Now We Are Nine

To commemorate the fact that this blog is now nine years old here are some posts discussing the Five Satins' In the Still of the Nite, part of a series salvaged from a long-disappeared yahoo group messageboard, originally posted to that board around September 2000. They vanished when the person running the group shut it down and I eventually set up this blog, Pismotality, in order to archive the ones I'd had the foresight to print out.


They are mostly exchanges between myself (Pismotality) and the DJ Clarke Davis, comparing the ways in which we arrived at a love of doo wop from our different backgrounds. Quite a few songs and groups were discussed along the way, but when it came to the Five Satins' In the Still of the Nite more members of the group than usual offered their own thoughts, which was an especial delight for me: having been brought up in Scotland rather than America, before the advent of the internet doo wop had seemed destined to remain essentially a solitary pleasure.

To give a little context to the sequence of posts reproduced below: inspired by Dave Marsh's mini-essays in his book The Heart of Rock & Soul I had already posted a piece to the yahoo group messageboard about the Flamingos' sublime Golden Teardrops; Clarke responded with a piece about the Cadillacs' recording of Gloria and then we moved on to Fred Parris's classic. Sadly, I've lost a page or two of the printout about Gloria but below are the posts relating to In the Still of the Nite.

clarkedavis
(M/Dover, New Jersey)

Why has this song attained the number one position on New York Oldies Sation WCBS FM, out of all the voted favorites, year after year? Answer really is quite simple. Magic. Two syllables. Big explanation.

Enter the teenage domain, circa mid to late fifties. A new culture emerges, with dungarees (not jeans), ponytails, "hops", frenetic DJ patter, shoo bop a loop on your radio as you drive to school in your customized hot rod, and the birth of Teenage Love. Parents thought that a contradiction in terms. If you were teenage, how could you love? If they only knew!

If you were lucky enough to find the right, daring, partner, you might find yourself driving your car deep into a brush, wooded area, far from prying eyes of others, and the police. Roll down the windows, move to the back seat, and let the magic begin. Moonlight, wind rustling the trees, the scent of nature in the air. Welcome, you have arrived at our destination, you are now In The Still Of The Night.

Is there anything more pleasurable than being with someone you are overpoweringly attracted to, and have that response returned in kind? Shoo doo, shoo dooby doo, in the still of the night, I held you, held you tight...cos I love you so, promise I'll never, let you go, in the still of the night. (An empty promise, at best.)

Remember that night in May? The stars were bright up a-bo-aa-aa-ove. I hope, dun dun, and I pray, dun, dun, to keep your precious love.

Well, before, the li-i-i-i-ght, promise I'll never let go of you tight, in the still of the night.

The words are simple, the arrangement and performance so sublime, replete with honking, almost, but not quite off key, sax bridge. There is a message in two parts. The actual event, of being with your lover in a private romantic place, and the remembrance of that eventful (hopefully) night under the stars.

I remember that night in May. May! School is just about over, and the restless summer is about to begin. The junior and senior prom where this song played, year after year, captured a moment in time so perfectly for so many of us.

Well, before the light ... as we all know, morning must come, in spite of our wishes. Light representing not just the end of the night, but the awareness that this magical moment might not endure the harsh scrutiny of life after high school. In spite of it being almost unearthly in the early hours of a May morning, the ominous pangs of reality are lingering, just outside our current level of consciousness. Boy and girl, almost man and woman, mind dancing and showing an exchange of caress, kiss and force. Moving pleasurably toward an inevitable conclusion, but taking seemingly hours to get there.

Harmony of the most divine order, shared intimately by two, at their prime physical time of life, with intense affection being the bond that will make this a lasting memory.

In the still of the night is not just a physical place. It's a spiritual place, where the hush before the morning's light is captured and shared with your love. It's a very guilty pleasure. One that may never be repeated. A magic moment, reflected perfectly by an awkward sax break, simple, unpolished lyrics, and an almost amateurish performance. Teenage Love in a teenage world. Our parents just never had a clue, or else they never would have allowed that song to be playing in their daughter’s room after midnight.

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

I think you're spot on with the "empty promise at best" bit - and maybe both sides know it. Someone said (possibly Dave Marsh) that the plea in Goffin-King's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow - "Tell me now and I won't ask again" - is the girl wilfully deceiving herself: she knows there's only heartbreak ahead "when the night meets the morning sun" but still needs the formulaic reassurance at that moment – he owes her that, at least, if she's doing this for him.

