Sad but compelling account of doo wop greats

This is the biography of one of the great doo wop groups who, as Logan Pearsall Smith said of Edmund Waller, floated to immortality on the strength of a phrase - or maybe a few bass notes. Gerald Gregory, the original singer of those notes, died a few years ago, and now lead singer and creative force Pookie Hudson has gone (with, in the UK at least, what appeared to be brief and grudging obituaries).

As one who was turned on to doo wop by the Spaniels I'm writing this review in the hope that someone in the UK apart from Spencer Leigh (who wrote the only halfway decent obit) might read this book, which is not a hagiography but a particularly saddening example of the exploitation of African American performers in the early days of rock'n'roll; even if you're not particularly interested in doo wop, this tells you a great deal about 50s America. (See the biography of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick or Sweet Soul Music by Gerri Hershey for more about exploitation in this period, or seek out the novel The Day the Music Died by Joseph C Smith aka Sonny Knight).

Given all the opportunities missed and all the rightful earnings withheld - especially as Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight has been exploited in film after film, so someone's obviously profiting - it is astonishing that the group persisted over the decades and that Pookie Hudson, even after a battle with cancer, continued to perform while in remission. The fact that there were two distinct groups of Spaniels (with Pookie at the helm in both) is also down to exploitation, as there was pressure on the original members to look after their families by taking regular jobs when it became clear after a couple of years that they weren't getting the rewards from singing. According to the book, the earlier group were more spontaneous, instinctive and the later one more technically able and correct but perhaps less warm (compare the two versions of Baby, It's You).

This book relies almost exclusively on the testimony of the members of the original group and their take on the others in their lives, so it's not a Peter Guralnick job, seeking out a variety of viewpoints, and there's not much analysis of why the Spaniels' records are so good - that's taken as a given - but what gives this account its strength is the sad consistency of the story the individuals have to tell, and the fact that there seems little attempt to whitewash the characters of group members - Gerald Gregory's problems with drink are discussed in detail and everyone seems frank about personal conflicts.

More than thirty years on, the original members came together to be inducted into a Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame (I don't know whether they were finally honoured by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) and to perform again; the pressures to support families having eased, this second chance was an unexpected bonus after so much disillusion. It must have been this version of the group I saw around 1992 in London and I recall that they stood out from the other acts in seeming still involved in the material: unlike the glitzy incarnation of a Frankie Lymon-less Teenagers or a Dion-less Belmonts, for example, Pookie, still at the centre, sang as though he was still feeling and exploring the songs. Now I know why: the original memmbers had no idea they were going to get a chance again, and the acapella version of Danny Boy which Pookie announced as having first sung with his friends at High School almost forty years before as a vocal warm-up must have felt as nostalgiac for them as it did for us.

In view of all the missing riches I don't know whether Pookie Hudson died a happy man, but I hope he did: he certainly continued to perform and to find an audience; the book even recounts how he made his peace with Vivian Carter (one of the owners of the 50s R&B label Vee Jay who issued Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight) on her deathbed. And those Spaniels recordings on Vee Jay - now, ironically, public domain in the UK, so they can be reissued and reissued without the current owners profiting - ensure that James Pookie Hudson's tremulous voice will live on.


More on the Spaniels' London concert in Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 20 plus a link to an interview with Pookie.

The review above was written for work then added to a well-known shopping website. I regret implying that the Spaniels will be remembered solely for Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight. There's no denying its ubiquity, but the strange gentleness with which Pookie handled Red Sails in the Sunset on one of those horrible pressings I picked up early on in my doo wop quest meant almost as much to me - to say nothing of the sort of cloudy cushioning provided by the other voices. Interesting to compare it to the impassioned, almost out of control account by Rudy West and the Five Keys - but please don't make me choose. It's not a Crewcuts/Chords situation. Or a Maguire Sisters/Spaniels one, come to that. I felt it as a personal affront when some girls at my former place of work were idly singing Goodnight, Sweetheart Maguire Sisters style. But I didn't say anything.

As mentioned in the Doo Wop Dialog[ue] post, Pookie did say in an interview with Matt the Cat of XM Radio that he had been getting some money, at least, from Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight since 1978 but the clear implication was nowhere near what he was due. The fact that he was reduced to asking the public for help with his final medical fees when that song can still be heard everywhere is a disgrace.

