 70s songs.

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When did you get back into touring?

Over the last few years I’ve returned to live performing. I’ve decided that something was missing in my life, and that was the getting out live and seeing the fans. And having some fun traveling around the country and the world. I’m doing this tour now with Andy Kim and Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods and the Ohio Express and Al Wilson and Alan O’Day. It’s called the Super Seventies tour. We’ll be performing in casinos and venues all over the country. This is a great tour, and they’re also talking about doing a PBS special at the MGM Grand.

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Radio playlists are so regimented anymore. You used to be able to hear rock, soul, pop and country all on the same station, and that just doesn't happen anymore. Do you think that can inhibit new musicians?

It’s always been difficult to get on radio. No matter what. Hundreds of records come out a week. Only five or six are programmable to the stations. You’re really fighting an uphill battle. You really need the push of a record company or a manager or a great song. The fragmentation of the music market makes it so at least you know where you’re going. If you cut a country record, you know what radio you’re going on. MOR record, you go there. Pop, you go to the pop stations. It’s always been difficult, it will always be difficult. The one light I see is the internet and internet radio… which is going to give people access to 500 stations all over the world. Whatever they need on their car radios and things at some point. Maybe not this year, but five years from now most likely. The internet itself is helping groups establish themselves, with their own websites, their own sound clips and video clips. If you can drive traffic to you, get some publicity and get people to come take a look at you, there’s a better chance today than there was ten years ago when the industry was a closed unit. I just hope for the best for the new people. You go to MP3.com, you can see all kinds of stuff.

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How would you like for people to see your music?

I would like them to say it meant something in their life. It had meaning and it enhanced their life in someway. It changed something. It brought them a smile or it made them get up and dance. ‘Sugar Sugar’ was one of the biggest dance records in the world, so I’m sure a lot of people danced to it. ‘Tracy…’ a lot of mothers and fathers named their kids Tracy. I meet a lot of Tracy’s now around 30-years-old. I would like people to just think back and think it contributed to the goodness of the world, and the positive stuff that came out of it. The year ‘Sugar Sugar’ was a hit, there was the Vietnam war and a lot of protesting and a lot of divisiveness. ‘Sugar Sugar’ was just this wonderful dance record, this happy little song that you could just kind of make anything out of it. That was the number one record of the year, 1969, in the era of Woodstock. So I was very fortunate to be a part of it.

Toni Wine 2007 interview.

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Carl Wiser (SF): "A Groovy Kind of Love," you were very young when that came out, right? Can you tell me all about that song?

Toni Wine: Well, I was very young. Donnie Kirschner signed me when I was 14, to what was then Allegro Music. And then later it emerged into Screen Gems, and now it's EMI. Carole Bayer and I wrote the song for Screen Gems. I was 17, she was 22, and there it was. Jack McGraw ran the Screen Gems offices in London. He thought it would be a perfect song for The Mindbenders, and they recorded it. It was amazing. It was Number One for that year, and then a year later it was released in America. And it was huge here, also.

SF: So it was a while before you heard it in America.

Toni: Oh yeah.

SF: That must have been interesting for you.

Toni: Yeah, but I knew that it was a hit because we would read Cashbox, and Billboard, and Record World, and we would see on the charts, "Oh my God, it's Top 30. Oh my God, it's Top 20. Thank God it's Top 10."

SF: Now, is this in the Brill Building where you're writing this with Carole Bayer Sager?

Toni: There were really two huge buildings that were housing publishing companies, songwriters, record labels, and artists. The Brill Building was one. But truthfully, most of your R&B, really rock & roll labels and publishing companies, including the studio, which was in the basement and was called Allegro Studios, was in 1650 Broadway. They were probably a block and a half away from each other. 1650 and the Brill Building. But we were all at 1650.

SF: But you were associated with the Brill Building?

Toni: Well, music from those days, people kind of condensed the area to the Brill Building area. That always bothered me, because the Brill Building is its own building and 1650 is its own building. It's New York City… there are lots of streets, but these two buildings happened to be, basically, diagonally from each other. And the Brill Building housed different organizations. They were more of the Tin Pan Alley building. According to a lot of interviews and a lot of stories, they say that all the music was in the Brill Building. We weren't. We were in 1650. Carole King, Barry Mann, Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weil, Howie Greenfield, myself, and tons of people, a lot of times are written as being housed in the Brill Building. We weren't. We were in 1650 Broadway.

SF: I guess what I'm getting at is the songwriters were not associated with each other in those two buildings. So it's not like you would get sent over to one building from the other or anything.

Toni: No. Wherever their companies were, that's where they were basically housed. I mean, we all loved each other, we were all brothers and sisters going to each other's offices. We just didn't work in each other's offices. And a lot of people refer to the Brill Building, because the Brill Building has gotten great publicity, where 1650 did not get great publicity. But boy, we had a lot of music coming out of there.

