Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 14

clarkedavis
(M/Dover, New Jersey)

Tony, the source you couldn't identify where there is a group on the corner who sees a girl walk by and jumps into an acapella rendering of Gloria when she passes is the beginning of a play called Blood Brothers. Pet Clark starred in it on Broadway, and it was extremely fine.

Regarding the idealized versus the actual in that era. Having lived through some of it (the later part), I can only say that it was only in retrospect that one could recognize that it was indeed a fleeting moment in time. At the time, it was as if each of us had all the time in the world, and there were infinite "girls next door" with pony tails and warm lips.

The record hops, or dances at the local High School Auditoriums were amazing Friday and Saturday night events. They actually turned the lights way down low, if not virtually off, in order to give the right atmosphere for the lovers/dancers. Teachers rarely acted as more than shadowy chaperones just there to keep an eye out. And it wouldn't be unusual to actually walk up to a girl, say hi, ask her to dance, and have an instant new girlfriend! Compared to today, isn't this an amazing description of a high school dance? The DJs were local radio personalities, and if a record was number one on the charts, you might hear it four times that night. This was a very peaceful scene usually without any fighting, except once in a while, two guys would be after the same girl, and something would break out after the dance.

And speaking of after the dance, well, legends are made of those nights. Autumn nights under the stars, parked at the beach with the moon shining down with your favorite girl sitting beside you in the middle of the car seat, because bucket seats were just not in vogue then. Doo Wop tunes swimming around in your head, all excited because your girl had her hand on your leg the past ten minutes you were driving. A moment frozen forever when you managed to actually kiss your dream girl. A trip to the moon, by simply brushing your lips against those of another. Back to the music......There's a moon out tonight...sounded like it never sounded before when circumstances such as those framed its playing on your favorite AM radio station. Forget about limited bandwidth, and static. The music jumped out of the speakers anyway, and became a living entity attaching itself to your brain for the rest of your life.

Special music for special times? You bet. A Golden Era of Rock n' Roll? You bet. But not when you were living it at the time. It was just another weekend night out having a good time. Who knew how very special those days and nights would become as the world would change and romance would diminish on those terms. Of course, romance did not die, just changed form, reflected by a culture that was more self-oriented, and weighted toward individual success as a barometer of attraction.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 13

kewl_steve
(55/M/San Diego, Ca.)

I agree with you Doug. It was nicely written. I'm enjoying the dialog both Clarke and Tony have going here.
:-)

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 12

shboom1943
(57/M/Ashtabula, Ohio)

[to Clarke]

In reference to your comments to our friend Tony
I might have used different words but I could not of said it better, certainly not with the feeling you did. That wasn't written to me but I read it like it was. Thank you my friend
Doug V.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 11

pamelas22
(F/Connecticut)

Wait & Flamingo fans, I too was at that show on Staten Island at the Lane Theatre. It was my first and only time to see the Flamingos and was truly an unforgettable experience. At first. I thought that it would be a Las Vegas type show because they opened with Besame Mucho complete with straw hats. I soon realized that they were setting a mood before each song. On many of the songs, Zeke talked before the song setting a very romantic mood. I recall that the group stayed on after its alloted time to entertain the audience. I wish I had waited for the crowd surrounding Zeke to thin out so that I could have expressed my appreciation of the Flamingos and their music. ......Pam

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 10

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Walt,

Your message reminded me of hearing one of the Carey cousins (can't remember which) being interviewed on an oldies station when the Flamingos came to London around 1990 (I BITTERLY regret not going). He was asked by the DJ why he thought the music had stood up so long and I remember one key word in his reply: “cohesive." Which seems a good word to apply to the Flamingos themselves – their longevity, their amazing consistency.

It was very moving to read you description of that night - wish I'd been there - and I hope lots of people share their thoughts about, memories of, this greatest of all groups in this thread. Incidentally, I know that London gig was videoed but I've no idea where to obtain it.

Tony


After I originally posted this on the Doo Wop Shop board a reader very kindly sent me a video of that show, which was actually in 1991. It is currently available in the UK on DVD under the title London Rock'n'Roll Stage Show 1991 - not to be confused with the oft-issued 1972 London rock'n'roll show with Chuck Berry and Little Richard etc. You can obtain it from several places but I have used Raucous Records in the past for doo wop CDs and found them reliable; the link will take you to a complete songlist for the DVD, although the Flamingos only sing three songs: I Only Have Eyes For You, I'll Be Home, and, with some playful choreography, Nobody Loves Me Like You, penned by Sam Cooke.

The DJ referred to was Randall Lee Rose, an American who at that time was presenting a doo wop show on the London AM station Capital Gold, called Randall Lee Rose's (as opposed to Kewl Steve's) Doo Wop Shop - yes, amazing as it sounds, for a while there was regular access to doo wop in the UK in those days before internet radio was widespread. He compiled a CD of that title for Ace Records which is still available and it could certainly be recommended as a starting point for a doo wop collection with the emphasis on the fun, poppier side, rather than R&B-slanted "deep doo wop," as I think I've seen Robert Pruter term it.

Assuming the DVD is the same as the video, there are actually some clips of one or more of the Flamingos being interviewed by Randall in the Capital Gold studios, although the particular part of the discussion referred to in the post either wasn't videoed or didn't make the edit. I might be misremembering, because it was a long time ago, but my feeling at the time was that Jake Carey (to judge from my memory of the timbre of his voice) was quite passionately trying to explain the music's longevity, and its importance to him, and Randall's response was something like: "Wow, that's deep," which suggested either he wasn't really getting what Jake was saying, or he didn't want to explore it further in what was meant to be a short segment to promote the concert - or maybe, quite understandably, he was just stunned, overwhelmed to meet those legends of vocal harmony.

