Sunday Drive: Sugar, Sugar

Your Head Trucker couldn't get enough of this bouncy tune when it came out in the fall of 1969.  I got the 45 as soon as I could, and played it over and over and over again, dancing around the house.

My dancing days are long past, but the song still makes me smile.  And I'm loving this brilliant little collage with classic dancers from the golden age of the movies.  Enjoy.

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Sunday Drive: Sweet Sounds

Just for fun, a little compilation of sugared songs from my early life. First up is one from 1958 by the McGuire Sisters that was a hit when I was just a tiny fellow, and one of the first songs I remember hearing:




Next, from 1964, the incomparable Julie Andrews singing one of everybody's favorite tunes from Mary Poppins, which was released fifty years ago - can you believe? - on August 27, 1964, to universal acclaim:




The Four Tops, led by the late, great Levi Stubbs, had a number-one hit in 1965 with this next one, which remains my all-time favorite dance tune:




As I remember it, this next song swept to the top of the charts just about the time school was starting in 1969. I remember I'd get up every morning in the early darkness and play this record over and over again on the living room stereo while getting dressed - and my mom walking in from the kitchen and yelling at me: "For God's sake, turn that damn thing down, you'll wake up all the neighbors!" Oh but I just couldn't get enough of this bouncy, catchy number - here's studio singer Ron Dante performing all the parts for his nonexistent group, and very convincingly too:




And the following year, Canadian group The Guess Who cut down on the sweetness with this plaintive number about the absence of sugar, whatever that might mean: