Imagine me and you and The Turtles and The Association and The Vogues and The Cowsills and Badfinger and Jay and the Americans. The “Happy Together” tour began 40 years ago and has become the most reliable 1960s pop nostalgia show on the circuit. The six-act event is returning to the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, where it has played dozens of times before, on Aug.
3 at 7:30 p.m. The lineup can change year by year, but it has always been headlined by The Turtles, whose 1967 megahit “Happy Together” gave the tour its name.
In recent years, though, The Turtles’ lineup had its own major change when the group’s founding lead singer, Howard Kaylan, was struck with health issues that took him off the road after over three decades. Kaylan’s longtime singing partner (and friend since childhood) Mark Volman is still involved, but another voice for the harmony-centered group was needed. They found him in Ron Dante, a verified chart-topping ‘60s pop star himself who now gets to perform his greatest hit, The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” on top of The Turtles set.
“I love their records,” Dante said of The Turtles. “I imitated their sounds on my records. ‘Happy Together’ was an unbelievable landmark.
It’s a monster, a great song. It was a big influence on me.” Dante said the top-5 hit he had with The Cufflinks, “Tracy,” was “an homage to The Turtles.
” Dante opened for the “Happy Together” tour in 2017. “The next year, they called me back” when Kaylan retired from touring, he said. Dante has brought his solo act to Connecticut a few times over the years and has been with the Happy Together tour not just at the Oakdale but the Big E in Springfield, Massachusetts.
He remembers Hartford fondly from when he was first starting out as a recording artist because “it was one of the few cities where the radio station would have me on before The Archies.” The Billboard charts ranked “Sugar, Sugar” as the No. 1 song of 1969, no small feat in a year that also gave us “Honky Tonk Women,” “Aquarius,” “Everyday People,” “Crimson and Clover,” “One (is the Loneliest Number),” “Bad Moon Rising” and many other classics.
The song’s co-writers Andy Kim (who later had solo hits produced by Dante) and Jeff Barry had an inkling “Sugar, Sugar” would be a hit. “Most of The Archies songs we did in 20 minutes,” Dante said. “This one took two hours.
Everybody said ‘This is a great fun track.’” His whispery “ssssshugar..
..” vocal style was inspired by the Donovan hit “Mellow Yellow,” lightened by the awareness that “I knew this was for a cartoon show for Saturday morning.
” Toni Wine, the revered session singer who recorded the women’s vocals on The Archies’ records, “decided to sing it low, then sing it high,” giving the song a momentary Motown soul feel. “It’s amazing how it evolved, really,” Dante recalled. The Archies released five albums between 1968 and 1971, but Dante performed additional Archies duties for the cartoon series “The Archie Show,” which promised “a new dance to watch and learn” every week.
Dante released some of those “Archie Show” snippets as well as other obscurities from his long career on the two-CD set “Ron Dante’s Funhouse” in 2020. Some of that material has made it onto a collectible one-LP vinyl variation of “Funhouse” that’s due out this summer. Besides being the singing voice of “America’s typical teen” Archie Andrews, Dante has had a number of other extraordinary cultural adventures.
From 1978 to 1985, he was the publisher of the literary magazine The Paris Review. The journal’s founding editor, George Plimpton, was a New York City neighbor of Dante’s. They met when a fire alarm went off in the building.
It seems that Dante’s skill at connecting with connecting with the youth of America didn’t stop with pop music. The Paris Review circulation increased during Dante’s tenure due to some marketing ideas he had, including outreach to college readers. He also got to hobnob with Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer and scads of other famous writers at Plimpton’s cocktail parties.
“He was a wonderful neighbor,” Dante said. “We’d go eat at Elaine’s every Friday night.” Dante’s other claims to fame include producing the first nine Barry Manilow albums (including the singer’s breakthrough hits such as “Mandy” and “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling”), singing on hundreds of well-known TV commercial jingles and singing backup on recordings by the likes of Steely Dan and Mountain.
“I was just a kid,” Dante said. “I didn’t realize I was among music royalty. I went through all the changes from 1963 to today.
” He moved to Los Angeles from his native New York 30 years ago and continues to write and record and produce but eschews the idea of a home recording studio, insisting that “home is for home, the studio is for creating.” Adjusting to being a member of The Turtles was daunting at first for Dante, despite his skill at swiftly switching up his singing styles for his animation and advertising gigs. He recognizes that he’s a rather different live performer than Kaylan: Dante is cheery and giddy, while Kaylan’s more of a grizzled hippie type with a very dry wit.
Dante worried how longtime fans of The Turtles (or of Volman and Kaylan’s longtime duo act Flo & Eddie) would take to him. He even fretted that he’d be talking and singing in a different accent: “I’m East Coast. They’re California.
They worked with Frank Zappa.” He went to Volman, who had always been the goofier of the two Turtles frontmen, and asked his advice. “Let’s make it all about the music,” Volman insisted.
“Bring your voice to it.” Dante took that to heart and explained that “You must read the lyric and interpret the lyric.” Acting skills come into play, the singer said.
“Backstage, I’m one person. When I go onstage, I’m someone else.” The “Happy Together” tour spans 51 shows in a period of three months, a carefully paced annual sojourn that fits a six-band bill where Dante estimates that “the average age is around 77.
” He’s in awe of the other acts, calling The Cowsills (the Rhode Island family band whose late-’60s hits included “The Rain, The Park and Other Things”) “the best singing act I’ve ever seen.” He joked that he felt he had to apologize to them because “‘Sugar, Sugar’ kept them out of the No. 1 spot for four weeks.
” The “Happy Together” acts all share the same backing band. The four-piece band — which Dante said “sounds like eight” — is led by Godfrey Townsend, who’s been in the touring bands of Alan Parson Project, The Who’s John Entwhistle, Cream’s Jack Bruce and Traffic’s Dave Mason. Dante said Townsend “analyzes the original records, then produces the original arrangements.
” Also in the band is legendary rock bassist Kenny Aaronson, who has worked with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Joan Jett, Billy Idol and Robert Gordon as well as the guitar greats Dave Edmunds, Edgar Winter, Rick Derringer, Mick Taylor and Leslie West. Aaronson and Townsend both play in the current version of the iconic British blues/rock band The Yardbirds. All the members of the “Happy Together” band sing backup, adding to the harmony of the already vocally rich acts.
Besides The Turtles and The Cowsills, the 2024 edition of the tour features Jay & the Americans (known for “She Cried” and “Just a Little Bit Closer”), The Association (“Cherish,” “Windy”), The Vogues (“Five O’Clock World,” “Turn Around, Look at Me”) and Badfinger (featuring the “No Matter What” and “Baby Blue” hitmakers’ only surviving member Joey Molland). “They get the artists, they get the hits, they get a trip back, the whole thing,” Dante said. Thanks to him, they also get “Sugar, Sugar.
” The 2024 “Happy Together Tour” with The Turtles, Jay and the Americans, The Association, The Vogues, The Cowsills and Badfinger takes place Aug. 3 at 7:30 p.m.
at the Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Road, Wallingford. $53-$210.
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