The play I'm currently writing (or not writing, given that I'm doing this) is for the Soho Theatre in London, and a few months ago they had a production that moved me deeply: set in a home for expectant unmarried teenage mothers in 60s England, it showed them listening to girl groups and sending up the sentiments (eg mockingly echoing, with gestures, the Shangri-Las' portentous "Cause that can never...happen...AGAIN!") but at the same time needing, and half-believing, those dreams, despite the transparent fact they'd been let down by boys. Maybe believing in two contradictory things at once, a la Alice in Wonderland, is a deep human need, and doowop sums it up.

What you were saying about the light made me think of American Graffiti and the way the move from night into day, especially tor the Richard Dreyfuss character, is also a stripping of illusions: you can't go on living forever in that indeterminate, protective dimness, even if your name Is Blanche Dubois. And of course American Graffiti is about that post High School test of affections you were talking about.

Gingers57Chevy
(F/FL)

I enjoy your and Clark's bantering and explanations... I 'feel' so much of it personally, as I was there in my time too.

'In the Still Of The Night' ~ And 'Blue Moon'; will always be embedded in my memories, as times that I spent in NAM. To this day, I am in contact (again) with my 'Still Of The Night' Partner, and beg Him to sing 'Blue Moon', every chance I get! We re-met, after 32 years...

Other than that; 'Unchained Melody' does just as well...
Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......

My Parents were Foster Parents; and aided many unwed Mothers. Going on to care for the offspring until proper Adoptions were arranged, so I can also, feel and remember the heart ache and break, of many of these Young Ladies.... Most were by choice, as it was a two way decision between She and her Fella.

I myself, am one of the fortunates that my parents 'Hand Picked' Me... And, Fortunate, I was to have loving Parents that carried on with the process, of having Hearts big enough, to care for others beyond the call of duty.

I enjoy your dissection of ideals, and the re-placement of wrong ideas.. (IF; any of what I said, makes sense!!)

Thanks, for the Memories~

Ginger

Always, the Romantic, at Heart.....


pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

According to Dave Marsh (Buy the book and skip the postings!) Fred Parris was on guard duty "in the middle of a freezing Korean night" when the song came to him as he was thinking about Cole Porter's song, so it sounds like the song was conceived out of nostalgiac need: a hunger for that sustaining image, however airbrushed the reality (just as at one point in Death of a Salesman Willy Loman demands good news from his boys, and you feel he deserves it, even though he's really saying Lie to me "and I won't ask again...").

Your images in your last posting are really evocative and detailed but I like the fact that, although seeing a more complex reality than the songs, they too have a kind of roseate glow, a sense of heightened, poetically selective reality that sits well with the music - presumably down to a combination of your own distancing from the event and an awareness of audience in this public context, to say nothing of the fact that as soon as we pick up a pen (or incredible shrinking keyboard, as at this end) we become selective - can't pin down the whole of reality, anymore than you can definitively explain away the mysteries of Gloria or Golden Teardrops (though you made a pretty good fist of the former, I have to say). Nabokov said that "reality" is a word which can only exist in inverted commas. In the act of writing anything down we have to select, and therefore the act of remembering is to poeticise. Which brings us neatly (whew!) back to In the Still of the Night...

You're right. Magic. You can't really say any more, but it's fun, as you've shown, to try, so I'll follow your lead. You've said so much and so powerfully (as I'm sure our audience will agree) that I'll just bear down on a few points.

The vocals, backing and lead, are wonderful. Because they're all too human and flawed (we're not exactly talking the Platters or the Four Freshmen) they invest that simple song with themselves: frail humanity plus divine aspiration - the yearning for the loved one taking on a religious intensity, as so often in this gospel-derived genre - equals a winningly poignant combination, and what they most certainly do not lack is conviction.

There. Almost done (for now). The only other thing I want to mention is that line "hold me again, with all of your might.” That's the most affecting line of all, as you, I think, touched upon. Cause you can't ever hold on hard enough to make it alright, unchanging, forever: time, the light, are coming in to do their dirty work and all you can do is grasp at the memory and half remember and half invent, on a freezing cold Korean night.

And go down in doowop history because we all want someone to make it right, too.


