How Ron Dante Became the Voice of a Generation | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan hosts Ron Dante, the iconic voice behind the Archies' 'Sugar, Sugar,' in a deep dive into the hidden world of classic pop music. Dante

Key takeaways

• Ron Dante was a teenage demo singer who became the voice of two Top 10 hits without ever being credited as a solo artist.
• The Archies' 'Sugar, Sugar' was crafted by elite New York session musicians, not a real band, highlighting the behind-the-scenes machinery of pop music.

Main topics

• The hidden role of session musicians in classic pop hits
• Ron Dante's career as a demo singer and anonymous hitmaker

Notable quotes

"I was just on a joyride." – Ron Dante on his passion for singing.

Conclusion

Ron Dante's story reveals that behind every iconic pop hit lies a network of

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) What I liked was singing. Singing in studio, singing other people's songs, my songs. It didn't matter. I was just on a joyride. Speaker 1 (0:07) Your voice has a lot of... You can sing, of course, but there's a personality to your voice that's... I think only you have that personality. Speaker 3 (0:16) Dick Charles comes out and he looks at me and he goes, you don't record very well. It'll be somebody trying Speaker 1 (0:22) to say, Speaker 3 (0:22) you shouldn't do it like that. And whenever they say that, I do it. Speaker 1 (0:28) I can't think of anybody that's similar to your story. A little different. I'm on stage and I don't know what to play. And I started playing Sugar Shaker. Speaker 3 (0:38) Ron Speaker 1 (0:41) Dante, thank you very much for being here on my podcast. It's so cool and fun and exciting to talk to you. You ready to jump in? I'm Speaker 3 (0:50) ready to jump in, Billy. So happy to be here. Thank you. Okay. Speaker 1 (0:54) Gypsy Be Mine. Oh, my goodness. Absence of Lisa. Oh, my goodness. Ronnie Dante. Or is it Dante or Dante? Dante. Dante, okay. Dot, April of 1967. I had only been one month old now, not to date myself. But I found this record, and there's that voice, your voice, which is there's only one person who sings like you. But I thought it was cool because I was like, it got me thinking like. What were you hoping to do as a recording artist? Did you want to be a soloist? Did you want to have a band? Because I know back then in the record business, there was a lot of stuff going on. It depended who had a contract. I'll let you put out a single. Hey, come sing on this session. So can you walk me through that part of your life? I was a studio Speaker 3 (1:40) singer, background singer, demo singer. I sang for other people. I did their demos. I worked in an office where the writers in the office were Goffin and King. Carole King, Jerry Goffenreit. They did okay. Speaker 1 (1:55) They did okay. Speaker 3 (1:56) The first day I walked into this office, I got a job as a demo maker. I was only 17. And who was in there but Tony Orlando, Neil Sedak, and Carole King. So I got to sing background on their records. And I was a journeyman singer. I would go to studio dates and do demos for people. And some of those demos would become singles. And they would put them out onto different names. And I said, great. If one of them hits, we'll do an album. Speaker 1 (2:22) Were you okay with that? Because it seems to me it takes a certain psychology to be okay with not having it always be about you. Speaker 3 (2:30) My ego was very submerged. I didn't have a big ego. I had a drive to succeed and do well and get my voice out there. I knew that some of these things might turn into great opportunities for me as a solo artist, but I wasn't in a hurry. Interesting. I wasn't in a hurry. Speaker 1 (2:49) Little Lollipop, 1964. Oh, no. Speaker 3 (2:53) My first single. Yes. But what's amazing to me as Speaker 1 (2:58) somebody who loves your voice is the voice is there already. Like, there it is. It Speaker 3 (3:04) was formed. It was formed at 14 when I started my first band. I had that voice. And I came from a certain part of New York City that had this accent that worked with lyrics. Interesting, right? Speaker 1 (3:18) Kind of like how sometimes people with English accents, they sound a certain way when they sing. I guess, American songs? Yeah. Or American rock and roll. Who did you idolize in your generation? Who did you look up as a singer and think, oh, I wish I could sing like that? Or who did you really look up to? Speaker 3 (3:36) Well, as a very young man, 10 years old, I idolized Elvis. And then 11 or 12, I idolized the Everly Brothers. And there were other acts that came along during those years that... I just love their songs and I love their sounds. Speaker 2 (3:51) My Speaker 3 (3:51) sound really didn't hit its prime and perfect spot until the Beatles came out and Four Seasons came out and the Beach Boys came out. And those were the ones. The Speaker 1 (4:03) 64, 65. Yes, I Speaker 3 (4:05) really, really felt, oh, this is