Edmund (not Thomas) Waller's carpe diem: Go, Lovely Rose. Does anyone remember or read Logan Pearsall Smith's Trivia collections these days? I loved them as a teenager and even read his autobiography where he talked about religion leaving him like leaves blowing off a tree (or something; apologies to the shade of one who cared so much about precision). I think there were three collections. Project Gutenberg will lead you to two of them (Trivia and More Trivia) but not, it seems, the final collection, which must have been the one which had the Waller piece and the aphorism which ran (forgive me, thou shade) something like:
All our lives we have been putting our goldenest pennies into penny-in-the-slot machines which invariably turn out to be empty.

One entry which I did, however, find in one of the Gutenberg books has a bearing on the Doo Wop Dialog[ue] and the tantalising promise of all those Sweet Dreams of Contentment in so many songs:

Beauty
Among all the ugly mugs of the world we see now and then a face
made after the divine pattern. Then, a wonderful thing happens
to us; the Blue Bird sings, the golden Splendour shines, and for
a queer moment everything seems meaningless save our impulse to
follow those fair forms, to follow them to the clear Paradises
they promise.

Plato assures us that these moments are not (as we are apt to
think them) mere blurs and delusions of the senses, but divine
revelations; that in a lovely face we see imaged, as in a
mirror, the Absolute Beauty--; it is Reality, flashing on us in
the cave where we dwell amid shadows and darkness. Therefore we
should follow these fair forms, and their shining footsteps will
lead us upward to the highest heaven of Wisdom. The Poets, too,
keep chanting this great doctrine of Beauty in grave notes to
their golden strings. Its music floats up through the skies so
sweet, so strange, that the very Angels seem to lean from their
stars to listen.

But, O Plato, O Shelley, O Angels of Heaven, what scrapes you do
get us into!

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 36

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

(continued)

The girl in the play, who becomes the woman the singer marries, is only referred to as Gloria," a fact which regally pisses her (. ..off, as we say in UK) - decades on, he still can't see the reality of her, just as he can't accept he's on the skids in his career.

As you know from earlier postings, I'm fascinated by the collision of past and present, and I kept thinking: what is it like to be singing those songs, especially the Gloria-type yearning ones, forty years on? Assuming you're not just the musical equivalent of a cab for hire, presumably part of you buys into the myth: the audience's need for the comfort of illusion is no greater than your own. And there is, as I've said re Dion and the Spaniels live, a dignity and a grace about sharing those needs, those vulnerabilities, with an audience, if you can see them for what they are. Brit playwright Dennis Potter (Pennies from Heaven) said you should look back at your past with "tender contempt," but stressed the importance of both parts.

But what if you're too caught up in those dreams - the grown man, as it were, still singing Gloria without that sense of distance? So I decided to make my lead character a fantasist who desperately needs those songs as a retreat from understanding life in the here and now, not a way of integrating the man and the boy.

Some details I took from the chapter on Ben E King in [Gerri Hirshey’s] Nowhere to Run, but King seems to me a very grounded individual: I saw him, reunited with the Drifters in the early 80s (pre the moderate resurgence of fame with the reissue of Stand by Me), and while the late Johnny Moore and the others were comporting themselves like so many manic starfish, projecting like crazy throughout, King sort of hugged himself as he quietly, naturally, sang his hits: "Hey, I can't be that person anymore," he seemed to be saying, "but this is as much as I remember. I'm not gonna embroider or patch it up, but what I tell you will be true for me now. If I made it any bigger, I couldn't feel it, so what would be the point?" And it worked; I remember the sense of him giving himself as a real person that night.

But that play was also a variant on my attempt to do the impossible earlier on this board, ie to pin down in words the experience of listening to Golden Teardrops and the mystery (to me) of its coming into being. Without any attempt to reflect the little I knew of the Flamingos as people (ie virtually zilch) I imagined the guy hurting his wife by some thoughtless remark, seeing her tears welling up, and being torn at that moment between the wish to comfort her - and the idea that is suddenly welling up, insistent, inside him. The idea wins; he assembles the guys - the stairwell they used to practise as kids - and Golden Teardrops bubbles joyfully into being: "We got together on a key and just - floated." They rush on to the prearranged session, he comes back late that night with an acetate of the song, exuberant, thinking she'll understand, be dazzled by the sheer beauty of this guilt-framed apology ... and she's gone.

