Ron Dante
by Bill Pitzonka

Billboard’s #1 single of 1969 was “Sugar Sugar”—the biggest hit by cartoon popsters the Archies. That September, as “Sugar Sugar” was descending from its four-week stay in the pole position, “Tracy” by the Cuff Links was ascending into the Top 10. But most people—even radio programmers—didn't know that both tracks featured the lead vocals of superstar session singer Ron Dante.

As Ron himself puts it, he literally “fell out of a tree and into a career.” He was born Carmine Granito on August 22, 1945, and when he was eleven, he broke his wrist while playing Tarzan among the treetops near his Staten Island home. His doctor recommended that he take up a musical instrument as therapy to repair the still-growing bone, and he soon became a proficient guitarist, lying about his age to play gigs throughout the tri-state area. He had also acquired a new moniker, appropriating the first name of "the best guitarist in Staten Island" Ronnie Anderson (from his first band the Persuaders) and Dante from the Spencer Tracy film "Dante's Inferno."

His first studio experience came in 1959 when "I got to sit in on the Elegants' recording session of their follow up to 'Little Star'," he remembers. "The bass singer worked for my dad and they sang at my grade school graduation party." Within a few years, Ron was regularly venturing into New York City to make the rounds of music industry Meccas 1650 Broadway and the Brill Building (1619 Broadway). "I'd take the elevator to the top floor and walk down, stopping at every publisher, every manager, and play my songs and sing for them. Most of them threw me out."

Ron was eventually signed up by former child star and 1650 denizen Bobby Breen who also managed comedian Dick Shawn. One day, Breen's secretary took Ron down to Aldon Music, where Ron auditioned for staff songwriters Charlie Koppleman and Don Rubin. He wound up performing for the whole office including Aldon president Don Kirshner, who signed Ron up to sing demos. Before long, Kirshner was encouraging Ron to write his own material.

After honing his writing and studio skills at Aldon, Ron set off on his own again. Soon he was offered a deal with TM Music, a music-publishing outfit that had just been purchased by Bobby Darin—"a real supportive environment," he recalls. "One of my biggest thrills was getting to see Bobby Darin perform live at the Copacabana."

In 1964, Ron recorded one of his earliest solo efforts: the novelty single "Don't Stand Up In A Canoe," penned and produced by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss. Soon thereafter, Vance and Pockriss recruited him, along with Tommy Wynn and Vance's nephew Danny Jordan, to record a parody of "Leader of the Pack." The trio duly christened the Detergents for "Leader of the Laundromat," which gave Ron his first Billboard chart appearance, hitting #19 in January 1965. It also marked Ron’s first full-scale road tour when the Detergents crisscrossed the country as part of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. Ron recollects that “I got to perform with the Rolling Stones, Freddie & The Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits, Little Anthony & the Imperials, Little Richard, the Animals, every big group in the ’60s I toured and sang on the same bill with.” He admits that it was an incredible experience, but regrets that he “slept through most of it because I was exhausted.—I was always sleeping on the bus.” Despite the incessant touring, the Detergents were washed up a few singles later.

In 1966, Ron signed on to write and produce acts for Greenlight Music, headed by Bob Feldman. Feldman and partners Richard Gotterher and Jerry Goldstein had written and produced the Angels’ huge hit "My Boyfriend's Back" and recorded as the faux Australian trio the Strangeloves ("I Want Candy"). At Greenlight, Ron first hooked up with his longtime writing partner Gene Allan. Together they wrote one of the first-ever rock musicals, Billy Budd (based on the Herman Melville novel) which ran at New York’s Billy Rose Theatre in 1967. That same year, Ron added motion pictures to his résumé when he sang the theme for the Doris Day western, The Ballad of Josie.