it. This is where the vocals should be. Speaker 1 (4:09) Oh, I see. Okay. Did you ever meet Phil and Don? Speaker 3 (4:13) I met Phil. Speaker 1 (4:15) Yeah, Phil was cool. I knew Phil a little bit. Speaker 3 (4:17) What a wonderful guy. He signed a pick for me in strings. He was selling strings at a convention downtown. Speaker 1 (4:24) Yeah, I saw them play once in Australia, and they were so good. It was frightening. It was frightening. Their pitch and their... And Speaker 3 (4:34) the choice of harmonies. Oh, yeah. Not always thirds. Not always... Speaker 1 (4:37) That bluegrass, like sad. Leuven Brothers, you know, there's a lot of influence on those guys. That's right. Do Speaker 3 (4:42) you Speaker 1 (4:42) know the Leuven Brothers? I Speaker 3 (4:43) don't know of them, no. Speaker 1 (4:44) Oh, I think you'd really like it. If you... I think what you might enjoy is if you listen to some of the best of the Leuven Brothers, I think 50s, I think they were on Capitol. Mm-hmm, Leuven Brothers. You basically hear the Byrds and those Crosby, Stills, Nash harmonies, but like 10 years before. Ah. They were the first one that were doing these kind of... I don't know, like parallel fourths or whatever those type of harmonies are. So when you hear the Leuven Brothers, you're like, oh, that's where they all got it from. Well, Speaker 3 (5:10) we always take what comes before and we build on it. You built on what came before. Oh, yeah. And then I Speaker 1 (5:16) stomped on it. Speaker 3 (5:17) You stomped on it. You did great, though. Thank you. You filled those Speaker 1 (5:21) coliseums. You're so sweet. Speaker 1 (5:24) When did you start working for Don Kirshner? I mean, was it a business relationship or was he just one of the people that would hire you under given circumstances? Were you an employee? Yeah, I Speaker 3 (5:34) was an employee. I walked into his office at 17 and the songwriters there listened to my songs and listened to me sing. And they said, we're going to take you in to see Donnie. So they took me in to see Mr. Kirshner. He had a great white piano with jelly beans in the sides of it. He just was the nicest guy. And I said, I'm going to sing for you. I sang for him. He said, okay, kid, you've got a job. I want you to be our staff demo maker, and I'm signing you to a songwriting contract. Wow. So that was the beginning of my relationship with him. Had you written songs before that? A couple. A couple. I was already thinking about what could I play for people. Speaker 1 (6:12) And what heady company to be around. Is this Brill Building or is this? It was across the street. Okay. Brill Speaker 3 (6:18) Building. I did work there at one point for Bobby Darin. And his publishing company later on. Talk Speaker 1 (6:23) about Bobby Darin, because Bobby Darin's what an incredible talent. Speaker 3 (6:26) He had a publishing company in the Brill Building called TM Music. I was looking for a job after I left Kirshner. I was on my own. And his music supervisor assigned me. So once a month or every couple of months, Bobby would come in and listen to you. And he'd give you a little critique. He'd say, I might want to record that song. He said, but here's some tickets. Come see me at the Copacabana. I got to see him at the Colbert. I was only 18 or 19. It was unbelievable. He was a really nice guy. One day he'd come in in a tuxedo. Next day he'd come in in jeans and a t-shirt. He had many different personalities. Because, you Speaker 1 (7:03) know, obviously my generation knew who Bobby Darin was because he'd Speaker 3 (7:08) be Speaker 1 (7:08) on TV. But he was trying to recast himself more as a singer-songwriter type. But the rep on Bobby Darin was he was like kind of this, you know, five-tool Mr. Showbiz. like an entertainer in a way that we don't have entertainers anymore. Can you at least talk about that a little bit? Speaker 3 (7:23) Sure. I think he took his key from Sinatra. I think a lot of his motions on stage, his movements, his vocals, the way he approached vocals and songs, Mack the Knife, that was his training ground. So he came from an older school of thought, and he used that, and it didn't work at a certain point. It started to not work. Because he Speaker 1 (7:45) wasn't cool. It wasn't Speaker 3 (7:47) cool. So he grew his hair longer and he put on jeans, a t-shirt and started to write. You Speaker 1 (7:51) ever hear Bobby's version of If I Were a Carpenter? Speaker 3 (7:54) No, I haven't heard that. It's so good. Speaker 1 (7:57) Because again, he has that incredible vocal ability, but he's trying to recast himself almost like a Neil Diamond, like one of those type of guys. So he's like walking that line, but it's beautiful. Speaker 3 (8:08) He could change. He was a chameleon. He could really change. Even from his first record, Splish Splash, that was like an R &B vocal. Yeah. If you listen to that. And it went from Splish Splash to Dream Lover. It kind of changed a bit. And then Mack the Knife. Completely