There's not much else to say, except that the enormity of what he's done to her hits him at the end, as he hears GT properly for the first time. It’s about selfishness as well as love, two sides of him. A lifetime away from that first fine "Gloria" ...

Tony

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 26

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Ah yes: "Dan got happy and he started raving - jerked out his razor but he wasn't shaving." 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 doowop) a sense of writing more directly from experience. There's also a very strange Perkins track, Her Love Rubbed off on Me, done when he was drunk (according to biog Go Cat Go) that is confusing but conveys the sense of real, unedited experience - and a lot of songs were originally improvised in the tonks, book says. I think it was Ringo who said that when Carl sings you believe him.

And those Sun sides, like Elvis Scotty and Bill, are so basic, seeming to bubble up out of the joy of being young, feeling that strength and power for the first time: Elvis' whoop on Mystery Train. So sad it didn't last in either case: CP's Columbia sides seem like imitations of himself, like MGM mishandling Laurel and Hardy, and nothing - nothing - in the Presley cannon is the equal of that spontaneous outpouring. (Not that there isn't some cornball stuff on those early sides: I don't care if the sun don't shine ...)

With Carl Perkins (as I also feel about the voice of Louis Armstrong - incidentally he started off singing in a vocal group as a kid) it's a voice that's known to me: like Ringo, I trust it. Like a friend or family member. And the fact that Blue Suede Shoes is still infectious when other records have dulled ... What I've avoided saying is I'm not omnivorous when it comes to rockabilly. Too much else seems like a pale echo (though others in England lap it up). But Elvis and CarI - well, it's not a bad choice, is it? And linking it to doowop, there is a kind of purity of heart about some of Carl's stuff, as well as the raunchier, hellraising Dixie fried ... analogous to the uptempo doowop with the leering bass voice: Sixty Minute Man or Gerald Gregory's invitation on the Spaniels' Housecleaning. Devil or Angel? We've got both in us...

Tony (Ok Steve, click on PRINT...)

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 20

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)
Clarke,

I'm also enjoying this and am prompted by your message to add a little more. Thinking about memories and the kind of double exposure you're talking about (40s songs with all those associations heard in the 50s) makes me think of the now multilayered experience of hearing groups today: songs predating their youth, sung in their youth, now sung in the dignity/poignancy/slow decay (select according to today's mood) of late middle age.

I'm thinking of two live experiences, one on record, one I was lucky enough to witness. First is the Dion and Belmonts' 70s reunion album: when Dion sings "some things that happened for the first time... " and you hear the audience's palpable joy at that moment, acknowledging the collision of time zones: it's then AND now, and if Dion's still alive then that part of themselves hasn't wholly died (...and what a great love song that is, incidentally...)

The other experience is seeing the Spaniels in London 1992. I’m of Irish descent and can't remember when I first heard Danny Boy but have always loved the directness of that song. Pookie Hudson introduced it as a song they sang in the locker room at High School in 1952 (or whenever). Great acapella rendition, true both to the Spaniels' style and the song - not all the acts that night sang like it still meant something - and for me something incredibly moving that 40 years on, there they were - or the same nucleus, anyway - and it couldn't be the same, could it? Not 15 any more. But it still felt real and vital and connected: "That which we are we are,' as the aging Ulysses says.

So seeing doowop singers, if you want to get pretentious about it, and I'm in pretty deep already, in their autumn years singing those same songs of idealised love puts us in touch with our own mortality and the needs and desires still in us - almost like Pookie or Dion is the priest in this religious ceremony, bestowing a blessing on us and making us whole, past and present in one ...

I think I'm done. I hope readers other than yourself will be indulgent and realise this comes out of the great love we all share for this timeless music.


As mentioned in Post 10 of this series, that 1992 concert was not well attended. And I was sitting needlessly way, way back in the first half, which didn't help. But my impression was that it was only Bobby Lewis who was warming up the crowd, albeit by relying on Big Joe Turner covers in order to save his big hit till the end. Johnnie Allan either didn't connect with the crowd or wasn't given time.

But the Spaniels were a class act from the git-go, intimidating as Gerald may have looked with the eyepatch. They came on to Baby It's You (of course), which took me back to my Springboard International album, which featured the remake of Baby It's You as well as Golden Teardrops.

