Second XI

Another eleven posts from the archive. Click on the image to read the piece described below.

 

1 : Golden Teardrops - the Flamingos

 

Although a more extensive piece on the Flamingos' Golden Teardrops can be found elsewhere, I'm fond of this earlier attempt to describe it during my 2000 dialogue with Clarke Davis. The style - of my writing, I mean - may be a little overheated but it reflects the excitement I felt at the new experience of  sharing my passion for doo wop with like-minded people, and I'm eternally grateful to those who expressed their appreciation by sending gifts of CDs, tapes and videos which couldn't be found in the UK.

 

2 : You Have Two (I Have None) - the Orchids

Like the Flamingos, the Orchids recorded for Al Benson's Parrot Records in the early fifties. They are best known for the disjointed narrative of Newly Wed, beloved of Frank Zappa and others, but You Have Two (I Have None), aka Happiness, which only saw the light of day in the nineties, is equally good. It seems they weren't treated well by Benson, and as a result didn't remain in the business, but they left the world eight sides of the very highest quality. Some discussion of Newly Wed cropped up during my dialogue with Clarke Davis but this piece was the first examination of a doo wop record written especially for the blog. (The image above, taken from the Vocal Group Harmony website, is not of the Orchids but the Five Thrills, the previous group of the Orchids' Gilbert Warren.)

3 : Waterloo Sunset - the Kinks

At some point in 2010 I gave myself permission to stray from the exclusive consideration of doo wop in these pages. This piece about Ray Davies's Waterloo Sunset was part of Gnome Thoughts, an unplanned, ever-expanding, series about David Bowie's early musical influences.

Blogs Eleven

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

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.)

In which JL still is king

Every Thursday night, from the late 1960s until some date lost to memory, my brothers and I would gather around the television to watch Top of the Pops, praying that my father would not interrupt the programme (in those one-TV-set-per-household days) and that my mother would be able to arrange the making of his tea in a way that would overlap with our time attending this semi-religious broadcast. 

TOTP was something shared exclusively between myself and my brothers. There wasn't a great deal of music in our house. I do recall one rare single bought by one or other of my parents: Tears by Ken Dodd - though I don't recall its being played except by one of us. True, Dodd was a Liverpudlian, but we knew wasn't the same as the Fab Four.

 The Beatles, as the most newsworthy representatives of the new style of music to be heard on TOTP, were half-heartedly tolerated by my mother but actively disliked by my father, who considered their financial success as unfairly earned and saw their creed of pleasure as something dangerous. I recall listening to the White Album for the first time on a brand new Boots stereo bought by my immediate elder brother, and the paternal disapproval over the collage-type insert with bare flesh: "I'm not very happy about that." Mild words - but as Bertie Wooster would have put it, he meant them to sting.

Lennon: The New York Years (aka LENNONYC) now available on BBC iplayer

 

For UK readers, Michael Epstein's 2010 documentary LENNONYC, known over here as Lennon: The New York Years, has just been repeated on BBC 4 and will be available to watch on BBC iplayer until November 8th. It's well worth watching if you didn't happen to catch it last night.

Even if you did see it you may not be aware of the documentary equivalent of bonus tracks available on the PBS website: the raw audio for ten interviews in which director Michael Epstein can be heard gently prompting - and occasionally prodding - interviewees to talk about matters which, in some cases, they haven't discussed publicly before.

It is required you do awake your Dono-faith one more once

Dono-fans will be pleased to learn that the concert at London's Cadogan Hall which had to be cancelled in April has now been rescheduled for Monday, 12th October. He will be playing two shows that day, to allow for social distancing, and both will be livestreamed.

All being well, I hope to attend the earlier show, but I suspect I won't be the only person wending his way to Sloane Square with mixed feelings on that Monday. Restrictions mean Donovan will no longer be playing with a band, and because of this it seems there will be fewer numbers from his new/old album Eco-Song, which features some lesser-known recordings from his extensive back catalogue with an ecological link.

In other words, probably not much different from a typical Donovan concert - and I'd stopped going to those, for reasons outlined in earlier posts.

