New book about doo wop now available (Could This Be Magic? by Spencer Leigh)

Update: Spencer Leigh's Could This Be Magic? has now been been published as an e-book and is available worldwide from UK amazon here and US amazon here.

 This is to let readers know that the DJ and author Spencer Leigh has written a book about doo wop which will be published this Friday, 17th April.

The current crisis means that it will be issued initially in e-book form, although it's hoped a hard copy will be available later. I recently read an advance copy of the book, which is entitled Could It Be Magic?, and chatted to Spencer Leigh about it.

The book had been a passion project of his for some years but it had proven hard to get publishers interested. Studies of individual artists are arranged A-Z in the music section of bookshops and easy for prospective buyer to find; miscellaneous music books tend to be lumped together so are a less enticing proposition when it comes to being commissioned.

When the bookshops open again, as one day they must, music fans ought to seek this book out, and holler if they can't find it. Could It Be Magic? (named after a song by the Dubs) works on two levels. It's an engaging introduction to the genre for those who are "doo wop-curious" - wishing to find out more about the music but with no idea where to begin when faced with the bewildering array of recordings only a few clicks away. Such readers will find that Spencer wears his considerable knowledge lightly, and his enthusiasm will sweep them along.

But there's also a great deal here for those who know their Penguins from their Paragons. Spencer has been presenting a programme called On the Beat on BBC Radio Merseyside for 35 years, over which time he has conducted numerous interviews with singers and musicians, and this treasure trove of firsthand reminiscence has been freely drawn upon for the book. Little Anthony, for example, recalls first hearing the Flamingos' Golden Teardrops "and it was like they were from another planet". And others may have outlined kiddie doo wop star Frankie Lymon's rise and fall but who else has spoken to skiffler Chas McDevitt, who toured Britain with Frankie? There is a freshness and vividness about much of the detail here.

Spencer is not averse to slipping in the odd joke but is clearly writing with passion. He is especially proud of a chapter which examines doo wop in Britain, a subject which hasn't been covered elsewhere. "In those golden years from 1955 to 1962," he writes, "very few British acts could sing it with conviction, but there are striking exceptions and even more from later years." One notable example is Emile Ford and the Checkmates, "the UK’s first successful multi-racial band", whose revival of the old song What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me for? actually includes the words "doo wop" in the opening ("Doo-wop be dooby dooby ..."), and Spencer traces the two American singles which inspired the arrangement on the record.

The book is arranged in three sections, with that discussion of British doo wop at the end. First of all, however, there's an account of doo wop from its earliest origins right up to the present day. Spencer doesn't stop at the convenient cut-off point of 1963 and the Beatles but instead looks at how the style was carried on into Motown, influenced the Fabs themselves, and remains part of music today. This
is followed by four in-depth studies of influential performers: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Dion and the Belmonts, the Coasters and the Prisonaires. More knowledgeable readers may raise an eyebrow at the last named as the Prisonaires are more associated with an older style of singing - but, as Spencer says, "Their story is so damned amazing and says so much about life for the American black population in the South, I just had to tell it."

Spencer is very clear in the book's introduction about what the book isn't. It's not a discography or a history of all the groups. Instead "it is a history of doo-wop told roughly chronologically so we can
follow the music as it progresses and see its highs and lows."

It's also good to see that he gives due weight to the importance of standards in doo wop groups' repertoire. An earlier book referred to doo wop as "The Forgotten Third of Rock'n'Roll", the other two components being country and blues. Spencer disagrees: "It is more like the forgotten quarter as the popular music of the day also played its part. After all, Elvis Presley's favourite singers were Dean Martin and Mario Lanza. Note too how the pre-war standards were revived by many of the new acts, especially the doo-woppers."

When a reviewer mentions that he read a book in a single sitting I am never sure whether that's an unqualified endorsement (couldn't tear myself away) or whether there might be an implied criticism (too short). Could It Be Magic? is a substantial book, so I don't think the average reader is likely to finish it in a single sitting. But if you're anything like me, you won't want to. I kept stopping in order to listen to forgotten or unfamiliar records online, and I know I'll return to the book later for more. As in his radio programme Spencer Leigh is an enthusiast who is able to transmit that enthusiasm, and a safe pair of hands.

