Ron Dante may not be a household name, but his voice featured on a couple of the biggest pop hits of the late '60s (
the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" and
the Cuff Links' "Tracy"), he worked as musical director for
Barry Manilow in the '70s, and he sang on some of the most ubiquitous commercials of the era, including the iconic "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" for Coke.
It all started in Staten Island when young
Carmine Granito broke his arm and the doctor gave him a choice of playing a sport or an instrument to help the healing process. The
Elvis-loving preteen chose guitar and soon was playing and singing in a neighborhood doo wop band called the Persuaders. At the age of 15, the youngster, now known professionally as
Ron Dante, headed to Manhattan to break into the music business. After a few false starts, he ended up working as a demo singer for Don Kirshner's Aldon Music. He released "Little Lollipop," his first single under the name Ronnie Dante, in 1964 on the Almot label, but it didn't go anywhere. Neither did his next, the novelty song "Don't Stand Up in a Canoe." In a twist that foreshadowed his future career path,
Dante did have a hit in 1964 as the anonymous singer of the "Leader of the Pack" parody "Leader of the Laundromat" by the invented group
the Detergents. He spent the next few years writing songs for
Bobby Darin's company and releasing singles that didn't worry the charts much.
In 1968, his life changed when he auditioned for a new project Don Kirshner and producer
Jeff Barry were working on and got the gig as lead singer. The band was
the Archies and the first record to come out was "Bang-Shang-A-Lang." It was a hit, but the next song they released defined an era. "Sugar, Sugar" launched the bubblegum sound and reached number one on the singles chart. The
Archies project continued for a few more years, with the hits drying up and
Dante learning the ins and outs of record production, eventually helming their final album, 1971's
This Is Love. During that time, he was free to work with other producers and he teamed with
Paul Vance and
Lee Pockriss on the smash 1969 song "Tracy," credited to
the Cuff Links.
Dante released his first solo album,
Ron Dante Brings You Up, in 1970, with
Jeff Barry producing and
Dante co-writing most of the songs. It didn't take off the way anyone hoped and
Dante went back to releasing one-off singles under his own and other names, as well as doing the voice for another cartoon band, the Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan. He also did plenty of work singing commercial jingles, providing vocals on campaigns by Pepsi, McDonald's, and many others, including Coke's famous "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" spot. At one of these sessions he met
Barry Manilow, who was working as
Bette Midler's piano player and as a composer of jingles. The two hit it off and began recording demos of
Manilow's songs. Their hard work paid off in 1974 when "Mandy" became a huge hit and launched the singer's career.
Dante became
Manilow's musical director and producer throughout the 1970s. At the same time,
Dante released singles under his own name and under pseudonyms (Bo Cooper, Ronnie & the Dirt Riders), even cutting a disco remake of "Sugar, Sugar" in 1975. He also rode the disco wave with Dante's Inferno, a late-'70s group that featured
Dante, Toni Lund, and
Monica Burruss on shared vocals.
Around this time
Dante began to branch out from music, becoming a Broadway producer and winning Tonys for 1978's Ain't Misbehavin' and 1980's Children of a Lesser God. He also became publisher of The Paris Review for six years starting in 1978, thanks to being a neighbor of the magazine's founder, George Plimpton. He did make another solo album, 1981's Street Angel, and produced records for
Irene Cara and
Barry Manilow after that, but he then took a long break from releasing anything. It wasn't until the late '90s that
Dante returned to making albums, with a series of recordings of his favorite songs and some originals. First came 1997's California Nights, then 1999's Favorites, and lastly, 2004's Saturday Night Blast. He revived the
Archies name soon after that, brought in two vocalists to play Betty and Veronica (Danielle van Zyl and Kelly-Lynn), and released The Archies Christmas Party album in 2008 on the Fuel 2000 label. By now he owned the rights to the
Archies recordings and oversaw the reissue on CD of all the band's original albums.
Dante continued playing live shows, and in 2016 he launched a couple of reissue projects, a CD box set of all the
Archies albums presented with the original album artwork and Anthology, a double-disc collection of songs taken from across his always interesting career. ~ Tim Sendra