Early Wiggle

Just before Christmas I visited a friend in Scotland who is also a doo wop and rock'n'roll fan. I brought a magazine with me which had an article about some new Carl Perkins finds - four roughly recorded sides predating his time on Sun - so was delighted to learn he already had the 10 inch Bear Family album (above) which contained these, along with some Sun alternate takes already issued on CD.

The magazine had described one of the newly unearthed sides, a version of Good Rockin' Tonight, as a "country blues boogie" or something of that sort. I'm not quite sure to what extent such a categorisation differs from plain ol' "rockabilly", but listening to the performances the question becomes academic: even if he hadn't quite arrived at the full-blown assurance of his later recordings with Sam Phillips, he was already well on the way by the early fifties.

For those who love Carl Perkins the three previously unheard sides on which he is leader, including a cover of Drinking Wine Spo-Dee O-Dee, are fascinating: you get a strong sense of how he must have played for audiences in the honky-tonks, as his intonation and pacing, especially on the Eddy Arnold song There's Been a Change in Me (written by Cy Coben), suggests he is imagining a crowd in his head.

A fourth tune on which he is a sideman, a traditional number called Devil's Dream, is also included on the album: pleasing enough of its kind though unremarkable, I suspect, unless you know of the association. But I'm very glad I had the chance to hear all these sides, and having loved Perkins from an early age it was especially pleasurable to be listening with someone who also understood his importance. Short samples of all four sides can be found on the Juno Records website here.

The release has also had the effect of correcting an error which may have been peculiar to my mind. It's some time since I read Perkins' autobiography Go Cat Go, which I remember as being pretty good, putting Carl's thoughts into self-contained sections so that author David McGee was freer to write about him in the third person. But what I thought I'd retained from the book, or possibly from some reference in another book or magazine, was that when Perkins first heard Elvis he thought: "I could do that!" and boldly made his way to Sun Records instanter.

Which is, I suppose, more or less what happened ... except that my fuzzy recollection was that Perkins hadn't put himself to the test already, just had some kind of mystical certainty, uncorroborated by experience, that his talents and inclinations must  perforce lie in the same direction. What these newly unearthed recordings make clear - or perhaps just confirm for more careful or retentive readers - is that Perkins was already doing that: he just needed someone like Sam Phillips to encourage and draw out his talent more fully.

Actually, maybe I'm not alone in that supposition. A press release on the Bear Family website  declares:

Those records make it clear that he was far from the clueless hillbilly who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the rockabilly revolution. In fact, one of the four songs he recorded was Good Rocking Tonight, perhaps two years earlier than Elvis Presley cut it at Sun!

By sheer coincidence, a couple of days ago I happened upon Andrew Hickey's podcast A History of Rock in 500 Songs for the first time, and one of the episodes is dedicated to Blue Suede Shoes. I will probably write about this series when I've investigated it further, but it's worth noting here his comparison of Elvis's cover with the original. (The transcript is not mine but is taken directly from his website, here, where you can read it in full or listen to the podcast.)

Perkins' version of "Blue Suede Shoes" and Elvis' had a few crucial differences other than just their performer. Perkins' version is more interesting rhythmically at the start -- it has a stop-time introduction which essentially puts it into six-four time before settling into four-four. Elvis, on the other hand, stayed with a four-four beat all the way through. Elvis' performance is all about keeping up a sense of urgency, while Perkins is about building up tension and release. [...] It seems to stall after every line, as if it's hesitant, as if he doesn't really want to get started. But at the same time that gives it a rhythmic interest that isn't there in Presley's version. Perkins' original is the more sophisticated, musicianly, record.

Mr Hickey, who studied the history of popular music at university, recently guested on an Elvis-related podcast and told its hosts that a lecturer once apologised to students before playing a Carl Perkins track, assuring them that they were only being subjected to this for educational purposes and that no one was expecting them to enjoy it for its own sake. If that isn't a cue for setting up your own podcast to ensure such a situation never happens again in our lifetime I don't know what is.

Which seems a fitting moment to resurrect a post from my dialogue with Clarke Davis on the Doo Wop Shop board. At the time this was written I only had a web TV and the tiniest of keyboards - a strong disincentive to embellishing one's thoughts. Yet I don't think there's anything I would add today.

