The “Golden Hits Of The 70s”
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DADDY DEWDROP
“CHICK-A-BOOM (DON’T YA JES’ LOVE IT)”
(Janis Lee Guinn, Linda Martin)
Sunflower 105
No. 9 May 8, 1971
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The “original” Daddy Dewdrop was Dick Monda. Publicity handouts from Dick’s long-deceased record label
would have us believe that he was born in Cleveland in 1952. Reportedly, at the ripe age of 19, Dewdrop
turned to music, and was hired as a songwriter and producer for a CBS cartoon series, unveiled for the fall
of 1970, “Sabrina & The Groovy Ghoulies.” “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” as the show was soon billed, had
been introduced on the successful “Archie’s Show.” The publicity releases fail to mention Monda’s
previously unsuccessful waxings for Verve and Moonglow.
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“Chick-a-boom, Chick-a-boom/Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It”–it was fluff, all right, but catchy to the ear, for a spin
or two. As performed by the Groovy Ghoulies on the Saturday-morning cartoon show, this novelty number
began attracting much notice. In an effort to beat out the Ghoulie “group’s” release of the tune for RCA, Dick
Monda assembled a studioful of sessioneers, whom he called the Torrance Cookers (Larry “Boom Boom”
Brown, Tom “The Hen” Hensley, Bill “Ma Brutha” Perry, and Steve “Atom Bomb” Rillera). They ran through
many other noxious numbers like “John Jacob Jingle Heimer Smith” and “Abracadabra Alakazam.”
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More efforts at public-pleasing pabulum appeared under the “Daddy Dewdrop” name, but fared poorly. In
the late ’70s, another entity calling itself “Daddy Dewdrop” surfaced with more 45s, but none of these
efforts–not even “Nanu Nanu (I Wanna Get Funky With You)”–received much of a response.
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P.S. The Groovie Ghoulies–without Sabrina moved into the Horrible Hall, where they continued making
weekend musiclike noises on ABC TV, through September 1976. Word is that Dickie “the Drewdrop Daddy”
Monda was involved. Sabrina was later reunited with Archie and crew on “The Archie Comedy Hour” and
“The New Archie Sabrina Hour.” In the fall of 1977, she resurfaced with her own series again, “Super
Witch.”
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