In addition to writing and producing, Ron was still doing loads of session work and commercials. His friend Ron Frangipane had been hired to arrange the music for Don Kirshner's new project, the Archies. Frangipane encouraged him to attend the vocal auditions, "so I went in along with a couple of other people that day to the RCA Studios and auditioned." The producer turned out to be Jeff Barry, who Ron had known "off and on through the years—I used to sing backgrounds on his sessions. Jeff had me go into the studio and sing to a track, and do different voices on the track. A high voice, a low voice, a breathy voice, a loud voice, an accent." Recalling the audition, Jeff Barry said "I do remember when I heard his voice, I could picture Archie." The next day Jeff and Don called Ron with the verdict that he'd do the voices for the records and filler material for the TV show.

The Archies turned into an Aldon reunion when Toni Wine (who had penned “Groovy Kind Of Love” at the tender age of 16) was hired to do the girls' voices. As she recalls, "Ronnie and I have always blended incredibly together. Ronnie and I used to do demos together constantly. I think that was part of the strategy, too, because we really do sound great together."

Starting in the fall of 1968, Ron could be heard singing on the Archies’ Saturday morning cartoon series, and the self-titled debut album came out in October. “We had the party for the launch of the first album at Madison Square Garden Felt Forum, the basketball court, and I and a number of local DJs played against [future Kirshner labelmates (!)] the Harlem Globetrotters. I was the center! We lost by a thousand but nobody cared. They kept playing the album over the sound system, and I remember being so proud.” By December, the first Archies single "Bang Shang-A-Lang" hit a respectable #22 in Billboard.

Soon thereafter, Vance and Pockriss renewed their association with the former Detergent. “They called on me to do a whole bunch of things,” Ron remembers. “I had just finished the Archies, so I was doing a lot of ghost groups.” He was juggling up to five or six recording sessions a day, but found time (often between sessions) to record for Vance and Pockriss. More often than not, Ron never knew what group name or record label a song would have until the records were pressed. Among the aliases were Abraham & Strauss (“Lay A Little Love On Me” on United Artists), Two Dollar Question (“Aunt Matilda’s Double Yummy Blow Your Mind Brownies” on the MGM subsidiary Intrepid)—and the Cuff Links (“Tracy”).

While most of the other projects disappeared without a trace, “Tracy” became a huge worldwide hit—just as the Archies were topping the singles lists around the world with “Sugar Sugar.” At the same time, a third single featuring Ron’s lead vocal, “Free” (produced by John Walsh and credited to the Pearly Gate) was also bubbling under Billboard’s Hot 100. “I was cookin’,” Ron beams. “And there were two or three other records being played that were also me that weren’t charting. So that was a hell of a ghost group year. I did records I didn’t remember for years.”

After “Sugar Sugar” sold millions, Toni Wine quit the Archies camp. “She wanted more than she got—and she should have gotten more,” Ron relates. “And I must say, we missed her. It was never the same. Toni’s the best.” In a calculated attempt to keep Ron a happy Archies camper, Kirshner proffered a solo album deal, which effectively precluded Ron from taking on outside session work. Ron had already completed the Tracy album for Vance and Pockriss, but informed them that he couldn’t do any further Cuff Links sessions—much to Vance’s consternation. In retaliation, Vance threatened to hold back Ron’s Cuff Links earnings until Ron stormed into Vance’s office for a bout of Wrestling for Royalties. Vance paid up, but erased Ron’s lead vocals from the master of “Run Sally Run,” an extra Cuff Links track already in the can for a second album. The lead vocal chores for that group’s second album were split between Joe Cord (who had been hired to front the group for personal appearances) and Rupert Holmes (who was doing the bulk of the group’s arrangements).

While continuing his Archies commitments, Ron set to work on his solo album, Ron Dante Brings You Up, with Jeff Barry at the helm. Ron scored his only solo chart single with the title track, “Let Me Bring You Up,” which bubbled under at #102 in August 1970. He even set off on a mini-tour in support of the album. “I went out, I did a ton of TV shows including Dick Clark. And actually, two weeks I spent with David Cassidy. We were hosting a series of TV shows together. He was very hot at the time, so I got to meet and work with him. I actually showed him the ropes.” While Ron was on tour, frequent Archies songsmith Ritchie Adams filled in as lead vocalist for one single, “Love is Living in You.” Unfortunately, the touring didn’t pump up sales of Ron’s album. Soon, Ron was back in the studio, and together he and Ritchie took over the Archies’ production duties. When Ron wasn’t offered a second solo album, he relegated the much more mature “Strangers in the Morning”—which he had co-written with Howard Greenfield—to the B-side of the final Archies single, “Plumb Crazy.”