I go way back with Carl Perkins, loving those economic guitar solos (possibly because I could hear George Harrison in them - Beatles were of course Numero Uno in my early years, listening to the records my elder brothers bought, our father's disapproval bonding us further). Can anything be simpler, neater than the solo in Movie Magg? And maybe - unlike doo wop - there is a sense of writing more directly from experience. There's a very strange Perkins track, Her Love Rubbed off on Me, done when he was drunk (according to Go Cat Go) that is confusing but conveys the sense of real, unedited experience - and a lot of his songs were originally improvised in the tonks, the book says. I think it was Ringo who said that when Carl sings you believe him.

With Carl Perkins I feel, as I also feel about Louis Armstrong, that it's a voice that's known to me: like Ringo, I trust it. Like a friend or family member. And Blue Suede Shoes is still infectious when other records have become dulled by overfamiliarity. There is a kind of purity of heart about some of Carl's stuff, as well as the raunchier, hellraising Dixie Fried. 

14 Karat Soul one more time

Does anyone else actually know or remember this group? Sometimes it seems they were only a thing in my dream: an unattainable vision (and sound) of doo wop perfection, never seen by waking eyes or heard with unclogged ears (I'll explain later).

And yet there they are on youtube; CDs can be bought; they're mentioned in Jay Warner's Billboard book of vocal groups and there's still an official website online - even though to all intents and purposes they called it a day in 2003.

14 Karat Soul were undoubtedly an accomplished act, slaying live audiences time after time, as I can testify, yet they never made it big in America or the UK, only attaining the scale of recognition they deserved in Japan. And that's why I want to do my bit to commemorate a group who deserve to be revered all round the world.

I first came across them in 1981 at the Edinburgh Festival, an annual celebration of the arts in Scotland's capital. Anyone can perform at the so-called Festival Fringe, which over time has become much bigger than the festival itself.

Studying Greek tragedy at university in nearby Glasgow at the time, I was intrigued by the notion of a production of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus with Gospel music. I can't remember if the word "doo wop" was mentioned in the Fringe brochure (each act is given two or three lines to sell itself to potential audiences) but what I got for my gamble in the staid setting of the Assembly Rooms that evening in Edinburgh was what seemed to me doo wop heaven.

As well as The Gospel at Colonus, as the Sophocles adaptation was called, the group performed a piece called Sister Suzie Cinema which was all about atmosphere rather than plot (five young men enter a cinema, are beguiled by visions of fifties starlets, then leave). The university student in me ought to have dismissed this as the slighter piece; the burgeoning doo wop fan was only aware of the most gorgeous, soaring harmonies, unimpeded by any instrumentation, and a growing sense of entering a kind of trancelike state. Doubtless this was partly the production's intended effect - the characters were in a place which peddled dreams - but the feeling was enhanced in my case because although I had been collecting doo wop albums for the last ten years I had never imagined that the essence of those fifties recordings which I listened to in my bedroom could be brought so vividly to life. And although I had been going to concerts for around the same length of time there weren't many doo wop groups, vintage or revivalist, who stopped off in Glasgow. (Please don't bring Showaddywaddy into it.)

Through a cruel twist of fate, at the precise moment of this wonderful discovery I was having ear trouble which meant that I had to pull down sharply on one lobe in order to hear anything which didn't sound as though multiple layers of cotton wool had been interposed between me and the sound source. So there I was, doing my best to soar high in doo wop heaven and drink in all this acapella perfection, taken to heights of aural ecstacy such as I had never known before ... all the while with a constant reminder of the baseness and imperfection of my human form, my head to one side, forever tugging on that lobe.

I'll spare you the details of the subsequent treatment, except to add that as wonderful bright, clear three-dimensional sounds finally rushed into my head once again, I could only mutter to the nurse: "Too late."

Living in the UK with no internet in those days, I had no easy means of finding out afterwards about the group's career in America, though I do remember thinking: "Hey, don't they realise they could use that singing ability to perform actual doo wop oldies? Now that I would pay to go and see." It never occured to me that Lee Breuer, creator of the two pieces, had chosen 14 Karat Soul precisely because, young as they were, they already had a reputation as ace doo wop revivalists, championed by the late Stan Krause and others. (Krause was a New Jersey record shop owner who founded Catamount Records.)



My chronology is now a little vague, but around a year later I was delighted to find that the group, who had toured The Gospel at Colonus and Sister Suzie Cinema around Europe, were having a week long residency in the unlikely location of the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow.