From reading the Spaniels' biography, I think that the group then would have been the original members who had been given this late chance to perform again; the book was basically saying that a later set of Spaniels were technically better but the first ones around Pookie had got there by instinct. Must have been odd, however, as the book describes them listening to the old records in order to relearn, or at least be reminded of, what had once come naturally. (As so often, find details of line ups and much else in one of Marv Goldberg's R&B notebooks, based on interviews with Pookie himself.)

Whatever, it worked; and I was aware that, as others have said, Pookie is not a showman as some are, but he does - or, as I must now say, did - the most important thing of all: singing as though he is still feeling and exploring the song right at that moment. Which goes all the way back to that tentative definition I offered in Post 1 of this dialog[ue].

Download former XM deejay Matt the Cat's interview with Pookie Hudson here; you can also find interviews with other doo wop and R&B greats. The interview is well worth a listen; Matt is an intelligent, informed, as well as an enthusiastic, host; Pookie is gracious; callers mostly pay tribute.

I didn't realise that he had been getting at least some payment for Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight since 1978, and that laws had changed at some point so that performers on a recording now get something, no matter how miniscule, each time a recording is aired. Appropriate enough when you think of how much the performance is part of a record's success (apparently Richard Rodgers hated the Marcels' recording of Blue Moon, although I don't know whether he spurned the resulting royalties).

Matt also made the point that small record companies were often up against it in terms of when they would be paid by distributors, so that delayed (or no) monies could be about a little indie struggling for survival - to which, I admit, one obvious riposte might be: "Tell it to Carl Perkins." Anyway, I don't know whether such thoughts were a factor, but the Spaniels' biography does record that Pookie, for his own sake, made it up with Vee Jay's Vivian Carter before she died.

To return to that concert: a Dionless Belmonts also performed, although they seemed to be doing a lot of Dion solo numbers, on the grounds that they had performed them during that reunion gig noted above. They were agreeable enough, although I don't remember the performance in detail, apart from the disturbing fact that one Belmont was now stone bald: suddenly it ain't the fifties no more.

The Spaniels were the best act of the evening but the headliners were the Teenagers with Lewis Lymon in their number. I can't remember whether the female lead was Pearl McKinnon or a later replacement, but I do remember the brightness of delivery becoming a little tiring by the end, and the oddness of the references to the departed Frankie: his mischievousness was mentioned, not his death.

To which the response might reasonably be: Well, what did you expect them to do? And from what I've read of the Teenagers, they deserved to make some money and I hope they did; it was a polished act which delivered what the audience wanted.

But what it comes down to, I suppose, is that a Teenagers without Frankie is like - well, a Spaniels without Pookie.

14 Karat Soul

I feel like saying: does anyone else actually know or remember this group? Sometimes it seems they were only a thing I dreamt: 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, a glimpse of them, anyway, on youtube; CDs can be bought; there's an official website which hasn't yet been taken down, even though I believe they called it a day in 2003. They're even mentioned briefly in Jay Warner's Billboard book of vocal groups.

[update: caution is advised when checking out the official website,14ksoul (dot) com. For a while it was not safe to access, although at the time of writing - November 2011 - it seems okay.]

Perhaps it's simply the oddness of the situation: an accomplished act, who I saw time after time slaying live audiences, never made it truly big in America or the UK, only attaining the scale of recognition they deserved in Japan. Whatever the reason, I want to commemorate 14 Karat Soul. They should 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. The beauty is that 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, I was intrigued by the idea 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, there was 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, however, was only aware of the most gorgeous, soaring harmonies, unimpeded by any instrumentation (The Gospel... had a piano), and a growing sense of entering a trancelike state which was partly the production's intended effect - the characters were in a place which peddled dreams - and partly because I had never imagined that the essence of those scratchy fifties recordings could be brought so vividly to life.

And as this is a blog, I don't have to omit the indelicate detail that I was having ear trouble at the time 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 am, soaring in doo wop heaven, drinking in all this acapella perfection, taken to heights of aural ecstacy such as I have never known before ... and all the while head to one side, forever tugging on that lobe. Fate can be cruel and kind.

I'll spare you the details of the subsequent syringing, except to add that as sounds - wonderful bright, clear three-dimensional sounds - poured 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 Stan Krause and others.