SF: So what was it like going to work at Allegro Studios?

Toni: Allegro was great. Allegro was a fun studio. It wasn't "our" studio. It just happened to be a studio that was for rent in 1650 Broadway. A lot of people recorded there, not only from the building, but from all over. I remember the first session I ever saw at Allegro was Dion And The Belmonts. That was very cool. You'd walk in and there was just music in every elevator, in the lobby, and everywhere you walked in. That whole area of the city… you'd walk on the street and there was just a lot of music.

SF: So when you were actually writing the song with Carole Bayer Sager, would you go into an office? Or what would happen?

Toni: No. There were offices that everyone refers to as "the cubicles," and they were incredible. A lot of just wonderful feelings would come out of those cubicles, as well as an awful lot of wonderful songs that we would hear the writers writing.

But Carole and I never wrote in the offices. We would always write at her house, because she lived four blocks away from the office. It would be just very easy and more private, and really comfortable, in a very, very wonderful way. She was a schoolteacher, and I was still in high school. So sometimes I'd come down after school, which would be around the same time that she'd be getting out of school. And then of course as we were older it didn't matter. But we had our hit, and then she stopped teaching. And then we could write at will, whenever. Whoever I would be writing with, or whoever she would be writing with. We wrote in her house, it was great. It was a wonderful atmosphere, and very easy.

SF: Did one of you write the lyrics and another the music, or was it more of a collaboration both ways?

Toni: Carole is a very musical person as well as verbal, and I am a very musical person as well as verbal. So with she and I, it was a wonderful thing. I'm mainly music, she's mainly lyrics, but I can say that whatever we've written together, we would write truly together. So that was a beautiful writing situation. It was always the best. It was always wonderful.

SF: Now, was this an early use of the word "groovy"?

Toni: Yeah, it was.

SF: Can you tell me how you came up with the whole lyrics and the song idea and all that?

Toni: Well, we were talking about "Groovy" being the new word. The only song we knew of was "59th Street Bridge Song," by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. You know, "Feelin' groovy." And we knew we wanted to write a song with that word in it. Because we knew it was the happening word, and we wanted to jump on that.

Carole came up with "Groovy kinda… groovy kinda… groovy…" and we're all just saying, "Kinda groovy, kinda groovy, kinda…" and I don't exactly know who came up with "Love," but it was "Groovy kind of love." And we did it. We wrote it in 20 minutes. It was amazing. Just flew out of our mouths, and at the piano, it was a real quick and easy song to write. Those are incredible things when those songs can get written. Like some you can just be hung on for so long, and then others just happen very quickly. And that was one of them. And it's been so good to us.

SF: And then years later you wrote "Candida," correct?

Toni: I wrote "Candida" with Irwin Levine probably four years later, maybe five years later, and we had a wonderful record with Tony Orlando. It came out as Dawn, and that was a great thrill for both of us, because I go way back with Tony. I was signed at 14, and he was signed at 16, both by Donnie. So it was really nice that we could have a hit together.

SF: So the "Candida" song that you wrote with Irwin Levine, "Candida" is the name of the girl, correct?

Toni: Uh-huh.

SF: So how did you come up with the whole idea for naming a girl "Candida" and writing a song around her?

Toni: Well, I came up with the name "Candida." We knew we wanted a Spanish girl's name. Rosita had been taken. Juanita was a hit. Maria had happened. We knew we wanted to write a Latin-flavored song, because of the areas that we grew up in. A lot of Latin and R&B music were being combined, and I grew up in Spanish Harlem. Loved the music, just loved that whole feel. We needed a three-syllable word, and all those girls were gone. So "Candida" had been a name that I had toyed with, and there she became a reality.

SF: Did you actually know anybody named Candida?

Toni: No, but my first boyfriend was Latin, and we had thought, 'Oh, maybe in the future if we'd ever gotten married and had children, maybe we would name her Candida.' Ah, to be young.

SF: Were any of the events in that song, like the gypsy, based on any kind of personal experience?

Toni: No, we just immersed ourselves into that feel, that vibe, that time period, and just flowed with it. They were all beautiful images that we thought would be interesting. It was a musical lilt, the way it was phrased. We just rolled with those lyrics and music, and it worked for us.

SF: Okay. And what is the story about how Tony Orlando came to record that song?

Toni: What stories have you heard?

SF: Well, I've heard plenty of stories, but I'd like to get the real one.