I say unlikely because although Glasgow audiences are known for their warmth - Green's Playhouse, later the Apollo, was a renowned UK venue for rock acts - the more modestly proportioned Mitchell Theatre was part of a recent extension to Glasgow's main reference library, so it had no history or particular atmosphere to speak of. Possibly it had been cheap to hire and/or seemed was a handy place to try things out away from the glare of too much publicity. Maybe it had state of the art sound, as that was certainly very good. Or it could be that the decision was the a result of their earlier appearance at Mayfest, Glasgow's modest attempt to start a festival of its own to rival Edinburgh's.


Anyway, I booked to go to the Mitchell Theatre, normally home to local amateur theatre groups, just about every night of their stay. I saw them quite a few times afterwards but that week at the Mitchell Theatre is how I remember them. Aspects of the act changed from night to night, suggesting that it may have been a tryout base, although these were fairly minor. Essentially, they were good to go from the first night - and the first number - onwards.

Quite a few of the songs they sang that week are available on CD, although those antiseptic studio recordings are a long from hearing (and seeing) five figures with nowhere to hide blasting out at you.

I think this is what draws me to acapella doo wop, and acapella in general: the knowledge that you're watching a balancing act, and if there is one weak link in the troupe they will all topple. You're seeing something vulnerable and human.

At around the same time, a lecturer at Glasgow University was trying to explain the twentieth century to us - a good trick in precisely fifty five minutes. His main point was that in previous centuries people were in touch with the objects which surrounded them - eg a door handle would have been carved out of wood, and you could visualise how it was made: by a man, as you were a man. You could have made it. (Unless you were a woman, of course, but that was a whole 'nother lecture.)

Come the twentieth century, however, the advent of mass production and the development of new, artificial materials meant people were surrounded by objects which they didn't really understand and so they lost a secure sense of their place in the world which led to social alienation and lots of depressing - I mean, challenging - literature.

The tutor probably put it better (it was over twenty five years ago) but when I see an acapella group onstage, vulnerable in way that no rock band can be, I feel in touch with something fundamental. There's the sense of intimacy involved: the directness of the human voice, as opposed to an instrument, to provide the music; the self-exposure and risk in the sharing of that voice, in offering it to others for judgement. Then the magical-seeming way in which a group of individual personalities subdue their egos to create a single entity. To go back to the image of the balancing act, when nobody falls - when, in fact, they all seem to soar - then that is a joyous moment which affirms your faith in humanity. And as the listener, you feel like an intimate part of that group. During a discussion of In the Still of the Night on a long-vanished doo wop forum someone pointed out that there were actually only four members of the group, but it seemed to me that those who listened to and cherished that record - were the fifth Satin.




As part of my job I've had to do some research into folk music in Britain. I'd always known about the fifties folk revival in America and Britain but didn't realise that all through the twentieth century and earlier collectors had been trying to preserve what they could of ballads handed down through the generations. I don't know enough to discuss it in detail, though I believe part of the impulse in Britain would have been as a response to the growing dominance of imported American culture. Interestingly, however, on a visit to Cecil Sharp House (the UK's Folk Music Central), when I mentioned my interest in doo wop to the assistant librarian Peta Webb, she likened it to folk music. Which I suppose all comes back to a phrase which struck me all many years ago in the entry about doo wop in the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock'n'Roll: "music you or your lover could have made."

The group kicked off their Mitchell Theatre set every night with Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and both ears now fully operational and tuned in. The bass singer, Reginald "Briz" Brisbon, had been a drummer, and was miming a double bass; but the moment I really knew this was something special was at a particular blending of voices around about the line "And now the company jumps when he plays reveille ..."

I can't describe precisely what was being done; I can only say it sounded grainy but right, rough but undoubtedly polished, not accidental. And a million miles away from the smooth stylings of  barbershop. Or, come to that, any white doo wop group I'd heard. The nearest match I've heard on record is towards the end of the Spaniels' Get Away Child (You Don't Move Me). Below is the group's Catamount recording of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The sound is more basic, less processed, than their later studio albums but it still doesn't convey what I heard on those successive nights at the Mitchell Theatre. The sheer attack of that opening number (cannily chosen from outside the genre), and the promise of an evening of like joys to come, is something I'll never forget.




But one of the highlights for me was Farewell, My Love, which I'd never heard before. I subsequently found out it's an old Temptations number which was as much doo wop as soul; on the original recording the bass voice echoes (or is echoed by) an actual bass all the way through, so really one or the other is redundant, and the song was eminently suited to an acapella rendering. I'm presuming it was a favourite of Stan Krause's, as the Royal Counts also recorded it.