different person. Vocally. Speaker 1 (8:26) Of course, growing up in the 70s, you know, we knew Don Kirshner because it was Don Kirshner's rock concert. So he'd be in his, I'm Don Kirshner, you know. Can you talk about the real Don Kirshner a little bit? I know you said he was a nice guy, but can you... Take me behind the scenes, because he was a real mogul in the New York publishing world. Speaker 3 (8:44) He certainly was. He was the biggest thing to hit New York City in years, with his idea to have a stable of writers, young writers, teams of writers. So he had cubicles in the offices, like eight of them, and there'd be a little piano in each one, and you could hear people banging out songs in one and doing one like that. But he was like, I always describe him as your favorite uncle. who would visit you on Sunday and slip you five bucks and say, don't tell your dad. He was the nicest. Speaker 3 (9:13) fairest guy I ever worked with. Wow. After about three, four months working with him, my guitar was stolen out of my car. A beautiful Gretsch, one of those acoustic, and it was worth like 300 bucks. So I went to Donnie, I said, Donnie, somebody stole my guitar. He said, no problem, kid. He said, check, go buy another guitar. Speaker 1 (9:32) Wow. Speaker 3 (9:33) So about three months later, they stole that one. Oh, no. I had a convertible. I should have gotten rid of that convertible. So I said, oh, I can't go back to Donnie. But I finally, I said, Donnie, they stole it again. He said, no problem, kid. Speaker 2 (9:48) There's another check. Go Speaker 3 (9:50) buy another guitar. We need you. Speaker 1 (9:52) That's the way he treated me. Wow. Can you, I'm obsessed with old, I guess, old studios because I wasn't there. Excuse me. I'm obsessed with old studios because I wasn't there. Can you walk me through like what a typical session in the 1960s would have been and where would you have been recording? Was there, did he have his own demo studio or were you going into like a typical? Speaker 3 (10:15) With Kirshner's Publishing Company, there was a little demo studio called Associated, which was very reasonably priced and not very high tech, but good. Yeah. And they would steer us to that studio, $100 an hour, whatever, 25 for each musician. You'd get three musicians. Speaker 3 (10:35) It was just a kind of a funky studio with old-fashioned mics and some old-fashioned players who had been around quite a long time. The bass player had just gone to electric bass. He was playing upright bass in the 60s. Speaker 2 (10:51) Yeah. And Speaker 3 (10:51) then it became the Fender bass. And it was just very easy to do, but we would record and then we'd bounce to more tracks because there was only like four tracks. I see. And we'd bounce vocals back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And each time it would add hiss. And compression, Speaker 1 (11:10) though, which is kind of part of the magic of the thing. And Speaker 3 (11:12) we would put it on and sound like frying eggs. But it sounded great. Yeah. Because I got to do, like, many voices, backgrounds I could harmonize with myself. So that was the session. The guys would help us out. The older musicians would help out the young writers. They would say, no, no, you can't. play this chord to this melody and they would help us. Oh, Speaker 1 (11:33) wow. Speaker 3 (11:34) And it was a beautiful thing at that time. Speaker 1 (11:37) How'd you learn how to do harmonies? Because that's usually a gift that people have. Was it something that came naturally to you? Speaker 3 (11:43) Kind of. I used to bring up the Everly Brothers. I used to try to find the note in between their notes. Speaker 1 (11:49) To sing with them. Speaker 3 (11:50) What? Speaker 1 (11:51) To sing, almost like sing with them? Yeah, Speaker 3 (11:52) I would sing with them. So I'd learn Bird Dog or Dream, any of those things, and I'd hear where the hole was, and I'd plug the hole vocally and sing along with them. And, of course, I did doo-wop at first. I was, you know, 16, 15 years old. I would sing in bathrooms at school or at the ferry terminal. Speaker 2 (12:11) And Speaker 3 (12:12) so I would learn what notes go where. Speaker 2 (12:15) And Speaker 3 (12:16) it did come naturally to me, though, because I grew up on a... family where people did sing, an Italian-American family where a Speaker 2 (12:23) lot Speaker 3 (12:23) of people sang. My dad liked to sing, my uncles. Nobody did it professionally. I was the only one who got out. Speaker 1 (12:30) Who's the first person that ever pulled you aside and said, your voice has something unique? Speaker 3 (12:35) Well, I think it was Hadda B. Kirshner. It had to be him because he would constantly try to get me a record deal on the demos that we were doing. When I was 14, I went into a recording studio in New York City, Dick Charles Recording Studio. It was a big demo studio. And Dick Charles was the engineer. And so I'm singing some song that my dad wants me