But maybe, in these times, a typical Donovan concert is what we need. And I'm aware, as with going to see Ben E King, that there's a ceremonial aspect: we come to give thanks, to acknowledge what our hero has been to us, not to complain that time hasn't stood still.

Tony Randall

I was sorry to learn yesterday of the death of Tony Randall. I had emailed him a couple of days ago to let him know about the Billy Shelton piece (previous post), which I thought might be of interest; the email bounced back then I saw today on the Louie Report website that he had died in June of last year.

Tony had written an account of his search for his father, the singer Johnny Flamingo, which was published in the Guardian, and it struck me that it had potential as a drama; we chatted about it and he suggested I try and work something up and send it to him. 

Billy Shelton: Spaniel Forever

Billy Shelton has described himself in interviews as "a prehistoric Spaniel". He wasn't with the celebrated doo wop group during their hitmaking days on Vee-Jay Records in the 1950s but he taught their leader, James "Pookie" Hudson, how to sing during their time together at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, forming a vocal trio called the Three Bees with Pookie and another schoolfriend, Calvin Fossett.

Billy left school before Pookie, who was eventually prevailed upon by other schoolmates to join the group which became the Spaniels. A few years into their professional career Billy received several invitations to join them but resisted; he didn't become a member until the late 1980s. 

This was the second lineup of Spaniels, to be heard on later Vee-Jay sides such as Everyone's Laughing. Around 1990, however, Pookie decided to reform the original group, who had sung on Vee-Jay's debut release Baby It's You and the classic Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite. All the original members, who had long been out of the business, were keen to get back together with the exception of Ernest Warren, who had become a minister, and Billy took his place.

Now Billy Shelton is the last man standing from those Roosevelt High days – and still leading a group of Spaniels. They can be seen in Episode One of the BBC documentary series Rock'n'Roll America, with Billy intoning those immortal bass notes of Gerald Gregory's which usher in Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite.

About a year after the first broadcast of that programme I was contacted by Billy, who had read a piece in this blog about the Spaniels' personnel. He felt that he had never received the credit for his part in the group's history and was keen to talk “before I'm gone”.

The story which follows, distilled from several lengthy phone interviews, is not restricted to the Spaniels. Key events in the decades between schooldays with Pookie and Billy's finally becoming a member of the group have also been sketched in. That's because there is no real dividing line: one way or another, music has always been central to the life of Billy Shelton, right from the start.

Episode One of Rock'n'Roll America back on iplayer ... but hurry!

For readers in the UK the first episode of the 2015 BBC documentary series is temporarily available once more on BBC iplayer - but only until Monday 3 July, so hurry.

I couldn't say whether it's particularly innovative but it tells the story well and clearly, and has a poignancy not present in some earlier series by virtue of the fact that those involved are considerably older than in Tony Palmer's groundbreaking seventies series All You Need Is Love or even series of more recent vintage like Dancing in the Street.

Before providing a link to my original review of the episode allow me to draw your attention to a section around thirteen minutes in, featuring the Spaniels singing an acapella version of Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight and a rather too brief interview with their bass singer and current leader Billy Shelton.

Coming soon ...

I don't normally give any advance indication of when I'll be posting next but I've decided to make an exception in this rare case.

This is to say that in the space of a few weeks at most I hope to post an extended piece based upon a series of interviews with a veteran doo wop singer.

Because it's longer than normal, and aims to give a broad picture of his whole life, ordering the information has been trickier than usual. As when I was working with the comedian Freddie Davies on his autobiography, I'm discovering there's a limit to how effectively a longer narrative can be structured onscreen, so it's back to what I used to think of as The Pritt Stick Chronicles: printed sheets of the rough draft cut up into pieces and reassembled.

The process of writing has changed somewhat in recent months. In an earlier post, readable here,  I described a pleasing morning routine which is now impossible. But I shall push on and hope that you, and my subject, will see the results soon.

Raw footage of Ben E King interview

As mentioned in the previous post, Brent Wilson contacted Ben E King for the doo wop documentary Streetlight Harmonies but the singer died before an interview could be set up.