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 Susy Cinema around Europe, were having a week long residency in the unlikely spot 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 small Mitchell Theatre was part of a recent extension to Glasgow's main reference library, so it had no history or particular atmosphere, although very pleasant. Possibly it was cheap, or possibly it 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. The visit may also have coincided with Mayfest, Glasgow's modest attempt to start a festival of its own to rival Edinburgh's, as I remember 14 Karat Soul performing as part of that festival around the same time.

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.

I'm now going to try to remember as many of the songs featured in that week as I can. Quite a number are available on CD, although I cannot stress enough what a long way those antiseptic studio recordings are 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 overamplified rock band can be, all I know is that I feel in touch with something fundamental. There's sense of intimacy involved: the directness of the human voice, rather than a lump of metal in front of the face, 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, yet utterly human, way in which a group of people can temporarily 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.


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 that phrase which struck me all those years ago in the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia: "music you or your lover could have made."

Back to the show, as the audience is getting impatient. The group kicked off with Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and it was very heaven, what with both ears now fully operational and tuned in. The bass singer had, I believe, 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 "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 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). Sadly, although you can hear Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy online (see below), it doesn't really 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 joy to come, is something I'll never forget.

I can't remember the order in which other songs were performed; there may have been a bit of juggling around from night to night. Operator opened the second half in a change of costume and I became aware of the old-fashioned curtain backdrop and lighting, as though this could have been any night in the fifties; Trickle, Trickle was performed near the end, as was, I think, The Morse Code of Love.

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," which I haven't been able to locate. 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.

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 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 also saw the group in the more sedate surroundings of Ronnie Scott's Club (a legendary London jazz venue) some time later and I think that that was it. It had been on mind to record one of the Glasgow concerts with my very basic cassette recorder but I didn't, partly because I assumed there would be recordings very soon, much better than I could manage. I'd even heard them sing Sixteen Candles on the radio, possibly to publicise the residency, so I'd just sit back, enjoy the shows and wait for the LPs.

What I hadn't anticipated was that although songs from their live repertoire would gradually be doled out over a series of albums, these would be in the form of polished studio recordings which only hinted at the raw excitement of the same songs live.

And as the group - possibly because the great, and much deserved, breakthrough in the West hadn't happened? - went to Japan to develop a career there, recordings were difficult to obtain, although thanks to the magic of a certain auction site I now have several Japanese CDs. What I don't have is the original Catamount LP which I suspect may be nearer to the live group, although their album That`s Doo Wapp Acappela!! which, I think, followed the Catamount LP, has a fair amount of their live numbers but again sounds too clean. If only I had smuggled in my little cassette recorder - especially as there is a noble tradition of lousy-sounding doo wop recordings which are somehow magical at the same time - In the Still of the Night being the most famous case in point.

Talking of which, there is a long discussion of that Five Satins recording in the Doo Wop Shop posts (see blog intro for a pdf file link, or wait till I post them in expanded form here). It was particularly enjoyable because lots of people got involved, not just Clarke and me, and one of the questions raised was would you want to listen to some pristine mastertape of that fabled Connecticut church basement recording if it ever surfaced? Opinions differed, but I think the majority felt that the sound quality associated with that recording was now part of the experience.

Another point, raised by Bruce Woolf (who very kindly sent me, gratis, tapes of his old radio shows) was that there were only four group members at that basement recording session. To which the only answer could be: we are that Fifth Satin. In the same way, by the act of listening to them, and celebrating their memory as best as I can here, I'd like to think that I am that extra member of 14 Karat Soul ... er ... guys? Guys?

At any rate, without any available recording by the group which fully captures the pinned-to-the-seat impact of that week in the Mitchell Theatre, Glasgow (if you know differently, please get in touch), all I can do is try to remember what it felt like to be in that audience. And for someone whose exposure to live doowop up till then had been the music hall (vaudeville) version provided by the UK group Showaddywaddy it felt pretty good.

I'm still haunted by that singer's gesture. I know, because I was cajoled into singing a kind of Karaoke Abba over Christmas (there, I've said it and I'm glad) that my voice is not, perhaps, the most versatile of instruments (the machine, I think like that new Beatles game, actually rated each note but I don't want to talk about it). Could it have been he was saying: "Yes, your voice is terrible. But it's alright. You're here onstage where you belong, so go ahead and keep murdering the Dell Vikings, what with you being our extra unwanted member, and all"?

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.

So what does survive of 14 Karat Soul other than my possibly self-serving memories?

