I am delighted to share the news that the DJ Clarke Davis is back online, at Top Shelf Oldies. Clarke is currently presenting two shows, At the Hop and The Clarke Davis Experience, the latter dedicated to American pop of 1965.
And if it's anything like his show devoted to 1963, which I used to listen to on Rock-It Radio, the listener - especially if he is a Brit like me - is in for a treat. Until I heard the Rock-It show I wasn't fully aware of just how many American Hot 100 hits didn't cross the pond, or at least didn't make a substantial impact, and it was a real delight to hear so many records of which I had previously recked not. Even when a few threaten to become sickly sweet with repetition - no nostalgiac associations for one new to their charms - they are more than palatable as part of such a show. 1963, or most of it, was the last pre-Beatles year in America, so it will be interesting to hear how much the music has changed by 1965.
At the Hop is on every week on Saturdays; Clarke alternates his other slot but the next Clarke Davis Experience is on 22nd November - more details of both programmes, and Clarke's archived broadcasts, can be found on the Top Shelf Oldies website here. The schedule page can be found here.
As longtime readers will know, my internet friendship with Clarke goes back a very long way - right to the year 2000, in fact, when I joined a yahoo group and began to get involved in discussions about doo wop. Over a period of a few weeks Clarke and I began exchanging longer messages, comparing notes about how, despite very different backgrounds, we both gravitated towards doo wop.
Some posts sparked more general discussion within the forum. Clarke's description of the Five Satins' In the Still of the Nite encouraged others to share how this doo wop classic had likewise been an emotional experience for them. There was also a thread about the Dells' Sweet Dreams of Contentment (one of my all-time faves) in which several contributors strained every sinew (spoiler alert: unsuccessfully) to identify that final word uttered by Johnny Funches in his ascent heavenwards.
Sadly, and for reasons which remain unclear to me, the founder of that forum took it offline shortly afterwards, and for many years these posts were unavailable, floating around in the ether like discarded pieces of equipment from some ancient NASA mission.
The posts about the Dells must remain forever in that limbo state, but luckily I had had the foresight to print out most of the other messages Clarke and I exchanged, and in 2009 I set up the blog which you are now reading in order to provide an archive for these. There had been enough positive comments from their original readers to suggest that the posts were worth preserving. For a time in 2000 I even received small tributes through the mail from members of the board: CD compilations, rare videotapes, unobtainable in the UK, of doo wop events. I marvelled at the chance to see Vernon Green, several decades on, revisiting The Letter and being cheered as, once again, he offered to whisper "sweet words of pismotality" in the loved one's ear.
I will always be enormously grateful to those people for showing their appreciation and understanding in that kindly way, although it would have been reward enough simply to have had the chance to share my love of doo wop in the knowledge that there were readers out there who knew the music's worth. In Britain it has never been the force it once was in America and before the advent of the internet there would have been no incentive to write about it, simply because it would have impossible to imagine any readers.
Once I had reposted the messages which had been salvaged and added some additional comments, I assumed that that would be it: the information was there as a resource if anyone wanted to read it; I had done my job.
But reading over the posts and adding that commentary brought back a sharp reminder of what a joyful release it had been in 2000 to be able to share my feelings. Doo wop had been a largely solitary pleasure for more than twenty five years, and one which I had assumed would forever remain so; that feverish exchange of online messages with Clarke had been really important to me. In short, I didn't want to stop.
And so I didn't. Brand new posts about doo wop were added to the blog before thoughts about other genres, usually retro, crept in, then pronouncements about comedy and whatever else took my fancy. One post in praise of the British comedian Freddie "Parrotface" Davies, a childhood hero, led to writing his autobiography.
Doo wop remains the foundation of this blog - how could it not, with a name like Pismotality? It's an allusion, of course, to that wonderful and ridiculous recitative The Letter by the Medallions but I chose it because it was also my username on that vanished doo wop forum.
Last Saturday, having discovered that he was back presenting shows, I listened live to Clarke's At the Hop show. I went into the chatroom and introduced myself, delighting all the while in the records filling my ears from so many thousands of miles and several time zones away. It felt great to be back in touch with the person who, almost two decades ago, had shared my enthusiasm for this music over the internet.
Top Shelf Oldies can be found here.
The salvaged messages from Steve's Kewl Doo Wop Shop can be found on a single page (without commentary) here.
To read the posts with commentary added in 2009, start here.
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