There was also a number called, I think, Take Me Back Baby which included the line "Try me one more time".

But the biggest thrill, perhaps, was seeing Gloria acted out rather than merely sung. Rather than repeat myself, I'll quote the relevant part of a Doo Wop Shop discussion:

The full meaning ... came to me: the bass, Briz, loomed as the lead sang, one last time, of his yearnings, intoning over him those doomy notes that spelled out just one thing: You're alone, Bub; get used to it. The bass was reality, just as he often takes over on "baser" group sides (Pookie for the dreams; Gerald for the down'n'dirty), and his notes here were a death knell for the lead's tattered vision of togetherness ("Maybe she'll want me... "), a bell to toll him back to his sole self, alone in the less than tender night. Briz was singing right into his face, with a sort of evil glee: maybe this message from the Reality Zone had to be given, but he was certainly enjoying the task, and the "teenage" lead was not much liking it, protesting his love and need to the end.

You can read the above in its original context here.

Whether it was before or after that residency, I was with some friends at the Mayfest festival and 14 Karat Soul were queueing in the communal cafe (no Edinburgh elitism in good old leftwing Glasgow). I wanted to go over and say It's great what you're doing - I love the Dells, etc - but I didn't. I dearly wish I had.

Fast forward a few years and I'm living in London, going to see 14 Karat Soul at the Fridge in Brixton. I'm near the front of the stage, immersed in the performance, when I find I'm one of the people called up to add a few extra dum dums to Come Go With Me.

This is a task into which I throw myself with relish - only at some point one of the singers, grinning, makes a gesture. He slashes his throat with his index finger, which I know now almost certainly means "Shut the *&%! up as you cannot carry a tune in a bucket," but I thought then, and even now would like to present it as a remote possibility, that it meant he envied my vocal command, joshingly indicating that he wished my prowess could be curtailed so as not to expose his own limitations quite so cruelly when he next stepped up to the mike. But I admit it's a bit of a long shot.


I'm still haunted by that singer's gesture. But maybe it's best - in order to pull some tattered shreds of self esteem around me - to look up from the gesture and fix instead on his grin, which seemed conspiratorial. So it could have meant - oh, I don't know what it could have meant, but whatever was going on, I was part of it, I loved what was going on, and the odds are I didn't actively ruin it.
Someone even complimented me at the bus stop afterwards: "That was great, man. Do it again!" But maybe he was tone deaf too.


This is a revised version of a piece originally posted ten years ago today. Other posts about 14 Karat Soul: 

14 Karat Soul in 1980 here.
14 Karat Soul live on Channel 4 in 1983 here.
As They Should Be Heard here. (From a 1983 BBC Radio 1 session.)

Try Them One More Time here. (The one-off reunion gig in 2011)

John Shuttleworth podcast and tour

This is to draw the reader's attention to Richard Herring's recent podcast featuring Graham Fellows, otherwise hapless middle-aged musician and songwriter John Shuttleworth (above). It can be downloaded here.

The interview is leisurely, and fairly frank as well as funny, perhaps helped by the fact that Herring once gave Fellows a fiver in the nineties when the latter was having no joy at a cash machine. (Herring framed the cheque he received in return, making his act of kindness doubly kind.) But it's clear, as the conversation progresses, that they do have a certain amount in common, that act of charity aside: both have forged unusual paths in the business of comedy after an initial bout of fame.

I don't recall reading or hearing too many other interviews with Mr Fellows since his long-ago days as spurned teenager Jilted John (he had a hit single of the same name in the seventies before he developed the older character), although one detail which sticks in my mind from, I think, an NME interview is of his associating with elderly men who bred fancy mice; the Shuttleworth character derives in part from afternoons spent with such people in drafty church halls.

Fellows announced during the podcast that he will be reviving John Shuttleworth next year after having given him a bit of a layoff - and it's scary to reflect that he is now older than his creation, who is forever hovering somewhere in his late fifties. I will certainly try to catch his new live show, to be entitled John Shuttleworth's Back, although I have to admit I'm less keen on the character live, as John's command of the crowd seems at odds with his "loser" persona: the intimacy of radio seems a better fit.

There have been several series of The Shuttleworths on BBC Radio 4, in which John talks directly to the listeners and tries, with varying degrees of success, to involve his circle (his wife Mary, his "sole agent" and neighbour Ken Worthington, and others) in the programme.

