A couple of years ago I wrote about a compilation called 25 All-Time Greatest Bubblegum Hits: The Ultimate Collection, and said, “This thing provides the purest rock and roll sugar high available under current law, and I can’t remember the last time listening to a CD made me feel so goddamn happy.” I heard it again over the weekend, and now I’d go as far as saying it might be the single greatest compilation album ever devised. Some of this music you know—from the Monkees and the Archies to “My Baby Loves Lovin’” and “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes.” But this compilation vaults beyond comprehensive to sublime when it puts some of bubblegum’s lesser-known landmark recordings into the proper context. You really need to hear that context, but in the interest of making sure you hear something, I’m posting two tracks.
First, “Quick Joey Small” by the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus. Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz coined the term bubblegum to describe the lightweight, radio-friendly pop they were producing at Buddah Records starting in 1968, including some of the genre’s most iconic records, “Yummy Yummy Yummy” by the Ohio Express and “Indian Giver” by the 1910 Fruitgum Company. “Quick Joey Small” features Joey Levine, who sang lead on both of those other songs, adopting his best whacked-out Frogman Henry croak here. Kasenetz and Katz pile irresistable hook on irresistable hook, and you can almost picture them as mad scientists in the laboratory, cooking up the ultimate weapon. Which “Quick Joey Small” damn well is.
Second, “Every Beat of My Heart” by Josie and the Pussycats. Unlike the Archies, who were strictly a cartoon, the Pussycats were a real flesh-n-blood act, cast at the same time the cartoon, spun off of an Archie comic, was being developed. Producer Danny Janssen auditioned 500 singers, finally setting on three: Patrice Holloway, Cathy Dougher, and Cherie Moor. The Pussycats were inspired by Motown, and Holloway (whose sister had recorded at Motown) sounded a lot like Michael Jackson—good moves in 1970 if you wanted to sell records. But Hanna-Barbera, producers of the show, wanted all three Pussycats to be white, and asked that the African-American Holloway be recast, even though her character, Valerie, had been black in the original comic. Janssen wouldn’t budge. Holloway stayed, and as a result of Janssen’s stand, several major L.A. studio players, black and white, offered to play on the Pussycats’ album for scale. “Every Beat of My Heart” didn’t make the Hot 100, and even in a decade as notable for failures of mass taste as the 1970s, that’s inexplicable. Given the way the radio sounded in 1971, it should have fit right in.
(Bonus trivia nugget: Cherie Moor of Josie and the Pussycats became famous later in the 1970s under her married name—Cheryl Ladd.)
Get these fast because I’m not leaving them up for very long.
“Quick Joey Small (Run Joey Run)”/Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus
“Every Beat of My Heart”/Josie and the Pussycats
Buy 25 All-Time Greatest Bubblegum Hits here. Really, you must.
Filed under: Tracks
Boy…thses bubblegum songs you mention take me back to the little desk I had to do homework on in my room in Jr high, lol, whilst listening to the top-40 am station on my little transistor radio, lol.
Thanks for the gum! Once had an old fart back in the day complain to me about the “acid bubblegum music you kids all listen to”! I tried trippin’ on Dubble Bubble, but it didn’t work.
Actually, I think the odds are pretty good that drugs of some sort were involved in the creation of “Quick Joey Small.”