Anyway, Randall Lee Rose has been a champion of doo wop in this country so maybe the best thing to say is that my subjective impression of that moment in the interview helped trigger my radio play about a composite doo wop star, because it suggested a possibly unbridgeable gulf between the person making the music, with everything it has cost and meant to bring it into being, all the wholly personal associations, and the fan - even a professional and dedicated fan, like a deejay - who can't see it in quite the same way.

I also think the moment, and that magical word, "cohesive," stuck with me because it was reassuring, and moving, that a performer of about four decades' standing at the time still seemed so genuinely enthused about what he was doing, and hadn't resigned himself to being a kind of well-paid musical labourer in the nostalgia field; by way of contrast, I had seen a cabaret-hardened Drifters briefly reunited with Ben E King in the early eighties (discussed in a later post) and the difference between the two attitudes onstage was evident.

In case anyone from the UK is reading this and remembers those Capitol Gold shows, I tried to see what I could find about RLR's subsequent career. As far as I can tell, he was recently on a station called Big L presenting a fifties-themed show, but it's not clear whether he's still part of it or will ever be returning, to judge from the posts from fans on an increasingly plaintive messageboard. It appears that his Big L is show had originally gone under the title of The Doo Wop Shop, like his Capitol Gold show, which sadly suggests that whatever the pockets of enthusiasm for doo wop in the UK there isn't a big enough audience to keep advertisers happy. He also does voiceover work and you can find a fairly full biog here.

There was also a 1992 Wembley show sponsored by Capitol Gold, which I did attend, and which featured the Spaniels, the Belmonts (sans Dion) and the Teenagers (with Lewis Lymon); I'll write more about this at a future date, but sadly it was sparsely attended, which didn't help atmospherewise, and I presume that was the end for what had apparently been a conscious attempt to revive Alan Freed-style package shows, complete with house band.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 9

philmorew
(55/M/Wayne, N.J.)

Clarke,

I agree 100% with what you said about the Flamingos. About two years ago when Zeke was alive they appeared on Staten Island at what I believe was the Lane Theater. Doug McClure, who is now a preacher in Conn. but who had sung with them from the late 50's til the mid 70's and had not seen Zeke in 25 yrs. found out that they were singing nearby and surprised Zeke by showing up at the theatre for afternoon practice.

I don't know if he actually sang at all with them in the afternoon but at night during the concert Zeke stopped the show in the middle of his performance to recognize Doug. He then called him onto the stage and had Doug do his lead on I'll be Home. I'm dead serious. It was a religious experience. My date was crying her eyes out and people all over the theater were reaching for handkerchiefs. I have often wondered since Zeke, the last original died shortly after Doo Wop 50, if anyone has tried to get McClure back with the group for special appearances. I'm going to have to get some video tapes of their performances.

Walt



Unca Marvy's history of the Flamingos (where I found the above picture) mentions that "Sometime after those sessions [in March 1963 for The Sound of the Flamingos], they added tenor Doug McClure to make a sextet of singers again."

Steve Walker says of a Doug McClure lead: "In the spring of 1964 the Flamingos returned to Checker for a few sides. They recorded an incredible Latin-rhythmed version of Oscar Hammerstein's 'Lover Come Back to Me' that would have established a whole new legion of Flamingos followers had radio given it a chance to be heard."

Doug McLure's myspace page promoting his Love Letters CD allows you to listen to his jazz-tinged new recording of I Only Have Eyes For You.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 8

Yes, I'm keenest on Donovan at his simplest, just with a guitar, not the full blown psychedelic stuff.

And I totally agree about the groups you mention: Ravens' There's No you; Flamingos: "... a voice like mission bells that chime..."

Heard Chimes by the Pelicans for first time recently - now in my top 5. Or Ravens' version of Bless You for being an Angel ... at time like these I really feel the lack of being unable to send or receive sound files ... and what about 5 Keys' Be Anything But Be Mine ...

Tony

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 7

clarkedavis
(M/Dover, New Jersey)

While Donovan was trying to "Catch the Wind" while avoiding being "A Universal Soldier", we were still doo wopping it up over here, although on a much reduced basis from the Golden Days of the fifties.

I am floored by the tragic beauty some of the early through late fifties doo wop music exposes. The Flamingos (the ultimate group name in my opinion) cut some sides that were breathtakingly beautiful. Swallows, Ravens, and other birds of a feather, just sang their hearts out. The music is truly ethereal, transcendant, if you will, and to this day can transport one into the realm of the angels.

I think it's this ability to enter another world with a member of the opposite sex, which promotes bonding of an extraordinarily high order. When two lovers can share sips of champagne, delight in each other's physical prescence, and enter a magic world of spiritual delight simoultaneously via aural sensation, it is indeed memorable.

You can say all you want about the "trips" the sixties generation promulgated. Some of them were indeed fantastic, but I think the general state of pure pleasure via one's thinking apparratus was at an all time high in the fifties when doo wop was rampant . And all you needed as a chemical stimulant/tranquilizer was a little wine.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 6

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

A brief postscript to finish off my thoughts on the subject: the sentiments in doowop may be difficult to sustain - the reality collides with the ideal. So it's not how life is. But it's how life ought to be: who we are at our best, if only for a moment.