And there was a bit of a revelation about the radio show - for me, anyway - on the Herring podcast. I knew, or assumed, that there must be a bit of speeding up of the tape for voices such as Mary (Fellows, a trained actor, plays all the roles) but I didn't realise that The Shuttleworths is not actually scripted: he told Herring that although he had some idea of where he was going he disliked the sense of lines being obviously read in radio drama. Given that voices are recorded one at a time I reckon that makes The Shuttleworths an especially notable achievement.

If you haven't yet discovered or been beguiled by his radio show you are urged to do so. Perhaps the supreme example of his art in this medium is the episode from the first or second series entitled Pillock of the Community. This consists largely of John's wait outside a mysteriously closed hospice where he is due to play a gig - and it's left to the listener's imagination whether the inhabitants are simply ignoring him, perhaps having been entertained enough in the past.

John is confused but notices a Curly Wurly wrapper in the hedge and ... well, it's better to listen to this non-tale unfold at its own pace than to have it described. When one of John's songs swells up at the end, it's similarly nondescript yet loaded with significance:

And pubs and clubs
The bus to Crookes
And scouts and cubs
And doberman pups
And woodland paths
And parks and caffs
A Shandy Bass
In a lady's glass

It's a litany of small pleasures in a small life, but their importance to the character who has hymned them is beyond doubt, and for as long as the song lasts we feel something of it too.






Graham Fellows himself said (in William Cook's highly recommended book Ha Bloody Ha) that that episode was the best writing he'd ever done, even though nothing happened. (Presumably that means certain sections of The Shuttleworths were indeed written, or perhaps because this episode was essentially a monologue it required a different approach.)

One of the reasons it works so well, I think, is the way that pathos is held at bay. Even if John is a loser (especially if an audience of OAPs are desperate to avoid his act) he is a kind of poet too, not only via the details noted in the song but in his ability to seize on whatever he sees around him as he thinks aloud. Just as the aggressive optimism of Tony Hancock's character offsets his failures so John's ability to find meaning and interest in things means we needn't worry too much about him: he is well-insulated, even if a song in another episode speaks of John's feeling "alone with the day", which implies that loneliness, or boredom, is an everpresent threat. And Fellows tells Herring that Shuttleworth is "foolish" but also "sweet".

Occasionally the radio programmes have branched out to include celebrity guests and prankish phone calls. These are also enjoyable but do not work quite so well for me. The calls betray some signs of the performer's enjoyment and lessen the illusion. And why should biggish names condescend to give this man any of their time? This is why I'm also less keen on seeing John live - what does he think he's doing in a crammed theatre when his normal gigs are in hospices etc (or not, as the case may be)?

No, his true métier seems to be the radio, where you can believe he's wandering round with a tape recorder trying desperately to collect enough things of interest to fill a programme, even if you still have to suspend your disbelief about the BBC allowing him airtime. The domestic Shuttleworth, irritated by trivial things, with the merest suggestion of what the other members of his family think of him (not much), with the subtext always the need (in his life as in the programme) to fill up the time is the most deeply satisfying.

 Perhaps those live gigs and variations of the radio format are best appreciated as a kind of dream sequence, a chance to enjoy how John might behave in the unlikely event of success coming his way. And to invoke Hancock again, Galton and Simpson were never that consistent about how much fame had been enjoyed by the character they created. So maybe I should stop going down this route.

Far more interesting, in any case, to ponder over an episode of The Shuttleworths when Ken makes a reference to John's first wife only for John to shush him, fearful Mary will overhear. What's going on there? And to consider more deeply whether, in the Pillock of the Community episode, everyone in the hospice really was furtively watching behind lace curtains, praying he would go away and entertain somewhere else.

But that "Pillock" episode is a kind of victory (as well as a humiliation) for John, given the amount of interest and pleasure he can derive from a discarded sweet wrapper ... In fact, now I think of it, on an unconscious level my reservations about the Radio Shuttleworth series with celebs may have been not so much aesthetic as concern for his welfare: this is a man, after all, whose hobbies include measuring reservoir levels; surely exposure to C-list celebrities on a semi-regular basis might well result in some kind of sensory overload?

I've seen Fellows perform as Shuttleworth at least three times, and I must admit I did have to laugh when I saw him at Edinburgh a few years ago with a show around 5.15 - this was for our safety, John explained during the performance, as any later there could be "youths congregating outside."

