To mark eleven (count 'em!) years of blogging, an introduction to a selection of posts from 2009-2020, one from each year.
Click on any image to read the piece described immediately below.
2020
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Billy Shelton taught Pookie Hudson how to sing in the glee club at Roosevelt High in Gary, Indiana and formed a trio with him and another schoolfriend, predating the Spaniels. In the 1990s, when the original Spaniels reformed, Billy took the place of Ernest Warren, then a minister, and he still leads a group of Spaniels today. This piece, distilled from several lengthy interviews with Billy in 2016 and 2020, is around 25,000 words and covers his whole life and career. There aren't too many people still around from the very beginning of doo wop, so it was a privilege, as well as a pleasure, to help spread the story of one of the originators. (Photograph from 1950 school yearbook, shared by Todd Baptista on social media.)
2019
In 2019 I interviewed Pete West as part of ongoing research into the songwriter Alan Klein: Pete had been lead guitarist in the group which morphed into "the Al Kline Five" after Alan joined in the late fifties. For several years they played weekend gigs around North London but when the chance of a summer season at Butlins Skegness meant turning pro Pete had to decide whether he wanted to give up the security of his well-paid job ... (Thanks to Ken Aslet for the photographs of the band which illustrate this piece; that's Pete in the foreground above.)
2018
On a more personal note, some memories of watching the much-derided soap opera Crossroads with my mother, whose Pavlovian stratagem - a bowl of Heinz chicken soup was invariably placed in front of the television to await my return from school - led me to associate the watching of soaps in general with pleasure, although Crossroads will always remain dearest to my heart. For those not already of the faith I hope that this piece may go some way to explaining why.
2017
One of the first oldies LPs I alighted upon in the seventies included the Flamingos' Golden Teardrops, perhaps the greatest doo wop record of all. Between 2015 and 2017 I tried to establish the context for that supreme achievement by writing about the Flamingos' early recordings in Chicago: although familiar with a lot of the sides I'd never listened to them chronologically before or tried to trace the group's evolution from what Robert Pruter terms "deep R&B doo wop" into something more recognisable as rock'n'roll. Two group members from this period stand out: their original lead singer, Sollie McElroy, adept at handling the possibilities in comic or novelty numbers as well as ballads, and Johnny Carter, who shaped the musical direction of that first permutation of the group. The post I've chosen from 2017 as an example of this series provides an opportunity to compare McElroy's style with that of his successor, Nate Nelson.
2016
For 2016, an earlier post in the series about the Flamingos' early work. That's My Desire had been a big hit earlier for Frankie Laine, and would later become a doo wop staple, but at the time the Flamingos recorded it in 1953 there had only been a few jazz and R&B covers in Laine's wake. This is one of the earliest Flamingos sides, dating from a time when vocal groups tended to record with the jazz musicians who backed them at nightclubs. As for the song itself, Frankie Laine was far from the first to tackle it: the number had been around since 1931.
2015
Yet another Flamingos piece, the first in the series, to represent 2013. Cross Over the Bridge is a pop novelty with gospel overtones first recorded by Patti Page. The Chords also covered it, but less successfully: the Flamingos' version is a fine example of Sollie McElroy's ability to put over comic material.
2014
By way of contrast with the above flamboyance of Flamingos, a more personal piece: a lament for the fact that the supermarket cafe where I planned a lot of the book Funny Bones, my collaboration with the English comedian Freddie Davies, was about to close. Eating and having time to think there of a morning was a small pleasure which has never been adequately replaced. With so many cafes and restaurants shut at the time of writing this may strike a chord with fellow writers or those who simply enjoy wasting time - not that the distinction is a hard and fast one. (The image is that of a larger cafe in another branch.)
2013
Moving from breakfast to lunchtime, another personal piece: a musically-related incident which occured during a spot of postprandial idling in the shop above.
2012
I can't not choose this piece about Ben E King. It provides a review of his last live performance in London as well as a comprehensive account of the origins of Stand By Me.
2011
Similarly, only one post can be chosen for this year: an act of homage to the British comedian Freddie "Parrotface" Davies, a childhood idol, prompted by the purchase of a DVD of his TV and film appearances. I sent Mr Davies a link to the completed piece, which ultimately led to my working with him on his stalled autobiography, Funny Bones. It was a long process - the book eventually came out in 2014 - but never one I've had cause to regret: whenever I was sitting in a room with him it always seemed like the only place I could possibly be.