Okay. Now I'm done!

Tony

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 5

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Clarke,

Many thanks - I'm touched by your kind comments. I wrote a radio play about a doowop group - the first piece of serious writing I did - and during that process tried to articulate what it was about the music that moved me so much. One thing which I didn't mention in my previous posting is the male bonding thing - that these emotions which couldn't be articulated directly to each other by adolescent males are "safe", able to be exposed and shared when turned into this rough, vital art form.

I'm also fascinated by the contradictions: the Dells, self-professed "stone hooligans" outside the studio yet capable of that achingly tender, ridiculous yet touching song I referred to. And the idea of the spontaneous, direct outpouring of emotion – can’t remember the source but the image of a group singing at a corner, the lead turning to see a girl go by and launching into "Gloria" became the starting point of the play: the protagonist's unreal dreams of this girl and the gradually unfolding reality of the less than perfect relationship he develops with the flesh and blood woman.

And the poignancy of a frozen, perfect moment also seems at the heart of doowop for me: One Summer night, In the Still of the Night: I think Fred Parris had to add "(I'll Remember)" to avoid confusion with Porter's song title but that parenthesis is a clue to that sad pleasure in this music: its importance, its transience, and therefore its preciousness, is only fully appreciated in retrospect: "I never realised," sings Sollie McElroy in Golden Teardrops. Even that Dells song: sweet dreams "bring back the memory of you." As you might deduce I go for the ballads ...

A final thought. Doowop, lyrically, is often ridiculously naive - and I'm aware my distance from it both in time (b.1958) and place lends enchantment/romanticisation. But (much as I feel about the music of Donovan at his best) it's about looking at the world, at the possibility of love, with a sense of wonder rather than cynicism. Back to Dave Marsh: he tells of a hip record store customer mocking the Students' I'm So Young. Marsh says: "That's somebody' life. Who cares if it's corny and misshapen?" Amen.

Tony



Listen to I'm So Young and learn about the Students here.

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.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 3

pismotality
(42/M/London, England)

Bob,

Thanks for your kind comments. Rock'n'roll has always been big in Britain but never really doowop. I became interested in the early 70s, not through American Graffiti but a British film, That'll Be The Day, set in 50s England but the same rites of passage stuff. The soundtrack had some doowop - Why Do Fools, etc - and I began collecting 50s stuff by trial and error. But now, with Tower Records in London and Ace Records (roughly equivalent to Rhino) there's lots of stuff.

I absolutely agree with what you say about thinking and sharing. Listening to music is really a non-verbal thing - especially in doowop the lyrics are just a peg to hang those sounds that emanate from the heart - and it's impossible to convey that experience adequately. But trying to do so can make the experience keener.

For me, above all, listening to doowop is about entering another world, where emotions can be on show, however awkward and gauche, and the pangs of adolescent, idealised love are given a kind of dignity (think of the Dells' Sweet Dreams of Contentment). I'll never forget the excitement of seeing a doowop group for the first time in the mid 80s - 14 Karat Soul; known in US? - I went night after night, thinking: "This is it; this is exactly what I want." You're lucky having such free access to live doowop in the States. And cheaper CDs! Though I suppose a free health service is a minor consolation ....

Tony



Tower Records in the West End of London, along with all its Relic CDs which I stupidly didn't snap up, has gone.

Find a full tracklisting for the soundtrack album for That'll Be the Day here. These were the songs which first turned me on to rock'n'roll and doo wop. That'll Be the Day is not a cheap American Graffiti clone, incidentally, but a highly effective tale in its own right. I recently read, in a review of the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, that the aimless hero of That'll Be the Day was based on the young Lennon. My review of That'll Be the Day, now issued on DVD with its less successful sequel, follows below:

First film is the more universal tale

That'll Be The Day is a modest but very satisfying rites-of-passage movie with 70s pop star David Essex (who'd already scored in the stage musical Godspell) playing a 1950s teenager with a string of conquests but no sense of direction until music starts to give his life a purpose.

He is careless of the feelings of others, so this is not a simple pop cash-in for the singer, and there are good actors around him (the exasperation and affection of mother Rosemary Leach is especially notable) and an excellent, well structured screenplay by Ray Connolly, where even small scenes - the action of a kindly policeman, for example, when Essex is drunk and lonely on his birthday - contribute to a coherent whole.

Ringo Starr must have been taken with the script, too, as he plays Essex's buddy/mentor when they are both working at Butlin's. And a young Robert Lindsay is his schoolfriend, watching in horror as Essex chucks all his books into the river prior to an exam. Lindsay later reappears in a truly fifties moment when he and his university chums are all listening to trad jazz, and the visiting Essex is made to feel left out; shades of the early Beatles having to pretend they were a jazz band to get gigs in Liverpool.

The aimless Essex, for so long indifferent to his mother's concern, eventually makes a stab at being the dutiful son but it does not last long: he cannot resist sleeping with Lindsay's girlfriend (the last in his long line of conquests) immediately before he is due to marry his friend's sister, nor is he able to sustain the marriage for long.