Bdbopper(18/M/Lawrenceville, GA)

"In the Still of the Night" is one of 'dose songs nobody forgets whether 'dey heard it at a special time or not. The lyrics just transport yinz to a different place in time. Although I can't see well enough to drive, I see myself sitting in a '57 T-Bird Convertable with my arms around someone special. I can't help it-It just comes over me every time!

Especially 'dis summer- I found myself in Minnesota on vacation. I was laying in bed in a room covered with 'dose Glow-in-'da-Dark stars. I was listening to my walkman & ITSOTN came on & I just went absolutely numb. I was transfixed by 'da wonder 'da song brang to me 'dat night. Very special moment-won't forget it ever!

Therefore, it is no small wonder 'dat ITSOTN happens to be a #1 Oldie time & time again.

As for "Unchained Melody"~1 have a special memory with 'dat song too. I was at 'da Homecoming dance a couple of years ago & had my first slow dance with an old girlfriend to 'da Righteous Bros version. We have since broken up (However we are still good friends). I heard many versions of 'da song since 'den. I especially like 'da Cookies version & Vito & Salutations version (although it's up-tempo).

Let's keep 'da conversation going! I really enjoy it!! :)

In Harmony
From 'Da Bop Shop,

Brian "Picksburgh's BD Bopper"


pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Brian,

I know exactly what you mean about those moments when you hear a song and suddenly you're hearing it totally and then the song is linked to that place. I always associate it with a long walk home at night over a motorway bridge, trees in the distance, no one else around - and this great song reaching out and touching me. Can't remember if I was playing it on a Walkman, or remembering it, or singing it (badly) to myself when no one else could hear. ..but it's the song that reaches out in the night, just as it did to Fred Parris.

markkozlowskim

All this talk about what certain songs mean to people makes it abundantly clear that our music being 'old' doesn't mean a thing. Music is timeless, plain and simple.

A good example is the mention of 'In The Still Of The Night' possibly being played on a Walkman - hardly 1950's, is it?

The reason that I mention this is that I always get annoyed when people criticise the stuff I listen to for being 'old'. The entire Marketing industry is geared towards making a virtue out of something being 'new', without really considering its quality.

But when did emotions get 'old'? I must have missed a meeting, cos the beautiful Doo Wop ballads that I love so much express many of the things that I simply don't have the words - or the voice! - to express myself.

But there is more to it than just the words. There is something amazing, something that you can't define, in the combination of the music, the voices, the atmosphere...Somehow it all melts together to produce something that becomes more than a song. It becomes an actual experience to the listener.

And that's the thing. I don't think that we just 'listen' to our favourite music. We experience it.

People always love comedians, because comedians make them laugh. And we love people who look after us, and do good things for us. So it's no wonder that we love the songs that make us forget where we are, forget everything, and just take us to somewhere special inside ourselves.

It would be foolish - and, I believe, profoundly wrong - to try and define exactly what it is that has that effect. It would be like trying to pin a beautiful butterfly down.

Instead, it is better, and more human, to simply talk about the joy that this music can bring. And – lo and behold - it seems that there are lots of us, all feeling similar things.

In closing, let me say that although I wasn't born until 1965, I don't see the music of the 1950's as 'old', or something from the past. It is a part of my 'present', and - more importantly - it is a part of my future.

Falling in love can never get old, and nor can Doo Wop.

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Mark,

Great posting that sums up what we're all trying to do on this board. Sharing as far as we can that joy in the experience. "somehow it all melts together... " - yes, you can't separate the elements, including what we bring to it as listeners: maybe that's what the Flamingos guy meant when he called it "cohesive." [I had heard Jake or Zeke Carey use this term in the early 90s during a radio interview with Randall Lee Rose on London's Capital Gold.] What I love beyond all is the fact that it's just five voices producing this but it's bigger and more mysterious than that, though the fact it's recognisably real people, not a drum machine or whatever, is part of what reaches out to us. I'm still blown away by seeing five guys come on stage, adjust the mikes... then suddenly out of their mouths comes this thing that's greater than any one of them. And we share in a collective moment. Even odder that fifty year old recordings, especially with the clarity of CD, take you there too, past and present in one.


pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

One thing we haven't touched upon is the sound itself: the actual technical quality of what was recorded in that New Haven church basement all those years ago. And we have to admit it's not, technically, "good," put up against the clarity of quite a few other records. Even on the best CD transfer I've heard it doesn't get much beyond an AM radio with the batteries low. But I think that's part of the magic, the mysterious. There are lots of "better," clearer records to like. But it's like hearing a friend's voice on a tape recorder. You don't care about the sound quality. Your mind fills in the gaps and you see the whole picture. And the amateurish quality seems to put it more within our grasp as well. There's no studio trickery - that is Fred and the boys, no more, no less.