It's just that for me the illusion is lost a bit when he's facing these large crowds who are laughing a lot at what he says and yet he carries on, by and large, as if they're not. I prefer the added melancholic dimension of listening on your own in the dark to John doing pointless things to fill in the day (and try to find enough material to constitute a show). In the same way that it can be a more melancholy experience to watch Laurel and Hardy by yourself rather than in a packed cinema (when you're more likely to register the pain and resignation in Hardy's expression in a closeup which, with the original audience present, would merely have been intended to mark time until the laughter died down) so for me the essential Shuttleworth is a solitary experience.

Of course an alternative explanation is it may be about my wanting to feel that only I get it - I don't want to see other people sharing my "secret" so maybe it's cultural snobbishness too.

Anyway, the details of the John Shuttleworth's Back tour can be found on his website here.

Teardrops of Burnished Gold

By way of commemorating ten (count 'em!) years of this blog I've uploaded the rare 1961 Vee-Jay release of the Flamingos' Golden Teardrops to youtube, as it doesn't seem to be available there or on spotify or anywhere else. You can find any number of transfers of the original 1953 Chance recording in variable sound quality - as well as a spurious "echo version" which would have turned Bill Putnam's stomach - but not the Vee-Jay pressing, which features an overdubbed guitar. Readers who have explored the earliest posts here will know how significant that recording was to me.

I had no idea that I'd still be finding new thoughts to add to this blog a few weeks after I'd set it up in December 2009, let alone in a decade's time. My modest intention had been to provide a permanent online archive for posts I'd exchanged with the American DJ Clarke Davis on a music forum, Steve's Kewl Doo Wop Shop, which had closed for business not long after our dialogue - or dialog, if you're American.

Over a few frenzied weeks in the autumn of 2000 Clarke and I had compared notes on how, despite coming from very different backgrounds, we had both managed to arrive at a love for this wonderful and ridiculous genre, and Golden Teardrops played a major role in the discussion, along with In the Still of the Night and Gloria.

The Doo Wop Shop vanished without warning but luckily I'd saved a few printouts - though I did manage, over the years, to lose an especially precious sheet of one particularly precious post: Clarke's description of the Cadillacs' recording of Gloria. At some point the page disengaged itself from my pile, and unless someone else has kept a copy you will have to fill in the blanks for yourself.

As a prompt for those inclined, here is the record:





The exchanges between myself and Clarke seemed to be enjoyed by a lot of readers on the original forum. Tokens of appreciation, in the form of videos, CDs and cassettes, were sent my way by especially generous individuals, to whom I send my heartfelt thanks once again. Some, like the late Bruce Woolf, were even kind enough to say that our dialogue might be of interest to doo wop fans in general, and those seeking to learn about the form, which is why I decided, with Clarke's approval, to make the posts available online again in December 2009.

But as I began transcribing the pieces for a new readership one thing led to another. It seemed only natural to add a commentary to the posts, filling out what I'd said or adding new thoughts, and to add the occasionally new piece about some treasured record I hadn't got round to mentioning in 2000.

And then, having got the taste for this sort of writing again - the pleasure of searching for words to convey to others how this music had given me so much pleasure - there didn't really seem any reason to stop. Those old messages were an incomplete picture of my early musical enthusiasms, so why not discuss the other genres which had also inspired me? And occasionally I'd add other, non-musical, elements to the mix: whatever else of the past had retained its importance for me, such as the comedians revered in childhood. (One of them even asked me to help write his autobiography after he had read my encomium, which can be found here.)

At some point the phrase "rummaging in the record shop of memory" advanced itself as a subheading for the blog; it seemed apposite, and it stuck. The image at the top of this blog is of another vanished Doo Wop (and other genres) Shop: the late lamented Cheapo Cheapo Records in Rupert Street, London. (I have written about that too, here.)

But whatever matters have crept in, doo wop remains the foundation of this blog - how could it not, with a title like "Pismotality"? That had been my username on the vanished forum, a nod towards one of the greatest (and possibly stupidest) doo wops of all, the Medallions' The Letter, so it seemed only natural to resurrect it for a blog which revived my contributions under that name. And what word better sums up that mixture of idealised romance and plain idiocy which characterises the best of this genre? (More about The Letter here.)

As I write this I am still eagerly awaiting the arrival of Todd Baptista's new book on the Flamingos, the first full-length study of perhaps the greatest of all the doo wop groups; they certainly recorded the supreme doo wop song, and I still thrill to hear it.