But his struggle throughout the film to make some kind of sense of his life, and way in which the answer - music - eventually comes into focus with an insistence which cannot be denied, keeps the character sympathetic, or at least understandable. And in case anyone misses the point, the film is bookended with the idea that he takes after his philandering father, unable to settle down to domesticity after the war. And the greyness (or, to judge from the decor of the family sitting room, the dark, suffocating browns) of a life of late fifties/early sixties conformity is well painted; taking over the family shop, or becoming like the smug Lindsay ("There's always night school," says his mother hopefully), convinces you that whatever is needed to feel fully alive cannot to be found in either of those options. There's a tiny scene using Bobby Darin's Dream Lover, for example, where the combination of the shot and the music really makes us feel his yearning for something else.

The sequel, however, which follows "Jim McLaine" into stardom, is, for me, far less appealing, and Ringo jumped ship (what was effectively his role was taken by Adam Faith). The trouble with this film is that a rites-of-passage story has a universal appeal; following a troubled star's decline when he's surrounded by material wealth (especially when his music is pretentious and high-blown tosh about the role of Woman and Mother) doesn't stir the same sense of general recognition.

Additionally, the focus is on the relationship between Essex and his manager so that the group, the Stray Cats (which seem to be all actors apart from muso Dave Edmunds) are not called to do that much, and Jim's wife reappears too briefly to make much of an impact. (Come to think of it, the one criticism which could perhaps be levelled at the first film is that we glimpse an underused band there, led by Billy Fury, but in that instance I could understand if they were largely edited out because they don't contribute significantly to Jim's journey.)

So essentially my advice is: don't expect too much from the sequel. Although I admit that maybe that's partly because for me, personally, the earlier film is a very important one as it alerted me to the hitherto unknown delights of early rock'n'roll and doowop; the soundtrack is liberally spattered with classics of the day, greatly enhanced by the fact that many of them are playing in the perfect setting of a fairground.

A footnote: as for the title of that first film, from a vague memory of reading Melody Maker when the film was just an idea, there had been an attempt to do a Buddy Holly biopic which was quashed for some reason - possibly I'm misremembering but they certainly didn't use, or weren't permitted to use, actual Holly recordings so the version of That'll Be The Day which plays over the closing credits is the Bobby Vee cover (with, I think, the Crickets backing him), and there is a scene where, reunited with his precious record player, Essex brandishes a Buddy Holly LP, saying "I've been waiting weeks to hear this," only for us to be treated to the strains of ... Richie Valens' Donna. But whether or not a biopic of Holly was originally intended, what emerged is a thoroughly worthwhile film which captures the sense of rootlessness which found an answer for many fifties teenagers in rock'n'roll.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 2

Noelsnick
(52/m/Seattle, WA)

Tony,

I enjoyed your post, particularly coming from abroad where you didn't really have "first hand" exposure to what we in the Colonies call "Doo Wop." It's funny, growing up in the fifties in Southern California the term "Doo Wop" was unheard of. DJ's like Huggie Boy and Art Laboe just started calling music from the past "oldies" and this included every genre. You mentioned "Holy Writ", the beauty of this club is there doesn't seem to be any "self proclaimed" experts who push their thoughts on the rest of us as "Gospel". I'm loving this flow of conversation, it keeps us thinking and SHARING.

Seattle Bob

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.

Doo Wop Dialog[ue]: 1

The Diamonds: sophomoric contempt?

Below is the first long post I sent to Kewl Steve's Doo Wop Shop messageboard on 19th September 2000. Maybe I should have put this in the introduction to this blog, as it still spells out how I feel about doo wop today. The post doesn't need much contextualising; a debate had been taking place on the board about just what constituted doo wop: Crewcuts vs. Penguins, Gladiolas vs. Diamonds etc.

Although I was addressing the board as a whole, this first attempt to articulate the difference between those groups for myself is what triggered the lengthy dialog[ue] with Clarke, so this is really where that correspondence begins. The last preserved post, incidentally, is dated 1st October 2000 - so the ninety-plus pages of printouts which will eventually all be posted here under the heading of Doo Wop Dialog[ue] were the result of less than a fortnight's fevered activity.

It's difficult to give a definition of doowop that won't have people reaching for their keyboards, but I'm going to try anyway, in the hope that thinking about the music may enhance the pleasure of listening; obviously when statements are offered as Holy Writ that's something else again. With that in mind, here goes:

Doowop is (or let's say tends to be) music sung by a quartet or quintet, often male, where the instrumentation, if any, is essentially secondary to the interplay of voices, and is fairly rudimentary: accentuating a beat or subtly enhancing the overall tone, not vying with the vocal display for attention. The voices may be said to mimic instruments - the bass voice can perform a similar function to a double bass, or think of the late Gerald Gregory's great bass saxophone-like intro to Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight - and there's also that trumpet-like sound that Phil Groia termed the "blow harmonies" of the Moonglows.

Sophisticated as these groups are, the appeal is of something homemade, within the reach of everyone: "Music you or your lover could have made," as a Rolling Stone essay said of Earth angel (Penguins version!).

For my money, once vocal group records became productions - ie, once the voices became part of the overall effect rather than the primary focus - they stopped being pure doowop. The Drifters' There Goes My Baby is a great record but the kettledrums and strings mean we admire the producers as much as the group. I wouldn't be so stupid as to say "That's when the rot set in"; it just became something else.

The only trouble is that my definition would include the instrument-emulating Mills Brothers, and I don't think anyone would consider them within the genre. So this brings me to the next, and crucial, part of the definition: the voices must be, to some degree, gospel-inflected. Mills Brothers, Inkspots don't make it; the Ravens and the Orioles, even when singing similar material, do: it's that sense of raggedness, of each performance being alive, new-minted at that moment as opposed to a smooth duplication.

