Josie and the Pussycats featured an all-girl pop music band that toured the world with their entourage, getting mixed up in strange adventures, spy capers, and mysteries. The group consisted of level-headed lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Josie, intelligent bassist Valerie, and air-headed blonde drummer Melody. Other characters included their cowardly manager Alexander Cabot III, his conniving sister Alexandra, her cat Sebastian, and muscular roadie Alan.
The show, more similar to Hanna-Barbera's successful Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! than the original Josie comic book, is famous for its music, the girls' leopard print leotards (replete with "long tails and ears for hats", as the theme song states), and for featuring Valerie as the first regularly appearing female black character in a Saturday morning cartoon show. Each episode featured a Josie and the Pussycats song played over a chase scene, which, in a similar fashion to The Monkees, featured the group running after and away from a selection of haplessly villainous characters.
Origins:
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 Archies' song "Sugar, Sugar" hit the #1 spot on the Billboard charts in September 1969, becoming the number one song of the year. Animation studio 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 (Alan M. and Valerie) while dismissing others. - Wikipedia (READ MORE)
Josie and the Pussycats featured an all-girl pop music band that toured the world with their entourage, getting mixed up in strange adventures, spy capers, and mysteries. On the small-screen, the group consisted of level-headed lead singer and guitarist Josie McCoy, intelligent tambourinist Valerie Brown, and air-headed blonde drummer Melody Valentine. Other characters included their cowardly manager Alexander Cabot III, his conniving sister Alexandra, her cat Sebastian, and muscular roadie Alan M.Mayberry
The show, more similar to Hanna-Barbera's successful Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! than the original Josie comic book, is famous for its music, the girls' leopard print leotards (replete with "long tails and ears for hats," as the theme song states), and for featuring Valerie as the first regularly appearing female black character in a Saturday morning cartoon show. Each episode featured a Josie and the Pussycats song played over a chase scene, which, in a similar fashion to The Monkees, featured the group running after and from a selection of haplessly villainous characters.
Every episode of the show would find the Pussycats and crew en route to perform a gig or record a song in some exotic location. Somehow, often due to something Alexandra did, they would accidentally find themselves mixed up in an adventure/mystery. The antagonist was always a diabolical mad scientist, spy, or criminal who wanted to take over the world using some hi-tech device. The Pussycats would usually find themselves in possession of the plans for an invention, an item of interest to the villains, a secret spy message, etc., and the villains would give chase. Eventually, the Pussycats would formulate a plan to destroy the villain's plans and bring them to justice, which result in a final chase sequence set to a Pussycats song.
The Pussycats would succeed in capturing the villain and get back to their gig/recording session/etc. The final gag always centered around one of Alexandra's attempts to interfere with/put an end to The Pussycats' performance and/or steal Alan away from Josie. - From Cartoon Network (READ MORE)
Trivia:
full album and and two 45-RPM singles were released by Capitol/EMI Records in connection with the show. Neither of the Josie & the Pussycats singles - "Every Beat of My Heart" and "Stop, Look, and Listen" - became chart hits like the songs from another Archie Comics series, The Archie Show (1968). Four further Pussycats 45s were relegated to the status of mail-in prizes on the back of Kellogg's cereals. - From IMDB (READ MORE)
Here is a great article about Josie and the Pussycats:
How Valerie In Josie and the Pussycats Was Almost Not African-American!
From CBR
When I picked Patrice, Hanna and Barbera called me down to the office....They said good news and bad news: We’re going do the show but we can’t use Patrice because she’s black. I said I can’t do that because it’s against my religion. I can’t tell her Patrice she can’t do it because she’s black. About three weeks later they called me down. I said, “You got a new show?” They said, “No, we’re going do Josie and the Pussycats.” I said, “Don’t do that to me. I won’t do it unless Patrice does it. Just paint the storyboard black.”
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Hanna-Barbera’s “Josie and the Pussycats” on Records
From Cartoon Research
Behind the music, there was Danny Janssen, already well-versed in bubblegum/franchise pop with Bobby Sherman and The Partridge Family. These songs were not afterthoughts (as Saturday morning pop seemed to become as the’70s progressed) but well-crafted songs with tight backing from top musicians.
The Capitol LP did not include several of the familiar songs from the TV show, including the theme song (adapted by Hoyt Curtin, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera from a piece of incidental music from The Jetsons). The trio also offered their musical take on some popular tunes of the day, including Bread’s “It Don’t Matter to Me,” which provides an interesting connection: it was written by Bread’s lead singer David Gates, who also penned the theme to H-B’s animated feature, Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear. In addition to the LP, Capitol released two Josie singles for radio play and four singles available only through mail order with box tops from Kellogg’s cereals.
The four singers were chosen from hundreds, and would have toured had all the grand plans come to fruition. Cathy Dougher was a classically trained theatrical musical and opera vocalist. Cherie Moore (Cheryl Ladd) was, according to the album notes, “an accomplished actress and dancer” who as a singer “appeared as the ‘warm-up act’ for Jack Benny at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.
Of course, Moore (her name changed to Cheryl Ladd) became an international star when she took the place of Farrah Fawcett on Charlie’s Angels and relaunched her singing career based on the higher profile that series afforded her. But the one singer who not only most firmly gave the trio its vocal sound, but deserved greater stardom was the amazing Patrice Holloway, most notable at the time for having written the hit “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” for Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Trivia:
In the series' original opening sequence, Alexandra attempts to blow up the band... but, like Wile E. Coyote, is herself blown up. When edited for re-broadcast, this sequence, coming toward the end of the theme song, is replaced with more footage of Josie and the Pussycats dancing... but, because the sound of the explosion is part of the theme track, the explosion itself has been left intact. - From IMDB (READ MORE)
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