As mentioned, there's an official website, but as that favours the Japan-era group with personnel changes (founder Glenny T. appears to be the only constant) I'd recommend instead Beaudaddy's 14 Karat Soul page on his Vocal Group Harmony site which has a link to the official site [which, to repeat, is unsafe at the time of this update: August 2010]. The site, which covers many doo wop groups and is well worth a visit,   features promotional photos which I have plundered for this article and reviews plus a link to a York Times article about the TV version of Sister Suzie Cinema which was part of the Alive from Off Center series.

Scroll down the page to hear three live radio performances including Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The audio isn't that great and unless I'm remembering through rose-tinted earlobes the performance here sounds a bit rushed; you can't really hear that graininess I talked about. But I'm very grateful to Beaudaddy for preserving these mementoes. Photographs for this post have been taken from his site. Access Beaudaddy's main page here, with lots of links to vocal groups - click on Persuasions, for example, to be taken to Jerry Lawson's blog.

According to the Mabou Mines website Sister Suzie Cinema came to London in September 1982; assuming it was in tandem with The Gospel at Colonus once again, this may have been when The South Bank Show (a prestigious non-BBC arts documentary series which, coincidentally, broadcast its last episode a few days ago) devoted half of its one hour running time to The Gospel at Colonus, including some clips of the production. I only remember a theatre critic saying something along the lines of its being well-nigh perfect. The good news is that I believe plans are afoot to make The South Bank Show's entire TV run available in some form, so I shall update this page if there is any more news. [updated info here]

It is possible to find an off-air recording of Sister Suzie Cinema on the net. Alternatively, here is what seems to be a place to rent it legitimately (Electronic Arts Intermix, "a nonprofit resource for video art") and presumably in far better technical quality, but it is not cheap.

The larger subsequent production of Oedipus at Colonus, featuring well-known performers from the golden age of gospel, has recently been issued as a DVD and is widely available. There is also a CD of that production. If anyone knows of sheet music, please let me know.

Right, I think I'm done for the moment. If anyone has any other 14 Karat Soul memories or information, I'd to hear from you. But to close, a youtube clip which illustrates the circular nature of my doo wop journey as the group do Frankie Lymon. Or, staying with the Lymon theme, if you too yearn to be that extra group member, try this other clip ... though having watched it, you may wish you knew of an internationally understood gesture meaning: "I revere the group you're miming to but, believe me, it would be an enormous boon if you could, er, stop, man? And, most emphatically, don't do it again."


Other posts about 14 Karat Soul: 

Try Them One More Time here.
Reginald "Briz" Brisbon here.
Greece is still the word here.

Doo Wop documentary

Having mentioned it in the previous post, this seems a good point to reproduce my review of this documentary about doo wop:

New Listeners Begin Here

A pretty good and faithful account of the rise and fall of the harmony group. Very little is said about the music's origins but you do see clearly how doo wop singing works in practice: footage of revival groups watching each other while singing bears out Ben E King's remark (in Gerri Hershey's Nowhere to Run) that singing in a streetcorner group was like "one big heartbeat ... those guys knew when you were going to breathe."

There's an impressive roster of interviewees including the late Pookie Hudson and Phil Groia, author of recommended doo wop history They All Sang on the Corner, but Canadian funding (presumably) means a member of the white group the Diamonds gets to rattle on at disproportionate length with no mention of the fact that his group covered songs by black groups and didn't take the form that seriously (though there is a telltale B&W clip where they seem to be goofing around while singing).

The rise and fall of Frankie Lymon (drawing on a PBS documentary), prejudice on the road and other aspects are covered too - some major stars are quite matter-of-fact about the way they were ripped off (though they've had decades to get their heads round it).

What unites almost all commentators, however, is a real love for the form, and the final sequence - a variegated bunch of singers harmonising on Smokey Robinson's My Girl ("Eat your heart out, Temptations!") tells you all you need to know about this singing, the teenagers (and at least one Teenager) caught up in a groundswell of simple joy - though there is an irony, unremarked and presumably unintended, about the fact that this is a Motown song - ie one of the companies who may have valued the voice but whose sophisticated production values and backing musos helped put paid to doo wop - though the British Invasion contributed too, as one DJ remembers: "Things changed," he says, simply - and again you have a sense that the afficiandos have had a long, long time to accept the fact that while this music may never go away it is unlikely ever to be a huge force again.