There are a lot of posts to choose from in my first full year of blogging, when it was all new and fresh and fun. But I've chosen this piece about Donovan because he has been on my mind in 2020. I booked tickets for a summer gig in London, postponed for obvious reasons, which finally took place in October; in the end, however, I couldn't face the journey on public transport and opted to watch the show streamed live instead. I drafted a post about this experience but couldn't bring myself to publish it; there is nothing, really, which need be added to this piece from ten years ago.
2009
And so, finally, we go back, way back, back in time ... to late 2009, to be precise, when this blog was set up to provide an archive for some material which could no longer be found online. I had no idea I'd still be adding to it eleven years on.
It came about, as they say, in this wise. (They probably also use the term "common weal", but let it pass.) In 2000 I'd saved printouts of some exchanges with the DJ Clarke Davis on a doo wop forum which disappeared not long afterwards, taking most of its messages with it, and in 2009 I thought it was about time that our dialogue (or dialog, if you're American) was made available again. There had certainly been a very positive reaction when Clarke and I first began conversing: the late Bruce Woolf, a fellow member of the forum, even suggested that an edited version of what we said could serve as a general introduction to doo wop.
The seventy-odd messages salvaged on this blog represent only a small proportion of what appeared on that long-ago forum. Clarke wrote a beautiful description of the song Gloria, for example, which I'm pretty sure I did print out, but two of the pages have disappeared along the way, leaving only a tantalising fragment. I also remember a discussion about the Dells' Sweet Dreams of Contentment which had several contributors speculating about the word uttered by Johnny Funches at the end ... that, alas, has gone in its entirety. But I think I saved between about eight or ninety percent of the thoughts Clarke and I shared, comparing notes about our first acquaintance with doo wop in fifties America and seventies Scotland respectively.
As with the Freddie Davies and Ben E King pieces one post demands to be chosen to illustrate this year, even though it was written in 2000: my attempt to get to grips with the Medallions' The Letter, the song which gave me the username for that forum, and under which I have traded online ever since.
As I've said, however, I had no intention of becoming a regular blogger, so how did I get from there to here?
The short answer is it just .. happened. As I began rereading those old messages, checking that the punctuation had survived the scanning process intact, I was reminded of the pleasure I'd felt at connecting with people who shared my passion for doo wop, something which hadn't been possible before the internet, and it occurred to me to add the odd bit of commentary so there'd be something extra for any original readers who came to visit ... and then, having enjoyed that process, I added the odd new piece, related to one or other of the posts ... then came the momentous day when I dared to choose a subject not directly related to doo wop and suddenly the blog became about the history of my musical enthusiasms generally, no longer confined to the glories of vocal groups ... then the odd post about comedy and other interests crept in, hence that paean to Freddie Davies, and then ... but you'll know the rest, if you have read any of the posts described above.
Blogging is largely its own reward, and most of the time the blogger must take on trust the enthusiasm of an audience. So why bother? Well, to be able to write about what you want, when you want, and see it immediately published in the virtual world, is undoubtedly a thrill, regardless of the size of the readership: it's a long way from the deferred gratification of some other writing-related pursuits, that's for sure. There may be less incentive than in other forms to polish work once that initial impulse has been spent, but against that there are pieces here which I wouldn't have written at all without this platform - and whether or not it may show, I have done the occasional bit of polishing along the way.
There are times when I fear that blogging - for me, anyway - has merely been a superior sort of displacement activity, a way of diverting myself from one of those nobler pursuits. At other times I try to tell myself that actually this may be the more important task - though I wouldn't really trust me when it comes to matters of this sort.
Nevertheless, the thought that an audience might get around to reading these words at some point is an incentive to continue - to write something, anyway, on those occasions when I don't want to raise up my eyes to contemplate the sheer-seeming cliff face which those other endeavours have come to represent.
And if it has all been a waste of time, then I can only say that I'm sincerely grateful to those readers who have chosen to waste some of it with me. (Now for heaven's sake get on and do something useful, why dontcha?)
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