During the 1968-69 television season, the first Archie-based Saturday morning cartoon 'The Archie Show' was a huge success, not only in the ratings on CBS, but also on the Billboard charts. The fictitious band had a massive hit with 'Sugar Sugar', reaching No. 1 on the UK and US charts in September 1969, and Hanna-Barbera Productions wanted to duplicate the success their competitors Filmation were having with 'The Archie Show'. After a failed attempt at developing a teenage-music-band show of their own called 'Mysteries Five' (which eventually became 'Scooby-Doo, Where are You!'), they decided to go to the source and contacted Archie Comics about possibly adapting one of their remaining properties into a show similar to 'The Archie Show'. Archie and Hanna-Barbera collaborated to adapt Archie's Josie comic book into a music-based property about a teenage music band, adding new characters while dismissing others. The group was to consist of level-headed lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Josie, intelligent bassist Valerie, and air-headed blonde drummer Melody, while other characters included their cowardly manager Alexander Cabot III, his conniving sister Alexandra, her cat Sebastian, and muscular roadie Alan. In preparation for the upcoming cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera began working on putting together a real-life girl group, who would provide the singing voices of the girls in the cartoons, and also record an album of songs to be used both as radio singles and in the TV series.
The Josie and the Pussycats recordings were produced by La La Productions, run by Danny Janssen and Bobby Young (a pseudonym for Bob Engemann of The Lettermen vocal group), and they held a talent search to find three girls who would match the three girls in the comic book in both looks and singing ability. After interviewing over 500 finalists, they settled on casting Kathleen Dougherty (Cathy Dougher) as Josie, Cherie Moor (later to find fame in 'Charlie's Angels' as Cheryl Ladd) as Melody, and Patrice Holloway (sister of Motown star Brenda Holloway) as Valerie. Janssen presented the newly formed band to Hanna-Barbera to finalize the production deal, but they wanted Janssen to recast Holloway, because they had decided to portray Josie And The Pussycats as an all-white trio and had altered Valerie, who had been conceived as black and was already appearing as such the revamped Josie and the Pussycats comic book, to make her white. Janssen refused and threatened to walk away from the project, and after a three-week-long stand-off between Janssen and Hanna-Barbera, Hanna-Barbera finally relented, allowed Janssen to keep Holloway, and changed Valerie back to being black, making her the first black female character on a regular Saturday morning cartoon series. Of the songs that were broadcast, lead vocals were split pretty much 50/50 between Holloway and Moor, as Dougherty felt she was stronger on harmony than lead, and ceded her spotlight to Moor, so although Josie was the group leader, it was Valerie and Melody who provided the trio with its singing voices.
Each episode found the Pussycats and crew en route to perform a gig or record a song in some exotic location where, somehow, often due to something Alexandra did, they became mixed up in an adventure. The antagonist was always a diabolical mad scientist, spy, or criminal who wanted to take over the world using some high-tech device, and The Pussycats usually found themselves in possession of the plans for an invention, an item of interest to the villains, a secret spy message, etc., and the villains chased them to retrieve it. Eventually, the Pussycats would ruin the villain's plans, resulting in a final chase sequence set to a Pussycats song. With the villain captured, the Pussycats would return to their gig or recording session, and the final gag was always one of Alexandra's failed attempts to interfere with the Pussycats' performance or steal Alan away from Josie, and while early plans were to be for a live-action Pussycats segment at the end of each episode, this idea did not make it to the final cut. To cash in on the show Hanna-Barbera released an album of the songs featured in the series, plus a few choice covers, and extracted two singles from it in the form of 'Every Beat Of My Heart' and 'You've Come A Long Way Baby'. Sales were nowhere near as good as they'd hoped, and so further singles were licensed to Creative Products, to be exchanged for sending in box tops from Kelloggs cereals. These four promotional singles are now extremely rare, and so it was good to finally get to hear them on a recent Rhino records collection, although only 5,000 copies of the compilation were pressed and that's now as hard to find as the original singles. So for anyone with fond memories of watching Josie And The Pussycats on Saturday morning TV, here are all their singles, along with a couple of previously unreleased tracks, and that classic theme tune. And sorry about the title, but I just couldn't resist.
Track listing
01 Every Beat Of My Heart (single version 1970)
02 It's All Right With Me (b-side of 'With Every Beat Of My Heart' 1970)
03 You've Come A Long Way Baby (single version 1970)
04 Stop, Look And Listen (b-side of 'You've Come A Long Way Baby')
05 Letter To Mama (single 1970)
06 Inside, Outside, Upside Down (b-side of 'Letter To Mama')
07 Josie (single 1970)
08 Voodoo (single 1970)
09 If That Isn't Love (b-side of 'Voodoo')
10 I Wanna Make You Happy (single 1970)
11 It's Gotta Be Him (b-side of 'I Wanna Make You Happy')
12 Together (previously unreleased)
13 Dreammaker (previously unreleased)
14 The Time To Love (previously unreleased)
15 Josie And The Pussycats Theme
If you're now hankering to relive your childhood then the whole first series is here to watch, as long as you're prepared to put up with some pesky ads.