With groups like the Crewcuts I'm reluctant to impose a blanket ban, but they do seem a long way from gospel: the feel matters less than a surface brightness and smoothness, whereas group like the Capris somehow seem to have a sense of flexibility in their performance that (again) has affinities with gospel, even though it's a long way from the raunchinesss of some groups.

But I freely admit that there is a grey area that is down to the listener's subjective impression: I don't much like the Platters but presumably they come from that gospel root, antiseptic as their performances seem to me. Perhaps the best I can say is that the doowop performances which move me display their church roots more prominently.

Which seems a good point to reveal my top 5 doowop (oldies is too difficult):

Golden Teardrops - Flamingos
Sunday Kind of Love - Harptones
All Mine - 5 Satins
Chimes - Pelicans
Crying in the Chapel - Orioles

Finally, on to the Diamonds/Gladiolas debate. Dave Marsh in The Heart of Rock and Soul (1000 records assessed, inc. lots of doowop) says that groups like the Diamonds were basically responding to the institutionalised bigotry of a market which wanted "more acceptable" versions of black hits. And apparently this college-educated group viewed R&B with "dripping sophomoric contempt." (Marsh is a fun read!) But he admits their version is nevertheless "as exciting as it is insincere": "When the thrill's the thing who gives a &*%! about intentions?"

Is it doowop? Don't know; but it's definitely a great example of the trashy wonderfulness of pop and doesn't have the politeness of other white covers. That said, it's the Gladiolas' version I have in my collection, though the Diamonds' version helped turn me on to 50s music as a teenager in the doowop desert of Scotland in the early 70s ...

Whew! What a long posting! Thanks if you've stayed with it - and hope my tentative attempt at defining, for myself, this genre we all love is of use to others.

Tony

I'm resisting the temptation to expand or revise the original Doo Wop Shop posts. It seems to make more sense to add notes at the end, which also has the fun effect - for me, anyway - of making this blog more than a storeroom. So I didn't add, when talking about the Inkspots, the sentence which would have summed it up: as far as I'm concerned doowop is essentially the difference between that group's rendition of When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano and the Dominoes' recording with Clyde McPhatter. And if nothing else I'm consistent, as this 2007 review of a Mills Brothers collection shows.
The Rolling Stone essay came from their Illustrated History of Rock'n'Roll, I presume the first edition, which had wonderful large format pictures. That had a big effect on me in the late seventies, devouring the essays about doo wop and the list of recommended recordings. 

There was also a wonderful picture of Gerry Marsden (of Gerry and the Pacemakers fame), grinning from ear to ear; a later edition of the book seemed to have scaled down that photo, or maybe the whole book was smaller format, or maybe the British invasion was too terrible a memory, after all. 

Anyway, that began my formal education in doo wop, and I don't have a copy to thank the author of that doo wop essay. But what a wonderful phrase, which helps explain the music's appeal: however strange it seems, it's also within reach: "music you or your lover could have made."
 
One of the Diamonds is a prominent interviewee in a fairly good, but annoying brief, documentary about doo wop available on DVD, Life Could Be a Dream: the Doo Wop Sound. I've reviewed it on a certain well known shopping website and will probably reproduce it here, but I have to say that, intelligent and articulate as he seemed, it just felt wrong to have him there, especially with Dave Marsh's phrase echoing in my head: "sophomoric contempt ... sophomoric contempt..." In my review, I've convinced myself that a brief bit of archive footage provides damning evidence he and the other Diamonds aren't taking the genre seriously, but who knows?
And re Clyde McPhatter recording When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano, there's a story which I read in Bill Miller's book on the Drifters which says that McPhatter, leaned upon to sing it "properly," blurted out that this was the only way he could sing it. There you have it; that's doo wop. Compulsion before craft.

You Have Two (I Have None)

Stately is, I think, the word to describe this 1955 recording by the Orchids on Parrot Records: the tempo feels unrushed, processional. I was wrong to describe their more famous Newly Wed as "lumbering" earlier, as that implies clumsiness; what can, perhaps, be said is that the change in Newly Wed's tempo between the wordless opening and the entry of the lead vocal (Gilbert Warren?) is unusual - to these ears, anyway. (I did say I wasn't an expert. Unlike Billy Vera, who describes it properly here.)

You Have Two (I Have None) seems marginally faster, but the disjointed feel of Newly Wed, which fits perfectly with what little we can glean of the couple's story ("Hearts broken - broken in two, / Don't leave me here ..."), is replaced by what sounds like calm assurance or resignation, though at the point of highest emotion ("Tell me you love me, Show me that you care") it becomes clear that the song is a plea for union rather than a celebration of a union already achieved; we aren't given any indication of her feelings either way.

But maybe the singer's air of calm comes about simply because there is nothing left to hide: this is his ultimate declaration that he's totally in this woman's power - he has, indeed, given his heart to her - and if the response should be a cold one, then at least he knows he has done all he possibly can to plead his case.

Unlike the Orchids' raunchier I Can't Refuse, it's not a song, or a performance, with undercurrents of raw sexuality. The tempo may be stately but the tone is courtly, as in the courtly love associated with Elizabethan poetry. I'm sure there are lots of other examples, but the one I'm familiar with is My True Love Hath My Heart - though that, perhaps, ought to ring warning bells for the singer, as that poem celebrates an equal, agreed exchange: "... and I have his", the first line concludes.

