Bubblegum music held no delusions of grandeur, nor any intent to expand your mind or alter your perceptions. Bubblegum producers only wanted you to fork over the dough and go home to play your new acquisition over and over to your heart's content (and, no doubt, to your older brother's consternation).
Eden went on to note, "Power pop aims for your heart and your feet. Bubblegum aims for any part of your body it can get, as long as you buy the damn record."
You could conceivably think of virtually every cute novelty hit, from pre-rock ditties like “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” to transcendent rock-era staples like “Iko Iko,” as a legitimate precursor to bubblegum's avowedly ephemeral themes.
The Royal Guardsmen. They managed a #2 hit in 1966 with “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron,” a novelty tune based on the funny-looking dog with the big black nose in the Peanuts comic strip. The single combined a campy kid's appeal with a punky bridge nicked without apology from “Louie, Louie.” Although “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” and its lower-charting sequels were certainly precursors to the recognized bubblegum sound, Bill Pitzonka insists The Royal Guardsmen were not a bona fide bubblegum group.
You could conceivably think of virtually every cute novelty hit, from pre-rock ditties like “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” to transcendent rock-era staples like “Iko Iko,” as a legitimate precursor to bubblegum's avowedly ephemeral themes.
The Royal Guardsmen. They managed a #2 hit in 1966 with “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron,” a novelty tune based on the funny-looking dog with the big black nose in the Peanuts comic strip. The single combined a campy kid's appeal with a punky bridge nicked without apology from “Louie, Louie.” Although “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” and its lower-charting sequels were certainly precursors to the recognized bubblegum sound, Bill Pitzonka insists The Royal Guardsmen were not a bona fide bubblegum group.
Let's take a listen to some of the precursors to bubble gum music so you can get a feel for where bubble gum music came from and how it evolved. Let's take it off with Patty Page.
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Artist: Patti Page
Song Name: How Much Is That Doggie In The Window
Year: 1953
Note: written by Bob Merrill in 1952 and loosely based on the folk tune Carnival of Venice. recorded by Patti Page on December 18, 1952, and released in January 1953 by Mercury Records
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Artist: The Crystals
Song Name: Iko, Iko
Year:
Note: One could conceivably think of virtually every cute novelty hit from pre rock era like how much is that doggy in the window to the transcendent rock era staples like IKO IKO as a legitimate precursor to the bubble gums.
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Artist: The Royal Guardsmen
Song Name:Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron
Year: 1966
Note: Novelty tune based on the funny looking dog Snoopy with the big black nose in the peanuts comic. The single combined can't be kids appeal with a punky bridge, Nick, without apology from Louis Lilly. Although Snoopy versus the red Baron and its lower charting SQLs were certainly precursors to the recognized bubblegum sound. Bill zonca insist the Royal garden. We're not a bonafide bubblegum group at any time.
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Artist: Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs
Song Name: Sugar Shack
Year: 1963
Note: Gilmer and The Fireballs were the last American band to chart before Beatlemania hit.
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We heard the Dixie Cups with their version of Iko, Iko from 1965 and then the Royal Guards with Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron from 1966. We ended off this first block of tunes with Jimmy Glimmer and the Fireballs with Sugar Shack from 1963. All the music we've heard sets the stage for music to come, but it really isn't considered to be pure bubblegum.
And, of course, there was no shortage of acts in the mid-'60s actively cultivating some aspect of the adolescent market. Herman's Hermits had a string of cuddly hits, with “I'm Henry VIII, I Am” veering the closest to bubblegum, but they were never quite a bubblegum group. The Lovin' Spoonful had a goofy, good time vibe all about them, but they were far too... well, authentic-sounding to be called bubblegum.
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Artist: Herman's Hermits
Song Name: I'm Henry VIII, I Am
Year: 1965
Note: In 1965, it became the fastest-selling song in history to that point. Originall written in 1910 as a British music hall song by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston it was revived by Herman's Hermits,[1] becoming the group's second number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, dethroning "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". Despite that success, the single was not released in the UK.
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Artist:Lovin' Spoonful
Song Name:Do you believe in magic
Year: 1965
Note: The single peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. And later it came back into the top 40 by teen star Shaun Cassidy in 1978 with his cover version of the song.
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Bubblegum pop (also known as bubblegum music or simply bubblegum) is a genre of music with an upbeat sound contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, which usually is produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers and often using unknown singers. Bubblegum's classic period ran from 1967 to 1972. A second wave of bubblegum began two years later and ran until 1977 when disco took over.
The genre was predominantly a singles phenomenon rather than an album-oriented one. Acts were typically manufactured in the studio using session musicians, and most bubblegum pop groups were one-hit wonders according to writer Bill Pitzonka, a bubblegum historian and author of the liner notes for Varèse Vintage's brilliant Bubblegum Classics series, "The whole thing that really makes a record bubblegum is just an inherently contrived innocence that somehow transcends that. It transcends the contrivance. Because there were a lot of records that were really contrived and sound it. And those to me are not true bubblegum. It has to sound like they mean it."
Popular music really became more than just a contrivance. It was really the musical roots for a lot of groups that would come in the late 1970 and 80s and further affect music into the 2000s.
We're gonna take a listen to what really are the original bubble gum hits and then play an alternative cover version by a group or artist so you can kind of get an idea of where things went who did what and why they did it. Keep in mind that it was still thing for a popular song to be covered by another recording artist even while the original song was still on the charts.
