Tempts had such complex dance routines that they must have had fiendish concentration to be able to sing at the same time.

My dad likes this one a lot, and he says he always thought it had a very "spooky" sound. It's haunting and pretty at the same time.

This is it, here...

Thanks for this, by the way... somehow never heard it, and I love this genre!

Some good choices here, but we'd be wrong to forget The Platters. Here's my favorite of theirs:



Two "personal" stories from the height of Doo Wop. My sister (ten years older than I) absolutely LOVED the song "Where or When" by Dion & the Belmonts. She played the record all day long (literally). My mother finally reached the breaking point, and she broke the record. My dad, who was in the jukebox business (us three kids had over 500 of the old 45s) came home the next day with five copies of the song for my sister, figuring that would last awhile before my mom went on a breaking spree again.

My brother was in a doo wop group (along with future Red Sox star, Rico Petrocelli) and they'd sing on the street corners and practice a lot. They weren't all that bad and they went on to sing on the boardwalk in Coney Island. They'd usually get mild applause when done. Their big mistake came in timing.... they performed one night to their usual mild reception and then were followed by a gangbusting group who garnered great applause. The name of this group? The Tokens (who later went on to fame with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight").

SC,

What a cool story. How nice those Doo-Wop memories must be fore you. Did your brother record (even if for personal use) any of his singing?

I too love Only You and the Platters. I also remember The Tokens mostly for The Lion Sleeps Tonight. I always thought they were pretty bold using a ethnic slur by singing "a-weina wop..a weina wop....until I looked up the lyrics and its "wimoweh"

TIS

SC - the Red Sox connection; Rico P. Forgive me if you've mentioned it before.

I always thought doo-wop was kinda cool, but I was more of an R&B guy back then. In later years, I joined the church choir and learned harmonies. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the doo-wop style and the discipline of a great harmony.

I saw the Tokens at one of those doo-wop shows about 25 years ago (SB, at the Lafayette). That one guy was hitting those falsetto, "Yeee,deee,dee,dee.....wee-oh-wimoweh". The crowd loved it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I0oG0FOxbA

Listen to this one Marty and the Symbols he sounds young.

I've posted about this before. But whenever I think of or listen to Doo Wop, I also think of Mary Lou who had one dynamite collection of those goodies. I usually don't go in for redheads, but that record collection made her an exception. You talk about golden oldies. She was a few years older than me, but in the dark with something like Only You or Smoke Gets in Your Eyes playing, it's one great memory - a series of them.

Useful business for a guy with teenagers. When I was a kid in Brownsville, there was a flea market set up in a disused trolley car barn near us. One of the booths sold used records from jukeboxes--3 for $1. Collected many that way.


Into the Sixties, I'd see guys with New York Stock Exchange linen coats gather in building entrances (for echo) singing the Channels' "The Closer You Are." Most NYers would say that Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were the quintessential NY doo wop group, but "The Closer You Are" was the quintessential doo wop song, IMO.

Can I ask if anyone listened to Lou Christie back in the 60s? I heard him on the Sopranos a couple of times, really nice music.

Sure. Lou had a whole string of pretty good singles that got tons of airplayon AM radio--"The Gypsy Cried," "Two Facees Have I," etc. The falsetto wasn't to everyone's taste, but it made his records sell.

I remember Christie well. Had a couple 45s by him (the ones TB mentioned).



TIS

Lightning is striking again ... another good ole Pittsburgh boy!

The Duprees were a great doo wop group. All paisani!

The Glory of Love.

What memory's loved them all but have to say the Platter's , as SC mentioned when I got a divorce after 31 years of marriage my tunes took a trip , along with my money, my shorts. But it is all good.

doo-woop

That's Terrific. What a great movie scene as well. The way that they kill off little Joe in this movie has to be one of the most brutal scenes ever put to film.I saw Lefty Rosenthal's story on biography. He was banned from Vegas, but loves to brag how he managed to sneak back in several times a year. He died in 2008.

Here's a great song that I was listening to last night with my Dad. The Mello Kings were pretty much a one hit wonder, but that one hit was a beauty. They weren't from the Bronx, but from neighboring Mount Vernon. So they're honorary New York City boys. Let's see if Turnbull remembers them.

Nice PB. I can't say I remember the song or artist off the top of my head.

Do you notice though how short songs were back then? I listen to some of my old favorites and they seem so short.



TIS

True, Tis.

Songs over 2 and a half minutes were VERY rare back then.

Maybe they were on to something .

I definitely remember it. It's one those songs that there were so many of during that era during which you could dance holding your baby so close. Oh yeah!

No two ways about it: "Tonite Tonite" is a real classic of white doo-wop. I saw them lip-synch the song on Bandstand. I thought they were Hispanic because they seemed dark-complexioned, and used prodigious amounts of Dixie Peach in their hair (they weren't). Dixie Peach was a pomade like vaseline with scent--the poor man's Alberto VO5.

I love Dion & the Belmonts. Teenager In Love, The Wanderer, Runaround Sue. Totally cool!



TIS

Dion and the Belmonts was one of the two best white doo-wop groups of that era (the other was the Skyliners of "Since I Don't Have You" fame). Lou Reed worships Dion DiMucci--he inducted Dion into the R&R Hall of Fame. You can hear Dion wailing at the end of Reed's "Dirty Boulevard."

Re: The Belmonts. Freddie Milano just passed away a couple months ago.

Here's a beauty.

Fun fact: Turnbull was still a relatively young man when it was recorded .

So when did doo wop die? Mid 60s? I wish it didnt and was still around tiday