The Rubettes: Sugar Baby Love

By Mark Williams

The Rubettes were a pop group formed by John Richardson during 1974, following the issue of Sugar Baby Love, recorded by studio session musicians the previous year by the song-writers Wayne Bickerton, then head of A&R at Polydor Records, and Tony Waddington, after their doo-wop & '50s American pop-influenced songs had been rejected by several acts. Tony got the band a manager, John Morris, husband of singer Clodagh Rodgers with whom they rose to fame towards the end of the glam-rock movement, wearing trademark white suits and cloth caps.

The Rubettes 1st single, Sugar Baby Love hit the top of the UK charts for 4 weeks in May 1974, selling c. 500,000 copies in Britain & 3 million copies worldwide, having made US # 37 that August. They went on to have a number of other top 10 hits across Europe during the mid-'70s, including Tonight, Juke Box Jive and I Can Do It, sung by Alan Williams, mainly written by Bickerton-Waddington. The group continued to tour well into the new millennium with a couple of line-ups.

Along with 3 other songs, Sugar Baby Love was recorded for Polydor during October 1973 at Lansdowne Studios in Holland Park, London, by session musicians featuring the distinctive falsetto & lead vocals of Paul Da Vinci, who was born Paul Leonard Prewer. However, Da Vinci didn't become a member of the band put together by John Richardson, instead focusing on solo work, having signed a contract with Penny Farthing Records. The Rubettes, The Glitter Band and Mud were among the UK groups who had roles in the movie Never Too Young to Rock in November 1974.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B09JJ7F9Z7
• ISBN13: 9798497457841
• Release Date: October 2021
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 70 Pages
• Weight: 0.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Big Disappointment

As a big fan of the Rubettes, I am always on the lookout for new sources of information about the band that tell about their activities that I hadn't seen or heard of before. This - what I would call a booklet, without so much as a title page or a mention of the author's name - was a total letdown. Out of the 70 pages, only 21 were actual narrative, the remaining 49 being black and white pictures that are commonly found on the internet. The written section is in tiny, eye-squinting print, and is disorganized and somewhat difficult to comprehend at times. Most of the narrative is about a wide range of glam rock musicians, and is written like an interview, but the reader has no idea who is being interviewed and who is asking the questions. I don't think the Rubettes were mentioned on more than a half-dozen pages, and most of what was talked about had been lifted word for word right out of internet articles I've already come across. This "book" was a total rip-off and a waste of money.