What I'd tentatively describe as the throwaway style of the lead vocal is also interesting. In British dee jay Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City, one of the first full length accounts of the rise of rock'n'roll, he cites the late Pookie Hudson's vocal in Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight as an example of the rise of what he calls the "cool" voice in rock'n'roll, meaning that you can't actually tell for sure what the singer is feeling.

Not sure if I agree - Pookie emotionless? - but there's certainly a restraint in many of his performances which can also be found in the Orchids' lead here. Maybe, in You Have Two..., there's an implied sense of weariness in the delivery, the message being something like: "I'm putting myself on the line, spelling it out the depth of my abject love for you, and then I'm just going to have to wait and hope, though there's probably no point. But here goes. (sighs)"

Well, that's what I hear, anyway. Or think I do. And if it's a wooing, then it's certainly not a very active or aggressive one: if you don't believe he's throwing away the words, I'm not sure you could counterclaim that he's hammering them home. But I love the sound either way, and I love that voice, slightly slurred, but simply so right, and whatever I succeed or fail in conveying here won't alter the beyond-words perfection of this performance.

And it's a beautiful composition as well, which unfurls like a flag. Technically it's odd, as you get a little verse at the beginning ("I love you baby...") then several choruses strung together (from "Don't you know God above ...") before the briefest of bridges ("Tell me you love me ...") before turning back to the chorus ("Yes, I had a heart ...").

That's why I think of it as stately: a kind of deliberate tread, with minimal interruption, all the way through the song, as though the singer's objective is to deliver himself of this longing in front of his mistress without let or hindrance: the doo wop equivalent, as it were, of Brando's painful walk at the end of On the Waterfront. (I also hear, as I reread these words, a possible echo of the Soul Stirrers' The Last Mile of the Way.) And the rest of the group sound like supportive friends in this venture - or, less charitably, possibly imaginary voices in the lovestruck fool's head, urging him on to this final, wretched act of humiliation.

And what about the simplicity and deliberateness of that saxophone solo, almost like the drumming of fingers or a ticking clock before the rest of the group break out in the momentary release of the bridge, the most directly emotional moment in the recording ("Tell me you love me, / Show me that you care,") before the singer, as it were, quietens them, and returns to his theme: "Yes, I had a heart ..."

And finally, though it's not really rational, when I hear this I see lush pastoral images, rich woodland. I presume this is because of my having had to study Elizabethan poetry at an impressionable age, leading to my association of the song with the imagery of courtly love mentioned earlier. But maybe it's also about the power of doo wop to take all of us to some kind of Nirvana. I don't have the original book to hand, and I've just found out that the Dave Marsh site mentioned earlier only reproduces his entries for the first 100 of his choices, but in Marsh's entry for Lover's Island by the Blue Jays (Number 434) he has a moment of wonder about just how the group, growing up in urban squalor, were able to imagine the leafy paradise in the song. Need is universal, I suppose. Billy Vera says that "two of the Magnificents ... recalled that the Orchids were 'hoodlums' and the kind of guys who might have stuck up a gas station on the way to the studio."

And just so that I don't leave anyone thinking that Elizabethan poetry is all about passionless contentment, here is a poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt which relates to the song even more directly than the Sir Philip Sidney verses quoted above - except that the speaker in this case, having already given his heart away, has realised his mistake and wants out of the deal.

The very best place to find out about the Orchids (and many other groups on Parrot, Chance and Vee Jay) is in Robert Pruter's excellent and highly readable Doo Wop: the Chicago Scene. I don't know whether it's still in print but it still seems generally available. In JC Marion's online magazine Doo Wop Nation you can find brief reviews of Robert Pruter and some others.

Pruter (along with Armin Buttner and Robert Campbell) has created an extensive (and I mean extensive) online discography for the Parrot/Blue Lake labels. This complements, rather than duplicates, the information in Doo Wop: the Chicago Scene as the focus is who played what on which session; buy or borrow the book anyway if you love this music. There are related sites, easy enough to find, which seem to focus on the contribution of individual musicians who backed the vocal groups. This massive and ongoing task (updated as recently as December 10th) is clearly a labour of love and an invaluable resource. Donn Fileti of Relic Records (who issued two excellent but now deleted Parrot and Parrot/Blue Lake comps) revised the discography. Using the reproductions of record labels as your signposts, croll about three quarters of the way down what is a very long page to find info about two Orchids sessions, both backed by a group led by Al Smith. Coincidentally, the September 1955 date which yielded You Have Two (I Have None) was the last vocal group session at Parrot; I'd like to think the general consensus was you couldn't improve on perfection.

You can hear You Have Two (I Have None) under its other title, the misnomer Happiness, streamed here, along with other Orchids sides, which are just about all equally good.

According to Pruter's book the Orchids split up when Parrot Records collapsed in 1956 and none of the members joined other groups. Amazingly, You Have Two ... wasn't even issued until its discovery in 1993 in the Vee Jay vaults, possibly having been sent to Vee Jay as an audition for the group (the image at the top of this piece is a none-too-subtle mockup on youtube).

Talk about a missed opportunity: You Have Two (I Have None) is, as Robert Pruter says, "a minor masterpiece and represents the highest level of doo wop creativity."

Vee Jay, the Dells and chance with a small "c"

The photograph used for the cover of Cornered (see below), borrowed from Unca Marvy's history of the Dells

Following on from the notes about Golden Teardrops and the licensing of Vee Jay recordings by budget labels like Springboard in the late 60s, it occurs to me how much Vee Jay material I was fortunate enough to hear very early on in my infatuation with doo wop largely through the unfortunate circumstance of the company's financial difficulties.