After the Archies ran their course, Pearly Gate producer John Walsh landed a staff position at Scepter Records and signed Ron to the label. Ron released one sterling solo single, “That’s What Life Is About” (written by Toni Wine), and a cover of “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” (credited to the California Gold Rush) before Scepter declared bankruptcy in 1972. He also returned to the comic-book front for a one-off concept album on Buddah, Spiderman by the Webspinners.

At the same time, “I put myself into commercials and I stayed with it,” he says. “I sang for everything but feminine hygiene deodorants. I must’ve done a thousand commercials in those years. Four or five a day: backgrounds, leads. I sang for McDonald’s, PepsiCo, anything you can think of, every kind of car made. I was singing for suntan lotions, I was the Beach Boys in New York. Anytime they needed a Beach Boys sound, a falsetto, they called me to do the commercial.”

It was during those years that Ron hooked up with Barry Manilow. “We were doing a commercial for Tomboy, a soft drink—Barry and I and Melissa Manchester and Valerie Simpson. Afterward, Barry asked me to listen to some of his songs.” They put together a demo of Barry’s songs that caught the attention of Bell Records. Both Barry and Ron were signed as solo artists in 1973, and together they produced their own recordings and singles for female labelmates Andrea Marchovecchi and model-cum-actress Sally Kellerman [!]. The following year, Clive Davis took over the Bell presidency—just as Ron’s first single for the label, “Don’t Call It Love,” was released under the pseudonym Bo Cooper. “He loved the record,” Ron remembers. “He put a full page ad in Billboard saying ‘Brand-new artist, never heard from before, Bo Cooper.’ Nobody could even recognize me in long hair and a moustache.” Ron reverted to his real name for “Midnight Show” which was released concurrently with Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.”

The Bell roster was decimated when Clive Davis rechristened the label Arista, so Ron signed with RCA for a few singles, including an update of “Sugar, Sugar” arranged by Barry. In the wake of “Mandy”’s chart-topping success, Ron directed his energies toward co-producing Barry’s recordings, which kept him busy for the rest of the decade. Ron was approached with offers to produce other acts, but only worked with women like Cher and Irene Cara, “because producing other male acts would be like working with the competition,” he explains.

During that time, his career took a literary turn. “I became the publisher of The Paris Review around 1977 and 1978. George Plimpton was my next door neighbor when I lived on East 72nd Street in Manhattan. We had been friends for many years when he told me he needed someone to support the Review, so I became the publisher after the Aga Khanstopped.” He also became a theatrical producer, backing the Broadway show Ain’t Misbehavin’. “The director Richard Maltby said, ‘Why don’t we do a dance version of the title theme, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”?’,” Ron remembers. “So I got Harold Wheeler who’d just done ‘I Will Survive’ and ‘Superman Disco’ and he arranged it for me and did a beautiful job. I took it to my friend Ron Alexenburg and he had a new label, Infinity.” Alexenberg commissioned an album, and Ron dubbed the completed project Dante’s Inferno. Promotional copies of the single “Fire Island” were issued to clubs on 12” red vinyl. Infinity didn’t last into the ’80s, and soon Alexenburg had a new label, Handshake, where Ron recorded his second-ever solo album, Street Angel, in 1981—a full decade after his first.

It would be almost two more decades before Ron would release another solo album—Favorites in 1999, a collection of covers that have great resonance for him. He moved out to Los Angeles in 1992 “because I’m working on soundtracks for movies now, and TV shows, cable things.” As the millennium approached, Ron even performed at several festivals as the Archies and is preparing Kirshner-era material for CD reissue. Looking back on his career and where he is now, Ron admits “I cannot be happier.”