I first heard it - in that overdubbed form - just over forty years ago. Presumably the 1961 sweetening was an attempt to cash in on the group's recent crossover success with End Records: the hitmaking arrangement of I Only Have Eyes For You is ushered in with a guitar.

Not that I was aware that I was listening to a reworked recording when I first heard it. I only registered that this seemed a more challenging listen than some of the other tracks on the compilation album I had picked up cheaply in the basement of Glasgow's Listen Records in Renfield Street. It took me a while to adjust to the Flamingos' sound, as I told Clarke on that Doo Wop Shop forum. I reproduce the post below with a ghost of an apology for its slightly overheated style, reflecting the elation I was then experiencing at finding other doo wop enthusiasts, like Clarke and Bruce, via the new magic of the internet:

Odd as it may seem, it wasn't that accessible to me when I first heard it around 1978, on a poor quality oldies compilation with muddy sound and a dubbed-on guitar. Adjoining tracks, like Sonny Knight's Confidential or the Spaniels' Baby It's You, seemed far better: I got the point. But this - this was Ink Spots territory, wasn't it? That guitar. The Harptones' I Almost lost my mind, also on the LP, that was emotion; the Flamingos seemed out of reach, unfocused, somehow; I couldn't take the whole thing in in one listen.

I don't particularly recall a moment of piercing clarity. But at some point the elements made sense - tremulous falsetto, out-of-tune-sounding yet absolutely right lead, odd lyrics (why "a cottage by the sea"?) and above all that sense at the beginning that we're being ushered into a holy place, cavernous and echoing as a great cathedral, and then drawn together in a moment of collective stillness, as though calmly taking stock of the sadness in things (lacrimae rerum, appropriately enough: "the tears in things") before there's a collective sigh - at what life is?- and Sollie McElroy comes up to testify or confess: "Swear to God I'll stray no more ..."

But it's too late: although at one point he addresses the lost love directly - "Darling, put away your tears," – the burden (and howl) of the song is about regret: all he can do is try to take in fully the time he hurt her enough to make her cry: the time, now gone, when he mattered to someone, and the knowledge bearing down upon him that he's going to be carrying that memory to the grave and beyond: "Until the end of time, And throughout eternity - " Golden Teardrops. Cried, by her, for him.

And the rest of the group, or congregation, seem to grab him there - we're almost at the end of the song now - try to hold him in that moment when he feels the enormity of what he's done. Maybe the wisdom will last; who knows? But the sad, sweet pain - the knowledge that he was once loved - undoubtedly will, if the falsetto weaving in and out of the reiteration of that painful vision of her tears at the end is anything to go by.

Doo wop lyrics don't matter that much: a peg for emotions. They'd be trite enough here if read on their own. But on this occasion they seem to give the group a clarity of focus which inspires them to a height they never quite attained on any other song: Golden Teardrops is, quite simply, the loveliest and the saddest of all doo wop records. In his autobiography Chaplin talks of the day music entered his soul. Golden Teardrops seeped into me on some unknown date. But I never tire of it and always hear it afresh; for me it holds the whole mystery of doo wop: it's religious, it's secular, it's ... beyond words, actually.

At the time I knew the Flamingos' classic only through the Vee-Jay version until Clarke kindly sent a CD of one of his shows featuring the song "sans guitar" and I gradually learnt to wean myself off the doctored reissue. Now when I listen to it I can hear that the guitar is essentially an unnecessary underlining of what is already present in the restrained musical backing by Red Holloway and the other session musicians in 1953. (You can read more about Golden Teardrops in my song-by-song account of the Flamingos' early recordings here.)


That said, it does seem odd that the doctored side is so difficult to find in the digital era. Charly's ten disc box set of Vee-Jay recordings features the Chance original. So here, in order to commemorate the past Ten Glorious Years (other adjectives are available), is the overdubbed version of Golden Teardrops. Please note that sound quality is not optimal - this is taken from an old cassette I recently found, not directly from the original vinyl album depicted in the video, and the audio seems to have taken on a slightly corrugated effect over the years. But it's still worth hearing, if only to cement your opinion of the original.






A complete guide to posts about the Flamingos' Chance and Parrot sides, described by Marv Goldberg as "a wonderful analysis", can be found here. 

Or go straight to the piece on Golden Teardrops here.

A review of Todd Baptista's book about the Flamingos will follow in the New Year.