In addition to Springboard International's ORIGINAL OLDIES Vol. 18 (block caps, always block caps) making its way from an American supermarket or drugstore to the bargain basement of Listen Records in Renfield Street, Glasgow, I once found a whole heap of LPs on the Joy label (distributed by UK's President Records) in a little newsagent's beside Motherwell Civic Centre (admittedly you will need a degree of familiarity with that West of Scotland town to appreciate quite how surreally unlikely such a discovery was).

The pressings turned out to be horrendous, but I bought them all up there and then, as they were doo wop, this music I had lately discovered, and they were cheap, at 50p a pop.

I noticed each LP mentioned it was a Vee Jay recording, and I read names like the Flamingos, the Spaniels, the Moonglows and the Magnificents; in short, I'd accidentally stumbled across a cache of the very best of Chicago doo wop, including Chance and Parrot recordings, without realising it. It was then that I first heard mysterious tracks like the Spaniels' Play It Cool, which seemed to be in a kind of impenetrable code, and the strange, lumbering rhythms and fragmented narrative of the Orchids' Newly Wed; both were a world away from the brightness of Frankie Lymon.

One group was absent, but at around the same time in a Glasgow-based musical instrument shop called Biggar's (which has only recently closed its doors) I found a bargain price double album on the DJM label (Dick James Music, as in the man who originally owned the Beatles' publishing) entitled Cornered, featuring a generous selection of the Dells' two stints at Vee Jay. It may even have been licensed through Springboard, as I remember buying some Scepter/Wand material on the same label.

With the Dells, again, I had no idea of what I was buying, but songs like Sweet Dreams of Contentment remain favourites: some of the missing posts from the Kewl Steve site involved lengthy debate about just what that word is which is dreamily intoned towards the end of the song - I'm still not sure and don't necessarily need to know: a sweet word of pismotality, intended for the lover's ear alone, is all; Vernon Green would surely have nodded in recognition.

But "dreamily" seems the right term, as you sense the whole group sort of happily dozing their way through the performance, entranced and entrancing; there's even a kind of background wail or drone which reminds me of the self-disparaging term used by a group member to describe their early work: "fish harmonies" - ie all moving roughly in the same direction but hardly what you'd call synchronised swimming. Though I'm sure I've also read a group member (the same one?) say that that recording is also particularly evocative of those days for the group itself.

I had to stop at that point to listen to the song again. An interesting recording; not muddy, exactly, but the lead, bass and the band are so prominent that it's almost as though the other singers are ghostly presences from adjoining radio station - but their contribution is still crucial, even if you sense it more than you hear it. And the moment when that tremulous lead takes off into the stratosphere, finally unshackling himself from language other than that final, unknowable but perfectly comprehensible word, is what makes the record: he has sung himself into an ecstacy of longing.

You too can listen to Sweet Dreams of Contentment and other Dells tracks of the era here, on the official Vee Jay website cited in the Golden Teardrops post, if you have realplayer. What I didn't mention before, however, is that the CDs so temptingly arrayed on the site were deleted long ago; they date from a brief resurgence in 1993. But Vee Jay are still licensing material, hence the continuance of the site.

There are currently several compilations of Vee Jay artists including the Dells on Shout Factory in the US and there are Charly/Snapper CDs in Britain - though when I tried to link to Charly's Dells comp just now it seemed to have disappeared, so instead here is a review by Geoff Brown of the Charly compilation on the mojo magazine website. I haven't heard any Shout Factory product, but my experience of the audio quality of Charly CDs has certainly been, let's say, variable And I've been spoilt by that lavish double album anyway, so that neither of those Dells CDs is an adequate substitute.

One track not on that album, however, is Darling I Know by the ur-Dells, otherwise known as the El Rays, which as someone once said is like saying "The The" -though not a bad name for a group. You can hear it here, though its interest for me is hearing all the elements of the Dells but not quite gelling. Somehow it seems naive and amateurish, whereas Tell the World is naive and endearing, even though there's probably not that much between them.

To the gentlemen above: I salute you, and your fallen comrade.

And I thank Springboard International and those other budget record companies; whatever their intentions in the matter, they brought the Dells and the Flamingos into my orbit.

Golden Teardrops

As a further taster for the complete dialog (or, to me, dialogue) with Clarke, here is one of my posts from September 2000, attempting to describe the sensation of listening to the Flamingos' Golden Teardrops.

Clarke,

Sparked off by what you were saying about difficult records, I want to take one and play about with its significance for me.

Dave Marsh is a great model: a thousand mini-essays in The Heart and Soul of Rock'n'RolI, no set pattern: three lines about a 45 or two pages; a wholly personal memory or a discussion of the recording date - no rules: it's whatever you want to say about a record, the only idea being it'll make people want to search it out - the whole point of this notice board, after all. Cause the record isn't just the record; it's you - your memories – the group then and now: "Cohesive," as Jake (or Zeke) said.

And the song I want to talk about is ... Golden Teardrops. My major doowop thrill.

Odd as it may seem, it wasn't that accessible to me when I first heard it. On a poor quality oldies compilation, c.1978, with muddy sound and a dubbed on guitar (Veejay version). 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 on one listen.

And if all this seems odd to Americans, remember I had a very limited frame of reference: doowop was the brightness of Frankie Lymon or (dare I say it?) the Diamonds' version of Little Darling. And it's what you were saying, Clarke, about not getting a record on first hearing.