But simple and unadorned as it is, there's something special about that recording. I heard a live version by the Nutmegs. And it was...fine. But it wasn't the Five Satins – and more to the point, it wasn't that murky recording.

When I first came on the net last month, I spent a mesmerising couple of hours at a website devoted to discussing which mono 45s could now be found in stereo on CD, and more or less saying that record companies had a moral duty to create a stereo version if the four track (or whatever) master tapes had survived, even if the recording had never, ever been issued in stereo on vinyl on LP reissues. I had some sympathy - two hours, after all - but I eventually tore myself away and haven't felt the urge to revisit since. There was an implicit love for the music in what they were doing, but it seemed to be getting lost by not being articulated clearly enough. Sure, I favour Ace and Rhino reissues (though there was a lot of bitching about Rhino favouring mono) and all hail Little Walter DeVenne, etc, but if all your energies are taken up agonising over the precise placing of the lead vocal in the stereo image that leaves out all the more elusive stuff that goes on when we listen, including - the essential point of this resurrected posting - the fact that how we first hear a record, the quality of the sound, can be an integral part of how we experience it ever after.

Now I don't want to turn the clock back - I don't particularly want all my doowops to be imprisoned in a sonic murk. Let me hear the sighs, the intakes of breath if possible. And you can do wonders with poor sources - the most recent transfers of Robert Johnson put him in the room with you, apparently.

But there is something about some doowops, and certainly this recording, that make me never want to see a headline like "Master tape found in church basement." Don't tell me we've all been listening to a third generation copy for all these years, I don't wanna know. Because for good or ill, that *is* ITSOTN - the thing that we have experienced, this strange sensation that several of us have been talking about on these posts - it's that sound and no other. Take away the murk and you risk taking away something else. Degas opposed the restoration of the Mona Lisa – he didn't want his memories messed with either. And we are part of ITSOTN, just as much as Fred Parris - I don't just mean those of us doing the postings, but everyone who listens, gathers it into themselves. Experiences it, as Mark says. The audience completes the circle.

Lots of doowops in my vinyl collection could do with a good sonic scrub down. But not this. So why ITSOTN in particular? Well, we've been talking about this elusive magic it holds for so many people. And I think it's because it lets us in in a way few other songs do. Just as you hear the friend on the cheapo tape recorder and somehow go through what you hear, flesh out the poor representation with all you know of that person, so ITSOTN encourages us to fill in the gaps, doesn't dazzle us with hifi brightness or slick singing. We take our memories and feelings and connect.

Besides, there's another reason why the sound of that record is totally right, couldn't be any other way. I compared it to an AM station, and I think, on some unconscious (until now!) level, we've somehow always responded to that association when listening to it, and that's why the muddy sound is not an issue (for most people). Even listening to it on CD, it feels like a transmission, being sent out right at that moment, emerging, laden with static, out of the mysterious, silent sky, out of the recesses of memory. It's Fred and the guys singing their hearts out right now, to you, reaching out through time and space from that church basement to touch and unite all of us: Brian in that star-filled bedroom, me walking over the bridge and looking up at the vast and unknowable night sky, Clarke, weaving the past and the present together with his rich, evocative images - strangers who haven't met, yet all mysteriously linked because on some level, despite our differences, we all feel Fred and the guys reaching out to us, answering a yearning in us.

And we tune in.


alex_lowlands
(40/F/Holland)

I agree that the poor sound quality of that song is the sound we got used to and it does evoke that atmosphere you so well described. However, I personally am always happy when I get a very clean copy of a song, any song. In a way I think all these extra hissing sounds are a bit distracting. You would not have heard these additional sounds if you had heard Fred and the guys singing under their lamppost either, so to me it doesn't add anything 'original' to the record. When I hear a clean copy of a song I can really concentrate on the great harmony, the little off key way of singing, whatever of such a song.

