I am delighted to share the news that there is finally to be a book-length study of that enduring doo wop group the Flamingos - and for sceptical readers calling to mind a similarly-titled post from a few months ago I swear that the above image is the real thing this time.
Written by doo wop authority Todd Baptista, who contributed to the excellent BBC Radio 2 documentary series Street Corner Soul, this is due to be published in December by McFarland, whose website can be found here; the book can be preordered.
It's encouraging to see that both the Chance and End lineups are depicted on the front cover, which suggests that this new book will give appropriate emphasis to the group's early Chicago days - though as no member survives from that time it will be interesting to see whether any testimony not already familiar has been discovered.
As I have made clear in my song-by-song analysis of the group's Chance and Parrot sides, findable here, my personal preference is for the era of "deep R&B doo wop", as Robert Pruter, author of Doo Wop: The Chicago Scene has termed it: a time in the early fifties when session musicians for vocal groups such as the Flamingos were looser and jazzier before the notion of what constituted rock'n'roll backing became more firmly fixed.
You can hear the transition by comparing the Chess remakes of Dream of a Lifetime and If I Can't Have You (aka Nobody's Love) with their originals on Parrot and Chance respectively - see my posts here and here.
Oh, and the post about another Flamingos book, published in an alternative universe, can be found here.
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