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 (Iacrimae 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 - he was once loved - undoubtedly will, if the falsetto that weaves in and out of the reiteration of that painful vision of her tears at the end is anything to go by.

I've said before that doowop lyrics don't matter that much: a peg for emotions. They'd be trite enough here if read on their own (Ditto Danny Boy.) But they give the group a clarity of focus that inspires them to a height they never quite attained on any other song, for me. If any of you reading this haven't heard Golden Teardrops, download a file, buy a CD (Rhino), do something. It is, quite simply, the loveliest and the saddest of all doowop records. In his autobiography Chaplin talks of the day music entered his soul, or words to that effect . Golden Teardrops, like Danny Boy, 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 doowop: it's religious, it's secular, it's... beyond words, actually.

So much for stopping... but I've needed to say all this for years.

Tony


Online version of The Heart of Rock and Soul here, although Golden Teardrops is not included. Had it been, I probably wouldn't have attempted the above.

Bradford Cox of Deerhunter talks about Golden Teardrops in an interview with Gordon Campbell in the December 2009 issue of Werewolf.

The interview page contains a link to Golden Teardrops on youtube; if you have realplayer, however, I'd recommend the official Vee Jay website's The Moonglows Meet the Flamingos page for a much higher quality streamed version (as well as the rest of the Flamingos' Chance recordings, including their sublime September Song), plus a link to downloads of of Vee Jay material. Scroll down the same page and click on the album artwork to read Billy Vera's liner notes, which include what may be the last word on the song's origins.

Neither version of Golden Teardrops, sadly, is the one I first learnt to love, the 1961 reissue on Vee Jay with overdubbed guitar, which doesn't seem to be available on CD. Ah well, I still have my original cheapo Springboard International LP. And while trawling the net for an image of that album (Vol. 18 in Springboard's ORIGINAL OLDIES series) I came across a useful summary of the company's acquiring the rights to Vee Jay here as part of Mike Callahan and David Edwards' The Vee-Jay Story, which covers not only the history of this great company but the tangled tale of the many companies who licensed this material. (The home page of Mike Callahan's excellent Both Sides Now Publications website, here, from which The Vee-Jay Story is drawn, will point you towards more scrupulously researched record label discographies and histories as well as the Stereo Chat board, a highly addictive forum for the discussion of good and bad practice in the remastering of oldies for CD and of what does, and does not, constitute true stereo.)

More bizarrely, however, I happened across an account of French artist Francis Baudevin utilising one of those cheapo Springboard ORGINAL OLDIES LPs in his work for a current exhibition. If you happen to be in France, the show is on till December 23rd at 16 rue Duchefdelaville, 75013 Paris, but I have to warn you that a) it is not the ORIGINAL OLDIES volume which contains Golden Teardrops and b) the gallery's account of the artist's intentions made my eyes bleed - though it does make more sense when you see that, among other things, he's simply appropriated the basic geometric shapes used throughout the album covers in that series. Wonder how the original designer (if still around) would feel about such an unlikely compliment, four decades on?

Though I suppose you could say those original album covers (see below) were, if not masterpieces, then certainly ideally suited to the places where they were originally sold. And many years ago when I was an art student, a tutor told us that good design was all about an object's being fit for its intended purpose with nothing extraneous; he rhapsodised, by way of illustration, over a lock for a gate shaped out of a single piece of metal. But it did what was required; and those album covers, never intended for lesiurely perusal in a record shop, likewise performed their function perfectly, I'd imagine, in supermarkets and the like: same shapes, so you know it's the same series; different colours, so you know it's not the same volume you bought last week (or month, depending on your pocket money/wages); and the clincher, those all-important song titles and artist names prominently on the front cover as you move in for a closer inspection:

Suprising that Andy Warhol never cottoned on to their graphic potential before M. Baudevin - but then, maybe he already had the original Vee Jay albums. Or could it be, in fact, that Warhol was the brains behind the notorious theft of Lou Reed's entire doo wop collection, only to find warring sensations of guilt and delight serving both to check his enjoyment of the purloined discs and stifle creative stirrings in the area of doo wop-related graphics ever after, for fear of inadvertantly exposing the source of his inspiration to Lou? A case, you might say, of The Tell-Tale Heartbeats ...

The above puerility discharged, I couldn't resist checking the chronology of Reed meeting Warhol and getting his records pinched. To my surprise (as I presumed it happened long before the two met) I found that his records (and his Gretch guitar) were stolen while he was performing as part of Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable in New York in April 1966 - so it is technically possible that Warhol could have been the culprit, sneaking off to do the deed when Lou was safely onstage. Unless it was some earlier theft of the teenage Reed's records which I'd vaguely registered while surfing and he was forever dogged by ill luck in the matter of vinyl retention.

Either way, I would love to know which particular doo wop records he favoured, although I strongly suspect that Dion and the Belmonts' insouciant Love Came to Me would have been among them: at one point Dion gives a kind of laidback chuckle during the bridge ("Love makes me, uh, makes me feel so good") which makes me think of Sweet Jane.

Anyway, getting back to the point, after a fairly extensive search on the net, I haven't been able to find an image of ORIGINAL OLDIES Vol. 18 (Springboard SPB 2018), the one which turned me on to the Flamingos, nor M. Baudevin's Vol. 19, but here's another in the series which, like Vol. 20 above, you can click to savour in all its trashy glory: