During my early teenage years, I grew up listening to guys in my neighborhood who were hanging out on street corners singing, “shooby dooby wap wa naa … ” in three, four, and five part harmonies. Some of us girls even formed groups of our own. The music we now call “doo-wop,” which gets played on oldies stations and streaming music channels, was uniquely ours. We all thrilled to the sound of what seemed like hundreds of groups whose 45rpm records were played on Black radio stations across the nation.
Before I was even close to being a teenager in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, I can remember dancing to groups like The Dubs, The Charts, The Five Pennies, and The Flamingos with my poodle-skirt wearing older cousin and her friends as they invented new dances like the slop and the bop, and the Madison to go with the fast tunes. The older kids did slow drags and “the grind” under blue lights at basement hookie parties, falling in and out of love with each other. I was too young yet to be romantically inclined, but I could hardly wait to be old enough to have a first boyfriend who would croon one of those magical heartbreak tunes in my ear.
I can still hear the sound of “do wop shu bop” repeated as a chorus in The Flamingos 1959 classic, “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
“My love must be a kind of blind love
I can’t see anyone but you
Are the stars out tonight?
I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright
I only have eyes for you, dear”
For those of you who are in younger generations and who may not have grown up with doo-wop (though you have probably heard it on oldies stations), I’m delighted to explore the music and its history today. If you are blessed to be old enough to have been a part of this era, I hope you’ll join me in sharing your memories and favorites in the comments section.
Professor Frederick Dennis Greene, who was a founding member of Sha Na Na, has a well-researched description of doo-wop in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The roots of the doo-wop style can be found as early as the records of the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots in the 1930s and ’40s. The Mills Brothers turned small-group harmony into an art form when, in many of their recordings, they used their vocal harmony to simulate the sound of string or reed sections. The Ink Spots established the preeminence of the tenor and bass singer as members of the pop vocal ensemble, and their influence can be heard in rhythm-and-blues music beginning in the 1940s (in records by the Ravens), throughout the ’50s, and well into the ’70s. This influence is best exhibited in the remakes of the Ink Spots’ hit records “My Prayer” (1956) by the Platters and “If I Didn’t Care” (1970) by the Moments. In fact, Motown’s premier male group of the 1960s and ’70s, the Temptations, had a vocal sound that was based in this classic doo-wop style, with the Ink Spots’ tenor lead singer, Bill Kenny, and bass singer, Hoppy Jones, serving as inspiration for the Temptations’ lead singers, Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin, and their bass singer, Melvin Franklin. There also was a school of female doo-wop, best exemplified by the Chantels, the Shirelles, and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles.
The popularity of doo-wop music among young singers in urban American communities of the 1950s such as New York City, Chicago, and Baltimore, Maryland, was due in large part to the fact that the music could be performed effectively a cappella. Many young enthusiasts in these communities had little access to musical instruments, so the vocal ensemble was the most popular musical performing unit. Doo-wop groups tended to rehearse in locations that provided echoes—where their harmonies could best be heard. They often rehearsed in hallways and high school bathrooms and under bridges; when they were ready for public performance, they sang on stoops and street corners, in community centre talent shows, and in the hallways of the Brill Building. As a result many doo-wop records had such remarkably rich vocal harmonies that they virtually overwhelmed their minimalist instrumental accompaniment. Doo-wop’s appeal for much of the public lay in its artistically powerful simplicity, but this “uncomplicated” type of record also was an ideal, low-budget investment for a small record company to produce. The absence of strings and horns (“sweetening”) in their production gave many of the doo-wop records of the early 1950s an almost haunting sparseness. The Orioles’ “What Are You Doing New Years Eve?” (1949) and “Crying in the Chapel” (1953), the Harptones’ “A Sunday Kind of Love” (1953), and the Penguins’ “Earth Angel” (1954) are excellent examples of this effect.
Take a listen:
The Legendary Orioles were one of the first rhythm and blues groups ever. Influenced by celebrities such as the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots, they fused traditional pop songs with gospel style and arranged blues and gospel material with smooth harmonies, resulting in a style that appealed to a wide audience. In 1949 they recorded their first hit, It's Too Soon to Know, written by their manager, Deborah Chessler. In 1953 they recorded their multi-million seller, Crying in the Chapel. They went on to become the most popular recording group in the rhythm and blues field, garnering national as well as international publicity.
An R&B vocal group formed in 1953 in Harlem, New York City, New York, USA. The members were lead Willie Winfield, first tenor Nick Clark, second tenor William Dempsey, baritone Bill 'Dicey' Galloway, bass Billy Brown and pianist/arranger Raoul J. Cita. The Harptones were one of the smoothest and most polished R&B vocal groups to emerge during the early rock 'n' roll era. Although considered a part of the doo-wop phenomenon, they rarely employed nonsense syllables.
Earth Angel:
One of the most popular doo-wop songs of all time, "Earth Angel" was just the second doo-wop song to hit the Top 10 on the pop charts, following the Chords' "Sh-Boom."
The Penguins were four black high school students from Fremont High in Los Angeles who were named for the logo on Kool cigarettes - a penguin named Willie (the group was originally called The Flywheels). They recorded this song in a garage and released it on a small black-owned label called Dootone Records. When it sold over 4 million copies, it proved that independent record labels could succeed, and many more began operating across America.
To take a deeper dive, Stuart Goosman’s Group Harmony: The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm and Blues is a fascinating exploration of the roots of doo-wop:
In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know." Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s.
In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period. A few, like the Orioles, Cardinals, and Swallows from Baltimore and the Clovers from Washington, D.C., established the popularity of vocal rhythm & blues nationally. Dozens of other well-known groups (and hundreds of unknown ones) across the country cut records and performed until about 1960. Record companies initially marketed this music as rhythm & blues; today, group harmony continues to resonate for some as "doo-wop."
Focusing in particular on Baltimore and Washington and drawing significantly from oral histories, Group Harmony details the emergence of vocal rhythm & blues groups from black urban neighborhoods. Group harmony was a source of empowerment for young singers, for it provided them with a means of expression and some aspect of control over their lives where there were limited alternatives. Through group harmony, young black males celebrated and musically confounded, when they could not overcome, complex issues of race, separatism, and assimilation during the postwar period. Group harmony also became a significant resource for the popular music industry. Goosman interviews dozens of performers, deejays, and industry professionals to examine the entrepreneurial promise of mid-century popular music and chronicle the convergence of music, place, and business, including the business of records, radio, promotion, and song writing.
Born out of an earlier tradition of groups like The Mills Brothers and The Ink Spots, the advent of the “bird groups” with names like the Ravens, the Orioles, Crows, Larks, Robins, Penguins, and Flamingos heralded a shift in musical audiences. This was not the music of your mom and grandma at the time (though plenty of moms and grandmothers today still thrill to tunes like the haunting ballad “I Only Have Eyes For You” from The Flamingos).
Younger generations would croon along with The Complexions’ version (blended with The Flamingos) in the 1993 film, “A Bronx Tale.”
When we hear street corner sounds of doo-wop ballads, we think of love, romance, and teenage angst. Rarely do we relate it to social movements, but Brian Ward’s “Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations”
explores the connections between the civil rights movement and R&B.
One of the most innovative and ambitious books to appear on the civil rights and black power movements in America, Just My Soul Responding also offers a major challenge to conventional histories of contemporary black and popular music. Brian Ward explores in detail the previously neglected relationship between Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness, and race relations within the context of the ongoing struggle for black freedom and equality in the United States. Instead of simply seeing the world of black music as a reflection of a mass struggle raging elsewhere, Ward argues that Rhythm and Blues, and the recording and broadcasting industries with which it was linked, formed a crucial public arena for battles over civil rights, racial identities, and black economic empowerment.
Though not specifically about doo-wop, he covers that phenomena well.
The street, with its bars, laundromats, pool halls, liquor stores, corner stores, shoe-shine stands, barbershops, pawn shops, record stores and storefront churches, formed a distinctive lower-class milieu in which this black entertainment culture operated. Black vocal groups inhabited and helped to define this vibrant, if far from untroubled, environment. Imamu Amiri Baraka recalled that the sound of their music was “everywhere in that space, in the air, on the walls, in the halls, in the laundromats, whistled and sung and stomped to”. Vocal groups were conspicuous features in the landscape and soundscape of post-war urban black life. Aspiring groups besieged neighbourhood clubs and theatres, waiting backstage to impress their visiting idols or else performing in the many talent shows which provided a rich recruiting ground for record companies. In West Baltimore, the Plants, heroes for about a block around Schroeder Street, signed with J&S Records in New York after they were heard singing backstage at the Royal Theater prior to a Five Keys and Moonglows show...
