SAN DIEGO — Few singers have been as widely heard but remain as little known as Ron Dante, who is now on the “Happy Together Tour” as the lead singer in the Turtles. Fewer still scored their biggest successes — completely uncredited — in the 1960s as the fictional lead singer in the highest-rated Saturday morning cartoon TV series in history, then became the voice of Coca-Cola, Campbell’s Soup, Dr Pepper, McDonald’s and Budweiser in ubiquitous national TV jingles.

That series, “The Archie Show,” debuted in 1968 as an adaptation of the popular comic book, “Archie.” Both iterations featured the titular teenage character and his pals Jughead, Betty, Veronica and Reggie, who were also the members of the animated band the Archies.

The nonexistent group’s frothy 1969 song, “Sugar, Sugar,” was the biggest-selling single of the year in the U.S., topping the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” the Beatles’ “Get Back” and a slew of other classics. The song was later recorded by Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner and Bob Marley, among others.

Dante was the lead singer on nearly all the singles and albums released under the Archies’ moniker, including “Sugar, Sugar.” It also rose to No. 1 in Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Brazil and 10 other countries. “Sugar, “Sugar” did so, even though the Archies only existed in cartoon form and never performed a single concert or even a single song live.

“It’s very interesting when your song goes No. 1 and they play it on TV on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ and all they play is the cartoon!” said Dante, who will celebrate his 80th birthday on Aug. 22.

He is performing with the current iteration of the Turtles, who headline the annual Happy Together Tour’s 2025 edition. The lineup also includes Little Anthony and the current iterations of Jay and the Americans, the Vogues, Gary Puckett & The Union Gap and the Cowsills.

“I was a journeyman singer and went where the work was,” he explained. “I was fine with the anonymity. When I took on the job with the Archies, it was right up front that I would not be credited or promoted as having anything to do with them. But all in all, it’s been great for my life.”

Was it easy or difficult for Dante to create a musical personality for cartoon characters?

“I was well-versed with the Archies because I’d read all the ‘Archie’ comics and I knew what they were going for with the TV series,” he replied, speaking from his Los Angeles home.

“The show had two new songs each week and was produced by Don Kirshner, who had achieved great success with ‘The Monkees.’ He had a great team with (songwriter) Jeff Barry, and I knew what voice to bring to ‘Sugar, Sugar,’ ‘Bang-Shang-A-Lang’ and the other Archies’ songs.”

Dante laughed.

“I knew we were not Led Zeppelin!” he said. ‘We were going for a younger market, a 9- to-13-year-old bubblegum market, of kids who were just discovering pop music. So, I put myself in that mindset and I knew I had to be respectful and sound clean cut.”

In 1969, the year the Archies peaked, Dante also did all the vocals — again uncredited — on “Tracy,” a No. 9 hit that was credited to another nonexistent group, the Cuff Links. To cash in on the song’s success and a subsequent album for which Dante recorded all his parts in barely two days, a band called the Cuff Links was hastily assembled and sent out on tour without him.

Dante was all of 23 when the Archies hit it big. But he was already a music-biz veteran who had written songs recorded by Jay and the Americans (“Raining In My Sunshine”) and Gary Lewis & the Playboys (“Ice Melts in the Sun”). He went on to co-produce all of Barry Manilow’s albums between 1973 and 1980, as well as albums by Ray Charles, Cher and others. He also contributed backing vocals to albums by Steely Dan and the hard-rocking power trio Mountain.

‘Caravan of Stars’

Dante was just 18 when he co-founded a short-lived trio, the Detergents, which made one album. The group’s lone hit, “Leader of the Laundromat” — a parody of the Shangri Las’ 1964 chart-topper, “Leader of the Pack” — rose no higher than No. 19 on the national Billboard charts.

But before they washed out, the Detergents did a national Dick Clark “Caravan of Stars" concert tour. It also featured Little Richard, the Animals and Little Anthony and the Imperials, whose lead singer, Anthony Goudine, is part of this year’s Happy Together Tour and, at 84, the oldest artist in the lineup.

“Anthony is four years older than me and he still sounds like his 20-year-old self,” Dante said. “We played cards together on the ‘Caravan’ tour bus in 1965. Now, we’ve come full circle and we’re on the bus together again.”

The Happy Together Tour debuted in 1984 and was named after the Turtles’ chart-topping 1967 hit, “Happy Together.” The tour ran through 1987 with a rotating cast of artists and the Turtles as the headliners. It resumed in 2010, again with the Turtles topping the bill each year.

After he toured as an opening act on the 2017 Happy Together tour, Dante returned the next year to replace the ailing Howard Kaylan as the lead singer in the Turtles. He has retained that role on each subsequent tour, singing alongside Turtles’ co-founder Mark Volman, who continued touring after being diagnosed in 2020 with Lewy body dementia. The same disease afflicted comedian Robin Williams before he died by suicide.

A number of bands that rose to fame in the 1960s continue to tour. But few of them still have any original members left in their current iterations.

“People don’t really know who is in the Association or the Grass Roots. They know the songs,” said Dante, who performs several Archies’ hits during the Turtles’ Happy Together Tour sets.

“When Mark called me in 2018 and asked me to be the lead singer in the Turtles, he said: ‘You have to be true to the music. You’re not Howard; we’re not going to dress you up in costumes and have you do comedy. So, honor the songs and do them the way we recorded them.'”

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