In the late 60's and early-to-mid 70's, Post & Kellogg's issued cardboard 45's on the backs of selected cereal boxes. Post (now part of Kraft) had licensing deals with Motown (Jackson 5ive), Archie Comics (The Archies, of course), and also with The Monkees, even though the act had drifted apart in the years after their sitcom had ended. Kellogg's also had a license with Archie (Josie & the Pussycats).
In 1972, however, Post decided to take it one step further, by having one of their own characters front a pre-fab pop group. Hence, the Sugar Bears. Basically, Sugar swapped his banjo for a guitar, as shown on the album cover you'll see shortly in the following video. However, the sound they wanted wasn't the middle of the road adult contemporary that you might've expected from Sugar's long time voice actor, Gerry Matthews, who made Sugar sound like a cross between Dean Martin & Bing Crosby. Instead, session musician Dave Ellingson was hired to be the lead singer of the Sugar Bears, who had one big hit, "You Are The One", which got a ton of radio airplay in the spring & summer of '72.
I was hoping to find a commercial promoting the single on YouTube, but no go. So, thanks to EyeoftheLioness, we've got a still shot of the album cover referenced earlier. It may interest you to know that Ellingson's wife, Kim, would go on to a more successful solo career. Better known as Kim Carnes, she hit #1 8 years later with "Bette Davis Eyes", and even crossed over to the country chart for a duet with Kenny Rogers, "Don't Fall in Love With a Dreamer".
Here's "You Are The One":
2 comments:
Never heard this - though we did eat more than our share of Super Sugar Crisp at my house!
Now it's called Super Golden Crisps! Foo!
The song actually sounds pretty good, too bad it's not part of any music collection I know of.
I can testify that I did hear "You Are The One" on the radio at least once, riding home from school. Decent, but not exactly gold record material.
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