At the end of our conversation I asked Spencer why he thought that doo wop has stayed around for so long. His answer was simple. It's direct music, so it hasn't dated in the way that some other genres have. And it's not reliant on sophisticated recording techniques, as evidenced by an all-time classic of the genre, the Five Satins' In the Still of the Nite, recorded in a chuch basement in Connecticut: "The drums came out as a dull thud and the sound was muffled and distorted but the result was doo-wop heaven." Now that really is magic.


Spencer Leigh's e-book Could This Be Magic? can be bought from UK amazon here and US amazon here. 

The cost is $5 for US readers and £4.02 in the UK.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 39

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Clarke,

I read your Gloria piece again while listening to the Cadillacs. It really is a wonderful, precise piece of writing; I found myself listening to that extended "meee" with more pained enjoyment than ever. Again, you're so lucky that this was the soundtrack to your youth, there to enhance each experience rather than something you had to seek out. I went to a rock'n'roll club as a teenager but it was all in the frantic, jitterbugging mode favoured by the Brits, and no doowop ballads. Much the same in London now, sadly.

Anyway, as a sort of appendix to what we've been discussing about Gloria, I've now found the reference to the original song in the book by Gribin and Schiff I referred to. Because of the distinction I made (don't know if you agree yet) between Gloria as the ultimate expression of aching teen sensibility and GT as adult, it’s worth quoting the lyrics in full:

Gloria, it's not Marie, it's Gloria
It's not Cherie, it's Gloria
She's in your every dream

You like to play the game of kiss and runaway
But now you find it's not that way
Somehow you changed it seems

Wasn't Madeleine your first love
It was just hello goodbye
Wasn't Caroline your last love
It's a shame you made her cry

What a fool you are
You gave your heart to Gloria
You're not so smart cause Gloria
Is not in love with you

(Leon Renne, 1946)

The authors say "Whether the borrowing was accidental or purposeful will never be truly known," but the fact that Esther Navarro's name didn't appear on the first pressing of the Cadillacs' version (she was their manager) suggests she did. But the differences - and apparently the melodies are different, too - are fascinating. It's not first person, so you don't get a direct route to his subjective experience of his anguish, and it's hardly first love and all that wonder and innocence we've been talking about - more like poetic justice: as Bob Dylan, that poet (arguably) outside our remit (unquestionably) might put it: "How does it feel?"

That memory of the live performance of Gloria seems more appropriate here, where he gets what he deserves: not malign fate but karma. Gloria Mk.1 reads like a song aimed at adults, and because we're not privy to the guy's inner emotions, we can't feel the sympathy in GT, because we've got no idea how he responds to this blow (unless there's an even more obscure answer song waiting to be unearthed).

But it helps to show what a great piece of work Esther Navarro's conscious or unconscious borrowing of elements led to. As you say, even the title puts the emotions on a par with religious fervour and suggests the purity of that longing: Marie and Cherie are not his cast-offs but girls who did not awaken in him that divine longing.

Put that way, the word sounds camp (as in: "Too too divine, Dahling !") but I mean precisely that: that the wish to make contact, the ability to perceive beauty, maybe where others don't, in another, probably equally flawed, individual is a triumph of that imaginative power we all have that links us to some higher power, whatever you want to call it, or at least brings out our potential to be better than our workaday selves (I'm a long-lapsed Catholic, people, so I'm not particularly selling anything here).

The flip side of the coin, of course, is raging hormones and erector sets and hey, maybe this girl would be incredibly pretty to any pair of teenage male eyes straining at their sockets (“Va va VOOM!" is, I believe, your singularly infelicitous American term) and it's also about the naive belief that someone else will be the quick-fix solution to all your problems as opposed to bringing a whole new set of their own ... but there still seems something noble going on in that longing.

(I'm almost done here but will switch to a new post to avoid having to cut for length. Back after these important messages...)