So let's take a listen Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy and follow that up with L7’s version from 2016.
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Artist: Ohio Express
Song Name: “Yummy Yummy Yummy,"
Year: 1968
Note: It may be the definitive bubblegum hit, but it was merely a demo that somehow made it on to a 45 before singer Joey Levine knew what was happening; he later had a successful career writing commercial jingles.It reached No. 4 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart. L7 recorded a cover for their album Fast & Frightening in 2016.
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Artist: L7
Song Name: “Yummy Yummy Yummy,"
Year: 2016
Note: L7 is an American rock band founded in Los Angeles, California, first active from 1985. Recognized for being simultaneously subversive and infused with humor. Due to their sound and image, L7 is often associated with the grunge movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The album “Smell the Magic”, was released in 1990 on Sub Pop and earned a four star review by Rolling Stone who stated it was one of Sub Pop's finest hours.
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Artist: The Archies
Song Name: “Sugar Sugar,"
Year: 1969
Note: The Archies' "Sugar Sugar," masterminded by Don Kirshner (after the Monkees' Mike Nesmith supposedly rejected the song by threatening to punch the producer in the face). It was history's first tween pop: catchy, easy to sing, loaded down with references children would love, and presented with an innocence the rest of rock had long rejected.
Written by Jeff Barry and Canadian Andy Kim.
A huge hit by a band that didn't exist, this #1 hit at bubblegum's peak, possibly because singer Ron Dante was already in the Top 10 as the lead vocalist of "Tracy" by the Cuff Links.
reached No. 1 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in1969 and remained there for four weeks
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Artist: Wilson Picket
Song Name: Sugar Sugar
Year:1970
Note: Pickett's cover of "Sugar, Sugar" peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
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1969 also saw the emergence of the 1910 fruit gum company with their song Indian giver. Ironically the pace of Indian giver by the Ramones is incredibly slow compared to their usual frenetic pace and is really actually quite close to the original by the 1910 fruit gum company
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Artist: The 1910 Fruitgum Company
Song Name: “Indian Giver,"
Year:1969
Note: The Company were a "real" band, despite this hit being written by Shondells hit maker Ritchie Cordell and "Montego Bay" singer Bobby Bloom. This may be why both Joan Jett and the Ramones saw fit to cover it.
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Artist: Ramones
Song Name: “Indian Giver,"
Year: 1987
Note: Ramones Mania album.
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Artist: Tommy James and the Shondells
Song Name: “I Think We're Alone Now,"
Year: 1967
Note: The Shondells were the godfathers of bubblegum, "Hanky Panky" notwithstanding, and their string of late-'60s hits began in earnest with this ode to "playing doctor."
Covered by Tiffany in late 1987
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Artist: Tiffany
Song Name: “I Think We're Alone Now,"
Year: 1987
Note: The Tiffany recording reached number 1 on the charts of various countries including the US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand. it really proves. That bubble gum is a timeless.
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Bubble gum music wasn’t limited to just Canada and the USA. In the UK, they developed their own take on the phenomena.
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Artist: Daniel Boone
Song Name: “Beautiful Sunday,"
Year: 1972
Note: Boone was a prominent songwriter on what passed for the British bubblegum scene, but this solo song was the only one to hit big in America—and set records in Japan that have yet to be broken.
The only known perfromance video of Daniel Boone is this god awful version from British TV in 1972.
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Artist: Seiji Tanaka
Song Name: “Beautiful Sunday,"
Year: 1976
Note: The song went to #4 on the Japan single chart and sold 5 million copies. This song was so popular that it's been pre recorded in Japan by more than 25 different artists since 1972.
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Gimme Gimme good Lovin done in 1969 by Crazy Elephant was not the first recording of this bubble gum classic as Spencer Davis group recorded it in 1966 and released it in 1967, thus leading many people to believe this is actually a British bubblegum hit. Actually Crazy Elephant just made the song hugely popular by being in the right place at the right time.
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Artist: Crazy Elephant
Song Name: Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'
Year: January 1969
Note: The single ranked #89 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1969.
Crazy Elephant was a studio concoction, the Marzano-Calvert Studio Band, created by Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz of Super K Productions, and for some odd reason was promoted in Cash Box magazine as allegedly being a group of Welsh coal miners
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Artist: Helix
Song Name: Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'
Year: 1984
Note:A music video was made for the Crazy Elephant cover "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'". Two versions of this video were filmed: One for music video channels like MTV, and the other being an "adult" version featuring topless models including a then 16-year-old porn star Traci Lords. This version was aired on the Playboy Channel in the United States.
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**The uncensored Version
And last but not least press my favourite bubble gum song of all time is Edison lighthouse’s 1970 love grows where my Rosemary goes.
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Artist: Edison Lighthouse
Song Name: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
Year:1970
Note:Essentially, they were a studio group with prolific session singer Tony Burrows providing the vocals.
At the time it was the fastest climbing number 1 hit record in history.
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Artist: Wayne Newton
Song Name: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
Year: 1970
Note: Wayne Newton with his version of love grows where my rosary goes was a blatant attempt to hippen up the image of the Vegas perennial performers Wayne Newton. He jumped on the bubblegum bandwagon and did a series of albums which were strictly covers versions of current pop hits
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A young Wayne Newton
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