Saturday Morning Rock: When Pop Stars Became Cartoons
Long before music videos, the fastest way for a pop star to reach millions of kids was a bowl of cereal and a Saturday morning cartoon. From the late 1960s through the 1980s, the Beatles, the Jackson 5, the Osmonds, Sonny & Cher and even a Monkee turned up in animated form, often sounding a little different than you remembered. Here's a look back at the era when rock and roll went to cartoon land.
The Fab Four Go Animated
The trend started with the biggest band on earth. The Beatles cartoon premiered on ABC on September 25, 1965, and it was an instant Saturday morning smash. Produced by Al Brodax for King Features, the show built each episode around the band's real recordings, while the speaking parts were handled by actors. Paul Frees voiced John and George, and Lance Percival covered Paul and Ringo. The Beatles themselves had nothing to do with it beyond the music and reportedly disliked it at first, though John Lennon and George Harrison both warmed to it later. The series ran 39 episodes, and its team went on to help create Yellow Submarine.
Motown and the Osmonds Join the Party
In September 1971, Rankin/Bass (the studio behind those classic holiday specials) teamed up with Motown for ABC's Jackson 5ive. The brothers' hit records powered the soundtrack, but voice actors did the talking. Diana Ross voiced herself in the pilot, and young Michael's cartoon pets included two mice named Ray and Charles, a nod to the soul legend.
A year later, Rankin/Bass gave the same treatment to the Osmonds, whose ABC series sent the family on adventures around the world with a talking dog named Fuji. Unlike the Beatles and the Jacksons, the Osmond brothers supplied their own speaking voices.
Scooby-Doo's Musical Guest Stars
When CBS launched The New Scooby-Doo Movies in 1972, every hour-long episode paired Mystery Inc. with a celebrity, and several were music stars voicing themselves. Sonny & Cher helped crack "The Secret of Shark Island," the Monkees' Davy Jones met a headless ghost in "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall," and guitar-picker Jerry Reed got spooked in "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall." In 1973, Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas joined the gang for "The Haunted Candy Factory."
Cartoon Bands, Real Hits
Some cartoon bands never existed at all, yet they topped the charts anyway. The Archies, created for CBS's The Archie Show, were really session singers led by Ron Dante with Toni Wine, and their bubblegum classic "Sugar, Sugar" hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969. Hanna-Barbera's Josie and the Pussycats followed in 1970, with a young Cheryl Ladd (billed as Cherie Moor) and Patrice Holloway among the singers behind the animated trio. By the 1980s, shows like NBC's Kidd Video kept the idea alive, dropping a live-action band into a cartoon world just as MTV was taking over.
For collectors, this era left behind a treasure trove: soundtrack LPs, cereal-box records, lunchboxes and home video releases that now command serious attention. Not bad for shows made to fill the time between breakfast and lunch.
Which musical cartoon did you never miss on Saturday mornings: the Beatles, the Jackson 5ive, the Archies, Josie or a Scooby-Doo team-up? Tell us in the comments!