"... suggests she did" puzzles me as I reread it. Suggests she did what? Know that the borrowing was deliberate? In the Matt the Cat interview cited a few posts ago Earl Carroll, perhaps diplomatically, says that she was "She was a business lady, lovely lady. She was a lady, number one, but she was a business lady and she knew the business." He praises her professionalism in knowing exactly what her artists needed: Cholly Atkins, introduced to them by Navarro, "took us under his wing" - and there is a reference in Nowhere to Run to the young Ben E King's heart thumping as he watched the Cadillacs' dance routines up close.

The relevant bit from my review of a Mills Brothers CD, The Anthology (1931-1968):

Of particular note, if you are interested in their effect on later vocal groups, is the song Gloria, a distant relative of the doo wop standard (associated with the Cadillacs); but without the abject pain and idealisation in the reworking (this early Gloria is cheating on, rather than spurning, the lovelorn adolescent). This is, I believe, the second recording of the song (the original was by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers).

But according to wikipedia there were two other recordings of Goria Mk. 1, one recorded the same year as Johnny Moore's Three Blazers (featuring Charles Brown) by Ray Anthony (above), and one recorded the previous year, 1945, by ex-Ellingtonian Herb Jeffries as part of the Buddy Baker Sextet.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 19

clarkedavis
(M/Dover, New Jersey)

Tony,

The verse from Thomas Hardy is perfect. I think the doo wop mentality and the sense of spirituality has been around a long, long, time. But it was never articulated so profoundly for the common man ... I can imagine the communication between privileged concert-goers in Vienna seeing Mozart perform. Lead East, Europe in the "real" old days.

Seriously, the feeling two lovers must have felt when sitting next to each other, perhaps holding hands, listening to romantic strains of a concert orchestra, must have been akin to what doo wop evoked for us. It's the quality of communication, and the sharing of something special that creates the bond.

There are those still among us, who lived through the highly romantic forties. Songs like Where or When, Again, A Tree in the Meadow were versions of songs made popular a decade or more earlier. The forties produced a heightened sense of romance coupled with the danger of annihilation (World War II) which forged premature relationships to blossom, due to time constraints of soldiers.

Romance and sophistication went hand in hand in the elegant forties, and some of that spilled over into the doo wop era. The sensibilities that allowed the awkward and the raw, to emerge as acceptable, if true of heart, successful commercial entities was truly what the fifties allowed. So we have the Moonglows Secret Love next to Rosie and the Originals Angel Baby on the jukebox. Sublime to almost ridiculous, with both garnering respect, because of where the music was coming from, in both cases, the heart and soul.

I am very pleased we were able to have this communication, begging the indulgence of others who might think this a bit off base for a board of this nature.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 4

clarkedavis
(M/Dover, New Jersey)

Tony,

I just read your latest posting, and feel you have achieved a true understanding of what this genre is all about. Explaining these values represented in song to people who haven't lived it, is difficult. Today's world is a far different place than in the simpler times that spawned the tidal wave of intense and honest emotions reflected by this music.

The range goes from elegant (Golden Teardrops) to the ultimate good time party music, (Rama Lama Ding Dong) with so much more in between. Varying degrees of sophistication and naivete weave in and out of this florid genre, with spellbinding results at times. The values reflected, loving someone forever, unabashed weakness in power of another, and achieving a "nirvana" here on earth, with the vehicle for arriving at all this being the drive of the id to express itself in good measure. Is it any wonder this is music that will not go away?

The style of life conjured up by most of the doo wop mentality is one which lives on in the hearts of those who were there. Much like the literate dialogue that permeates film noir of the 40's, lyrics of the 50's takes a lofty notion, and brings it down to street level. A jukebox, a pretty girl, a darkened venue, dancing close to romantic falsetto tinged vocals drenched in harmony ... what more could a teenage boy wish for? Flashy cars, black leather jackets, macho tough swagger, are a perfect foil to the aforementioned romanticism. What a great time to be a teenager in America!

To think that you were able to recapture the essence of all that while living in London decades later, shows the power of evocation this music presents to those who have the talent and sensitivity to appreciate It. Cheers Tony for bringing all this out. This is truly a remarkable genre of music, that like its ideals, will go on for eternity, as long as there are torchbearers like you, who understand what it was all about, to pass it along.