It's a great pity, in more than one sense. Wilson seems to have taken considerable pains to gain the trust of the artists who took part, and even though contributions were heavily edited in the final version the raw footage must have been quite extensive if the case of Vito Picone of the Elegants is anything to go by. According to a virtual Q&A Picone was "in the chair" for a straight six hours before someone realised it might be time to break for a meal.

New doo wop documentary (Streetlight Harmonies)

 

I have just watched Streetlight Harmonies, Brent Wilson's new documentary about doo wop, and it's well worth your attention whether you are an aficionado or merely, as it were, doo wop-curious. A little over eighty minutes, it provides a very clear overview of the era as well as some discussion about the genre's lasting influence. It may not be the first film dedicated to the subject but where it excels is in the deft editing of the testimony of a large number of interviewees, allowing the story of this music to be told almost entirely through the artists' own words. Charlie Horner, credited as historical consultant, makes an occasional appearance when context is needed and DJ Jerry Blavat ("The Geator with the Heater"), songwriter Jeff Barry and some others appear, although the vast majority of interviewees are group members (including some representatives of girl groups). 

Interviews have been cut up and are spread throughout the film according to theme. The focus is on doo wop as a phenomenon and the experiences common to all those involved rather than having large sections dedicated to individual artists or groups. That might sound bitty but it isn't; the narrative flows very well. At the beginning we get an introductory segment about the form's gospel origins then we move to the Orioles and then - no, not to the Dominos, as a more detailed chronological approach might have taken us, but Frankie Lymon ... which is a bit of a jump, though it can certainly be justified as another major breakthrough.

DO press that button: The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp

Another story-in-song which made an impression on me as a child was The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, written by Dallas Frazier. Like Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town, the song had been a hit for Johnny Darrell on the US country charts in 1967, but I became aware of it via O.C. Smith's soulful interpretation, a greater success in Britain than America, the following year.

Listening to the opening chorus now, I'm aware of how quickly and efficiently the story is set up with a few telling details, preparing us for the fuller account to follow in the verses:

Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town or The Angel Went

Having written about Honey in the previous post I'm now going to look at Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition (above). There are some connections between the two numbers. Both are stories-in-song, much possessed by death, and whatever the pop/rock elements in their respective arrangements they are essentially country ballads, tales of woe.

But with one important difference - important, at least, to my childhood self. My elder brothers, ultimate arbiters in such matters, adjudged Ruby to be "cool" - or at least not "uncool", which amounted to the same thing. They didn't say so directly but I could tell because they withheld their mockery when Kenny Rogers appeared on our little TV screen, thereby granting permission for the song to be enjoyed, its sensational details savoured without embarrassment, by lowly younger siblings. Memory is cloudy but I don't think they extended the same privilege to Bobby Goldsboro's lament.

It's pretty clear why Ruby would have made the more favourable impact when my brothers and I first encountered the two songs on Top of the Pops. No string-laden backing, no cute Yuletide puppy, no fusty parlour song-type angels, only one of the putative Honky Tonky variety. Instead we found ourselves dropped straight into a film noir-type situation to freeze the blood, with talk of war, death, guns, maybe even murder: tailor-made for boys weaned on the Victor and those little Commando comics, as certain members of my household were.

Wild About Honey

Like all right-thinking people I follow Alwyn Turner's online series Revive 45 on the Lion and Unicorn website, and I urge the more malleable reader to go forth and do likewise. Once a month Mr Turner casts his eye over the top ten from forty five years ago, and the resulting mix of insight, original research (he's interviewed quite a few of the artists) and unashamed enthusiasm for hits long condemned as "uncool" by others has frequently been an ear-opener for me - and he knows how to turn the odd pleasing phrase too. The most recent post considers the charts from April 1975, including Bobby Goldsboro's oft-disparaged Honey (above).

Reading the piece has prompted me to listen to Goldsboro's record again and to look at the lyrics more closely. But before I get onto a more detailed examination I need to bring a certain hangup of mine into the open. The notional "coolnesss" or otherwise of certain records has often proven a hurdle to my fullhearted enjoyment of them, so I rather envy Mr Turner's lack of shame in that respect. I suppose it all goes back to my childhood ... childhood ... childhood ...

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.