Not to be confused with hypnotist Ronald Pellar

Ronald Pellar

Ronald Pellar is an American hypnotist and fraudster who performed under the stage names Ronald Dante and Dr. Dante, and who was briefly married to actress Lana Turner...

, aka Ronald Dante or Dr. Dante.

Ron Dante (born Carmine Granito on August 22, 1945 in Staten Island

Staten Island

Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...

, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 singer, songwriter

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

, session vocalist

Session musician

Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...

, and record producer

Record producer

A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

. Dante is best known as the lead singer for the fictional cartoon band, The Archies

The Archies

The Archies are a garage band founded by Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones, a group of adolescent fictional characters of the Archie universe, in the context of the animated TV series, The Archie Show...

, as well as the one-hit wonder group The Cuff Links

The Cuff Links

The Cuff Links were an American rock/pop studio group from Staten Island, New York. The band had a U.S. No. 9 hit in 1969 with "Tracy", with rich harmonised vocals provided entirely by Ron Dante...

.

Career

The Archies single "Sugar, Sugar

Sugar, Sugar

"Sugar, Sugar" is a pop song written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim. It was a four-week 1969 number-one hit single by fictional characters The Archies. Produced by Jeff Barry, the song was originally released on the album Everything's Archie. The album is the product of a group of studio musicians...

", written by producer Jeff Barry

Jeff Barry

Jeff Barry is an American pop music songwriter, singer, and record producer.-Early career:...

 with Andy Kim

Andy Kim

Andrew Youakim, performing as Andy Kim, is a Lebanese Canadian pop rock singer and songwriter. He grew up in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Kim is known for a number of hit singles that he released in the late 1960s and early 1970s such as "Rock Me Gently", which topped the US singles charts. In 1968,...

, was the number-one selling record of 1969 in the United States. Four years earlier, Dante was a member of the parody group The Detergents

The Detergents

The Detergents were an American music group consisting of Ronnie Dante, Danny Jordan, and Tommy Wynn. The group's speciality was parody songs, as with their first and best-known hit record, "Leader of the Laundromat", written and produced by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss...

, who recorded a novelty song called "Leader of the Laundromat". Concurrent with his work on the Archies project, Dante was also employed as a session singer and performed many television and commercial jingles.

In 1969, Dante recorded an album under the group name of The Cuff Links, for his old Detergents songwriter-producers Paul Vance

Paul Vance

Paul Vance is an American songwriter and record producer.With over 300 recorded songs, Vance co-wrote such hits as "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini," recorded in 1960 by Brian Hyland, which rose to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and "Catch a Falling Star," recorded in 1957 by...

 and Lee Pockriss

Lee Pockriss

Lee Julian Pockriss was an American songwriter who wrote many well-known popular songs and several scores for films and Broadway shows.-Early life and career:...

. Providing both lead and background vocals through overdubbing

Overdubbing

Overdubbing is a technique used by recording studios to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance....

 (as he did with most of the male Archies' vocals) Dante hit the U.S. Top Ten with the single "Tracy," at the same time that "Sugar, Sugar" occupied the top of the chart. Dante was anonymous on both tracks. Contrary to popular belief, the lead verses of another Archies single, "Jingle Jangle" (portrayed as being sung by either Betty

Betty Cooper

Betty Cooper is a fictional character of Archie Comics, the blonde-haired daughter of Hal and Alice Cooper. Betty likes sports, and is also a cheerleader. Betty was created in December 1941. Her older brother Chic Cooper and older sister Polly Cooper have both moved out of Riverdale, their hometown...

 or Veronica

Veronica Lodge

Veronica Lodge is a fictional character in the Archie Comics books series.-Fictional history and character:She is called both by her name Veronica and her nickname Ronnie...

), were not sung by a female vocalist, but rather by Dante using falsetto

Falsetto

Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...

 vocals.

Dante's first album release under his own name, on Don Kirshner

Don Kirshner

Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...

's label, was Ron Dante Brings You Up in 1970. In 1972, also under the supervision of Kirshner, Dante became lead vocalist for another cartoon group, The Chan Clan

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan The voice of Mr...

. In 1979, he recorded a disco album under the name Dante's Inferno for the short lived Infinity Records

Infinity Records

Infinity Records was a short-lived subsidiary of MCA Records established in New York City in 1977. The label was conceived by MCA president Sidney Sheinberg as a way for the Los Angeles-based entertainment conglomerate to improve its presence on the East Coast...

 label, and in 1981 his second solo album Street Angel was released.

From 1973 to 1981, Dante was the record producer for singer Barry Manilow

Barry Manilow

Barry Manilow is an American singer-songwriter, musician, arranger, producer, conductor, and performer, best known for such recordings as "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana ."...

, and often sang backup on Manilow's recordings, including the 1974 #1 single "Mandy

Mandy (song)

"Mandy", originally titled "Brandy", is a song jointly written and composed by Scott English and Richard Kerr."Brandy" had been a hit in 1971 for Scott English in the UK and in 1972 for Bunny Walters in New Zealand...

." Dante also continued to record sporadically during those years; in 1975, with Manilow as the producer, Dante released a dance version of "Sugar, Sugar" under his own name. In 1978, Dante produced the Tony Award

Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

-winning musical revue

Revue

A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...

 Ain't Misbehavin' on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

. During this same period, Dante, who was a Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 neighbor of George Plimpton

George Plimpton

George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...

, was invited to serve as the publisher of the Paris Review

Paris Review

The Paris Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S...

(1978–85).

Dante remains active as a singer, producer, and concert performer. An album, Favorites, was released in 1999, and another CD, Saturday Night Blast, was issued in 2004. The extended play

Extended play

An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

 California Weekend CD was released in 2006.

Dante's most recent high-profile appearance was with the CBS Orchestra

CBS Orchestra

The CBS Orchestra is the house band, led by Paul Shaffer, that plays for David Letterman's CBS late-night talk show, Late Show with David Letterman...

 on the Late Show with David Letterman

Late Show with David Letterman

Late Show with David Letterman is a U.S. late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, and is produced by Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated. The show's music director and band-leader of the house band, the CBS Orchestra, is...

on July 28, 2010.

External links

• Ron Dante Online
• http://home.comcast.net/~bubblegumusic/rondante.htm
• http://www.spectropop.com/RonDante/
• Ron Dante interview on WFMU