Toni: Okay. Well, Tony had a couple of hits, big wonderful hits. "Halfway To Paradise," "Bless You," in the northeast region, and actually all over the country. They were big, big records. Then he went to work as what a lot of people refer to as a song plugger, but he truly was more than a song plugger. He ran the New York offices of April Blackwood Music, which at that time was headed by Clive Davis. Tony not only is a great singer, but he has great ears. He really does. As a person that could marry a song to an artist. And that was what he did. So he had a very successful career as a music publisher/rep, but he still had that great voice, and he wasn't singing.

"Candida" had been recorded by a group. It really was a nice record, but the lead singer was not adored by the record label. Hank Medress and the Tokens had produced it. Hank asked Tony to re-do that record, to sing lead. And Tony, of course, did. But he was very, very skeptical, and very worried that it would be found out by Clive, or the offices, and he would lose his job because it could be a conflict of interest. He didn't want to put his job in jeopardy. You know, the music business... you just can't tell if it's going to work for you.

Well, Tony put his lead on. Myself, Jay Siegel from the Tokens, and another singer out of New York, Robin Grean, did the background vocals. The record was released by this group called Dawn, which had been named after the daughter of one of Bell Records' promotion men. So Dawn came out with "Candida," and just incredibly, it was this huge record. And we then wound up doing the album. And of course there still was no "Dawn," meaning Telma and Joyce. The entire first album, really, was Tony and myself and Jay and Robin Grean, or down the road, some other singers: Linda November. But there was still no real Dawn.

It was after the first album, which included "Knock Three Times" and "What Are You Doing Sunday?," which I also wrote with Irwin, that Dawn became a true reality. Joyce and Telma and Tony became Tony Orlando and Dawn. At that point, after "Candida" and "Knock" were as huge as they were, Tony was not worried about losing his day job. So that's the story on that. And I don't know if you know this or not, but it's funny. We're talking about Tony, but for the last three years I've been having a blast. I've been playing keyboards and singing with Tony on the road. We're just having the time of our lives. He, and the guys in the band… it's a ball.

SF: Sounds like fun.

Toni: It's great. We've been friends for… oh my God… since we were children.

SF: So you sang on "Knock Three Times?"

Toni: Uh-huh. I sang on the entire first album with Jay Siegel. Robin did several songs, Linda November did several songs. It was an interesting time. It was a great time.

SF: So what about the song you wrote ("What Are You Doing Sunday?") that ended up on that album? Can you tell me how you and Irwin put that together?

Toni: No. I have no earthly idea. We just wanted a happy, feel-good song. You know, "Hey, what are you doing Sunday? You wanna marry me? Cool." You know, and we did it. Really, we just wanted to have these two young people in love. Young love is always great to write about, and just very positive. That was a very positive time. There weren't really many songs of sadness. Sure, love gone wrong, and things that didn't work out, but I guess that whole period had a lot of uplifting songs. So we just joined it.

SF: Was that written specifically for the Tony Orlando album?

Toni: Uh-huh.

SF: But when you did "Candida," you weren't sure who was going to record that? Or you did have somebody in mind?

Toni: No, I had nobody in mind. "What Are You Doing Sunday?" we wrote because we knew the album was coming up, and we said, "Let's pitch some songs and cross our fingers." So we did that. But "Candida" we wrote just to be writing, just to do a song, and we did it, and it happened.

SF: Going back a little bit, the song "Black Pearl" that you wrote, can you tell me the story behind that one?

Toni: There wasn't really a story other than that was written by myself, Phil Spector, and Irwin, and most of it was written in my apartment in New York. Actually, just about all of it was, I guess, in the apartment. They came up to the apartment and we wrote it.

SF: The black pearl's kind of an interesting image. Do you remember how that came about?

Toni: The times. The very difficult times. It was disturbing, everything that was going on at that time period between people. All of our people. Just people. And segregation, differences. It was heartfelt. And that's how that song came about. We did that song and Phillip did an incredible record with The Checkmates. You know, Sonny Charles has a great lead. It was Sonny and Sweet Louie. It was a great record.

SF: So the black pearl is about a black girl?

Toni: It was about a black woman. The male is singing to her, she is his sweetheart. She is his world, and she is his black pearl. They're dreaming of better times, better days, and he is saying, "Black pearl, pretty little girl, let me put you up where you belong. Black pearl, precious little girl, you've been in the background much too long." At that time, with segregation, you had black students, white students, but older people, a lot of the black women, were depicted as being housekeepers, cooks, rather than having positions in companies, whether they were capable or not. It was a very difficult time period. They really weren't given the chances that their counterparts, the white women, may have been given. And it was time to have a song putting them on a pedestal. Because it shouldn't be "they" or "us" or anything. We are all capable of doing the same job, and should be given that chance. If we do a job well, we should be given the opportunity to do it, regardless of black or white. And in those days it wasn't as easy.