Sometimes groups were discovered by chance, singing in and for their neighbourhood. Legend has it that the Charms were spotted by Syd Nathan at a park softball game in Cincinnati. The El Dorados were taken to Vee Jay by their school custodian who had heard them practicing in the hallways of Chicago’s Englewood High School. Black Harlem impresario Bobby Robinson found the Mellomoods “singing on a stoop up in the Harlem River Projects”, and discovered the Channels in a Lenox Avenue rehearsal room. Ben E. King originally sang with the Five Crowns, and was subsequently the first in a long line of lead vocalists with the post-Clyde McPhatter Drifters. As King recalled, “They found you where you lived. And they didn’t have a whole lot of selling to do. That was taken care of by the guys who had already made it, got a contract and all that garbage. News traveled fast. And those guys were instant heroes”.
Thanks to Stuart Goosman, we know most about the demographics of the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. street corner group scenes which between them generated more than 60 recorded groups from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. In Baltimore, for example, there were fierce rivalries between East Baltimore groups like the Swallows, Cardinals, Honey Boys, Sonnets, Magictones, Jolly Jacks and Blentones, and groups like the Twilighters, Four Buddies and Plants who followed the Orioles out of the Old Town-West Baltimore area, with the bustling entertainment strip alongside Pennsylvania Avenue serving as both boundary and neutral zone between the two sections. Territorial loyalties could also create local celebrities who loomed larger than national stars within their own neighbourhoods, cities and regions.
It wasn’t until I read Ward’s book that I thought about the fact that “the most commercially successful doo-wop compilation ever released”— “The Paragons Meet The Jesters”—had two white guys in motorcycle gang attire pictured. Racial representation was still problematic, and many albums of music from Black artists had white people on the cover.
I just remembered some of the debates my friends and I used to have over which version of “Wind” was better—the original one by The Diablos, or the cover on this album by The Jesters. You be the judge.
Here’s The Jesters version:
Before there was The Jackson Five or groups like Boyz II Men, the Black teenage heartthrob group was Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. From Washington Heights in upper Manhattan, the group was made up of both Black and Puerto Rican members.
This clip is from their first live television performance on The Frankie Laine Show, which aired in 1956.
Lest you think that fame and fortune for these youngsters from New York was the only facet of their history, some of the harsh realities of life in the ‘50s were a key part of Frankie Lymon’s story.
Jeff MacGregor’s feature, Teen Idol Frankie Lymon’s Tragic Rise and Fall Tells the Truth About 1950s America for The Smithsonian Magazine, is a sobering read.
Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were five kids from Washington Heights, just north of Harlem. They sang doo-wop under the streetlight on the corner of 165th and Amsterdam. They were discovered by the Valentines’ lead singer Richie Barrett while the kids were rehearsing in an apartment house. A few months later their first record, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” made it to the top of the national charts. It was 1956. Overnight, Frankie Lymon was the hottest singer in America, off on a world tour. He was 13 years old...
Truth is, Frankie Lymon grew up too fast in every way imaginable. “I never was a child, although I was billed in every theater and auditorium where I appeared as a child star,” Lymon told Art Peters, a reporter for Ebony magazine, in 1967. “I was a man when I was 11 years old, doing everything that most men do. In the neighborhood where I lived, there was no time to be a child. There were five children in my family and my folks had to scuffle to make ends meet. My father was a truck driver and my mother worked as a domestic in white folks’ homes. While kids my age were playing stickball and marbles, I was working in the corner grocery store carrying orders to help pay the rent.”
A few days before Frankie and his friends from the corner recorded the song that made them famous, Rosa Parks was pulled off a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Less than two years later, Frankie danced with a white girl on a national television show, and the show was swiftly canceled. Another part of the legend.
Race integration in pop music was never going to be simple.