"Sugar Baby Love", recorded in autumn 1973[1] and released in January 1974, is a bubblegum pop song, and the debut single of the Rubettes. Written by Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington and produced by Wayne Bickerton, engineered by John Mackswith at Lansdowne Recording Studios, "Sugar Baby Love" was the band's one and only number one single in the UK, spending four weeks at the top of the chart in May 1974.
Bickerton and Waddington had been writing songs together since they were both members of the Pete Best Four in Liverpool in the early 1960s. Their biggest success had been writing "Nothing But A Heartache", a US hit for The Flirtations in 1968. In the early 1970s, they came up with the idea for a rock 'n' roll musical. They co-wrote and produced a demonstration recording of "Sugar Baby Love", originally intending to submit it for the Eurovision Song Contest but instead offering it to Showaddywaddy, who turned it down. It has also been suggested that the song was originally offered to former Move singer Carl Wayne, but he also turned it down.[citation needed] They then offered it to the demo musicians, provided that they would become an actual group. The musicians agreed, became The Rubettes, and "Sugar Baby Love" became a UK #1 hit in 1974, also reaching #37 in the US charts. It also reached #1 in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Australia, and #2 in South Africa.
Bickerton said:
"We had Paul DaVinci singing in that incredibly high falsetto voice and then a vocal group sings 'Bop-shu-waddy' over and over for about 3 minutes. Gerry Shury, who did the string arrangements, said, 'This is not going to work: you can't have a vocal group singing 'Bop-shu-waddy' non stop.' A lot of people said the same thing to us and the more determined I became to release it. The record was dormant for 6 or 7 weeks and then we got a break on Top Of The Pops and it took off like a rocket and sold 6 million copies worldwide. Gerry said to me, 'I'm keeping my mouth shut and will concentrate on conducting the strings.'
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