SF: It's interesting, when you're talking about "What Are You Doing Sunday?" you talk about how it was a lighter time. And then just a year earlier it was, I guess, a much heavier time, where you had these social issues.

Toni: Absolutely. I mean, these social issues, they would be more prominent in certain times than others, even if they were a few years apart. We still have social issues. It's still a drag. You know, we're still not all as equal as we should be.

SF: But when you guys are trying to write hit songs, you don't think too often that you're going to put, like, some social commentary in the songs?

Toni: It's not that we don't think that we will do that. But most writers, they do have views, politically or socially. At times a lot of us will want to slip something into a song purposely so that it might give a double meaning. If it's too touchy a topic, maybe we will deliberately not put something in, or remove something that might be controversial, although I love controversy. It doesn't bother me.

SF: Are there any other songs that come to mind that you've been a part of where something like that happened?

Toni: Not that I can think of. No. I think "Black Pearl" certainly speaks for the way the three of us feel. I love that song, it's very dear to me. And even though I've had success with other songs, I'm very grateful for what success I've had, but I think "Black Pearl" has always been and will be my favorite. It's very dear to me.

SF: And what was it like working with Irwin and Philip?

Toni: Well, Irwin and I wrote together for a long time. He was just one of the greatest, most wonderful… he was hilarious. He passed away several years ago. He had a fabulous family, and I mean, he was wonderful. Always was. And Philip is incredibly talented, great sense of humor, and he's a musical genius. We all know that he's created some incredible memorable songs, as well as records.

SF: "Sugar, Sugar." Can you just give me a little background on what really happened there?

Toni: It just was a very easy session. Donnie Kirchner wanted to bring the Archies to life, which he did. 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. We went in, we did the record. It was a fun session, it was a blast. We just knew that 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. We were going to grab a bite to eat, so I told him to just meet me at the studio, pick me up, and then we'll go eat. And he wound up handclapping on "Sugar, Sugar."

SF: Are any of the lyrics a bit subversive, or a bit more sexual in nature than…

Toni: In "Sugar, Sugar"?

SF: Yeah.

Toni: Like what?

SF: Well, when they're doing the whole "pour some sugar on me," and that kind of thing. I didn't know if there was any kind of thought…

Toni: No, sugar… "give me some sugar" is a very old-fashioned saying. It can refer to people kissing each other, that's sugar. Dogs licking you, that's "gimme some sugar." Sugar is just a form of love.

SF: So it is as innocent as it sounds?

Toni: Oh, absolutely. There was nothing… oh yeah, my goodness. I want you to know that that's the first time I've ever been asked that.

SF: Really? All right. The Def Leppard song that I'm pretty sure was actually inspired by the lyric in your song, "Pour Some Sugar On Me," is of course just laden with sexual innuendo.

Toni: No, "Sugar, Sugar" is very sweet and innocent. You know, "pour a little sugar on me, honey, pour a little sugar on me, darling," it was "give me some sugar – give me some lovin'." Give me some lovin', good lovin'. I mean, it's just exactly what it says, gimme some lovin'.

SF: Was that song then promoted on the TV show? With the Archies?

Toni: I don't remember what came first, the chicken or the egg.

SF: Okay. Somehow that song just became an enormous hit.

Toni: It was huge. Probably one of the bubblegum songs of all time. There were several huge bubblegum songs, that was one of them. But I just don't remember what came first. I know that when it was released it just took over like wildfire.

SF: All right. And did you ever have to perform as Betty and Veronica again?

Toni: Oh, no, no, no. It was a secret who we were. In fact, the New Year's Eve countdown of trivia -- for years one of the questions would be "What group never appeared together, never went on the road together, never interviewed together, and had a #1 song?" People wouldn't get it. It was hilarious. But Ronnie and I, in the last few years we've actually done 3 performances as The Archies. We didn't do it for 30-some-odd years, but in the last 3 years we did for the MDA Jerry Lewis Telethon, which of course Tony Orlando hosts out of New York, and has been hosting since day one. It was very, very cool. And we also did it when I did a one-woman show at Genghis Cohen in West Hollywood. And then about a month ago we did a special part for David Gest. And we did it there. It was a hoot.

SF: Toni, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.

Toni: Don't be silly. This is truly my pleasure.

SF: I'm looking forward to getting this online.

Toni: I'm calling Ronnie and I'm gonna tell him you wrote we did a dirty song.

SF: I had to ask.

Toni: Ronnie also started out with Donnie Kirchner. A lot of us started together, and we've all been very, very close for all these years. Can you imagine? Over 30 years, we're all… we're family.

We spoke with Toin on May 8, 2007. Get more Toni, including great photos, at www.toniwine.com.

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