Pour A Little Sugar On It: The Chewy, Chewy Sounds Of American Bubblegum 1966-1971 / Various CD

Three CD set. Anthology of late '60s American bubblegum pop. Hit singles, cult collectables and obscure album tracks. Featuring The Archies, The Monkees, Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Co., The Lemon Pipers, and Crazy Elephant. In the late summer of 1966, manufactured pop quartet The Monkees - a Beatles-inspired concept inevitably nicknamed the Prefab Four - made their TV and vinyl debut. Overseen by industry veteran Don Kirshner, whose Brill Building-honed team supplied most of the songs, The Monkees was aimed at the pre-teen market effectively disenfranchised by the increasingly sophisticated nature of mid-60s pop. The venture's runaway success encouraged numerous other backroom songwriting/ production teams to step forward, with the New York-based Kasenetz-Katz partnership coining the term "bubblegum" as shorthand for the manufactured pop process. Kasenetz-Katz hit big with such names as Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Co. And Crazy Elephant, while Don Kirshner and his favored producer Jeff Barry - both sidelined when The Monkees rose up against their puppet masters - returned with cartoon pop group The Archies and the biggest-selling single of 1969, 'Sugar, Sugar'. Pour A Little Sugar On It examines the bubblegum phenomenon in forensic detail, with all of the aforementioned acts joined by hits from The Lemon Pipers, Tommy Roe, Tommy James & The Shondells, The Cuff Links, The Box Tops, Lou Christie, Andy Kim and others as well as numerous cult 45s (The Rasberry Pirates, Cartoon Candy Carnival, The Four Fuller Brothers, etc.). Also featuring some unlikely names who occasionally left their fingerprints in the sticky stuff (The Electric Prunes, The Beach Boys, Sparks, Velvet Underground), 'Pour A Little Sugar On It' is housed in a 3CD clamshell box that includes a 48-page booklet with rare photos and the stories behind all 91 tracks. It's gonna make your life so sweet