It's the same way with cleaning up old paintings you briefly mentioned. Memories or not from the viewers, but they were not painted centuries ago with layers of dust. Nor had the artist intended them to look that way. They were sold at the time as fresh and sparkling looking paintings. When these paintings get the proper and careful treatment, things turn up that have been hidden for so long. Personally, I think this is great, like revealing something hidden for all of us to enjoy, just like the artist had done at the time.

To go back to the music. I didn't grow up with it, nor did I discover it in my teens, so I can't say I hold memories towards it, like most of you do. I just love it more than anything else for what it is: great music that you can feel, apart from hearing. That is one more reason why I prefer the freshly polished releases by Ace and the likes, over scratchy records.

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Yes I agree with you 99% of time; my point was ITSOTN felt like a special case. When Degas said don't restore ML, he was (I presume) saying he didn't want HIS memory disrupted, not pretending that ML had started out like that. And ITSOTN has burnt itself into people's memories in a certain way, so that's what it "is" for us. (I'm quite fond, in any case, of the boxy, warm AM sound – I’m with Jonathan Richman's Roadrunner sentiments on this one, to step out of our era for a moment...)
I do like Ace, etc, but with some recordings from other companies, or with gleamingly fresh stereo tapes of 50s/60s music, the balance can seem different from the mono, less punchy and direct, so I do have some reservations. I'm also a fan of early jazz and very few transfers to CD (apart from John R.T. Davies, jazzland's Little Walter DeVenne equivalent), have worked out that you lose some essential ambience if you filter too much out. I have one Ravens CD totally flattened out sonically, and lifeless; another, with a fair degree of scratches, conveys the immediacy of their presence far more (Bless You... is a lovely track).

So to sum up my views: if clean master tapes available, great (except ITSOTN!).

But care needs to be taken when cleaning up imperfect sources.

Stuff in stereo not originally conceived as such can have the effect of altering the balance of elements we recall from the mono - we hear more, but it can feel "wrong." Though I suppose no record competes with the memory ...

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

I talked in a recent post about discovering, or fully appreciating with age, simple pleasures like being with a friend's family: losing a layer of selfconsciousness and sort of - melting together, is how I think of it. And in its small but significant way doowop stands for the greater good when we can give ourselves up to something else and is therefore a powerful model for life. (I don't have [Gerri Hirshey's book] Nowhere to Run to hand but my memory is that [Ben E] King uses the phrase "spiritual experience" [about his streetcorner singing days] and makes clear none of the later success was in the same league.)

The act of listening to ITSOTN is, as I've said, another part of the same thing: we acknowledge those needs, those romantic aspirations, in ourselves; we don't protect ourselves by mocking their naivete, because they are about our deepest feelings. Close to the bone.

And the act of sharing those feelings on this board (and it's been great, and very touching, to see so much positive proof that others are receptive too) is also a part of that melting, that blending together started by those four (or five) guys in New Haven on that night. Bruce  is no doubt right about the number of the group [DJ Bruce Woolf had pointed out that there were actually only Four Satins] but maybe there's a sense in which the listener, that other vital component, is the fifth Satin: part, finally (once it goes out over the literal airwaves) of that melting, that blending together initiated by those guys.

[To understand what follows, you need to know that I posted to the group via an "Internet Surf Set" plugged into my TV and there was an everpresent risk that whatever I had laboured to type on my remote control-sized device might disappear into cyberspace when I tried to send it; there was no way of backing anything up or printing it out before it actually appeared online.]

And the process of this sort of writing seems like a metaphor in itself. I type direct onto that little rectangle, bit of checking for clarity (concision would take longer), then press "Post Message". It's always a slightly tense moment: will that sign come up saying the message is too long? Did I get too involved, reluctant to break the flow, and now face the tedium of having to check like for "real" writing? Will there be that horrific sign claiming I haven't logged in, and when I press "previous" the Message rectangle is returned, dazzlingly blank again?

Or will there be - and this is the magic, this is the doowop moment - the sign that my phone is dialling - the image of a telephone with red indicator arrows circling a globe, the word "connecting" plus three dots, then a melting of the screen – an anxious moment - a second, and then my message there, clear on the board? That moment of melting, and that satisfaction at the sight of the thought transmitted, public, shareable, both with you and our wider audience, within a breath of its being framed, feels like nothing but a doowop moment, a moment of harmony.

You can read all the saved Doo Wop Dialog[ue] messages on a single page here.

Alternatively, read them one by one with commentary (added in 2009) at the end of each post, starting here.