to sing. So I'm singing it. And Dick Charles comes out and he looks at me and he goes, you don't record very well. Speaker 1 (13:04) What does that even mean? Speaker 3 (13:06) I know. He says, your voice doesn't like the microphone, something like that. And even at 14, I knew he was out of line and that he was wrong. Speaker 1 (13:14) Oh, wow. Because Speaker 3 (13:15) I heard the playback and I said, that record's just fine. I have to get my voice better. Speaker 1 (13:20) Yeah. Speaker 3 (13:21) So that's what they try to do to you. Every once in a while, you'll get a positive, but there'll be somebody trying to say, you shouldn't do it like that. And whenever they say that, I do Speaker 1 (13:33) it. Yeah. I think what's interesting is that there's a lot of people who sing really good. But not everybody can sing with personality, which is an interesting gift, you know. And as has been seen by your musical life, your voice has a lot of, you can sing, of course, but there's a personality to your voice that's, I think only you have that personality. Does it make sense the way I'm Speaker 2 (14:02) putting it? Speaker 1 (14:02) Well, thank you. Speaker 3 (14:02) I used to do commercials. I sang commercials for years. I was a jingle singer. And I would work with different people coming up. Michael Bolton would be coming up, Luther Vandross, Valerie Simpson. They would be coming up the same way and they'd be on the side of me. Speaker 2 (14:16) And Speaker 3 (14:17) I remember Valerie leaning over to me one day and saying, I hate your happy voice. That's kind of what I was after. There's a happiness in your voice. It's so happy. And I couldn't help it. It was just, you know, I love singing. To this day, I love singing. Like you love to do what you do, right? Speaker 1 (14:36) Yeah. So it's well known, of course, the Monkees' history with Kirshner and that, you know, they sort of rebelled at some point. You know, there's this incredible story where in the beginning it's Boyce and Hart. They think they have the gig. Then Kirshner kind of muscles in. The Monkees end up kind of pushing Kirshner out. And then Boyce and Hart kind of had a year for a while. And I think Kirshner ended up kind of coming back in towards the end. Were you around for any of that machinations? Because eventually it does have to do with you. I Speaker 3 (15:09) was at Screen Gems Columbia Music, which Don Kirshner was the president of. And he had me audition along with everybody else on the staff, young, who could sing and do videos and send them out to the coast. Speaker 1 (15:21) So you actually auditioned for them. I auditioned for the Speaker 3 (15:23) Monkees, yeah. They were considering me for the Davy Jones. Speaker 3 (15:27) part, but Davey really deserved it. He was so great. People loved him and his English accent. Speaker 1 (15:33) The charisma of the four of them together. Yes, it Speaker 3 (15:36) worked. I remember thinking, Don Kirshner really wanted to funnel in great songs to them. He knew they were a TV group. Speaker 1 (15:44) Yeah. Speaker 3 (15:45) Right? Made up to be a group. So he would get them the best songs, I'm a Believer. Speaker 1 (15:50) Oh, so many great songs. Speaker 3 (15:52) Produced by the same guy, Jeff Barry, who produced Sugar Sugar. So I remember that time, and Donnie was very upset that they didn't like his approach, not letting them play on the records, not letting them write the songs. And he was very despondent about that. And the Monkees were so popular and so strong that he was fired. Speaker 1 (16:12) Yeah. Speaker 3 (16:13) Just fired from Screen Gems Columbia Speaker 1 (16:15) Music. It made them... Hundreds of millions. Oh, he got fired from the job. Speaker 3 (16:19) Yes. Wow. He got fired from the job. Speaker 1 (16:21) I didn't know Speaker 3 (16:21) that part of it. And he said, someday I'll come back with another company that will be as big. And he did. He came back years later. And he did. He found Kansas. He found the Archies. Yeah. Speaker 1 (16:30) So as the story goes, of course, correct me, is that he offered Sugar Sugar to the monkeys and they turned it down because it was too sweet. That's what I Speaker 3 (16:39) heard. And even Mickey Dolenz told me. It's funny because Speaker 1 (16:43) I went back and listened to Sugar Sugar today knowing I was going to talk to you. Speaker 1 (16:50) You can almost hear Mickey singing it. Easily. Good singer. Great singer. But what I'm saying is, if you just listen to the song, you can hear it was literally written for Mickey. I mean, it's got Mickey's rhythm in it. Speaker 3 (17:03) They would have had a number one record if Speaker 1 (17:05) that song was Speaker 3 (17:06) destined to be a Speaker 1 (17:07) big hit. So did you just cut the demo and they released the demo or they said, okay, now you're going to do the song? Because how does it end up instead of Archie's? The Speaker 3 (17:14) Archie's were going on TV. And they needed music. And Jeff Barry was