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Doo-wop

February 14, 2023

For other uses, see Doo Wop (disambiguation).

Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s,[2] mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.[3][4] It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation. Lyrics are simple, usually about love, sung by a lead vocal over background vocals, and often featuring, in the bridge, a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved. Harmonic singing of nonsense syllables (such as "doo-wop") is a common characteristic of these songs.[5] Gaining popularity in the 1950s, doo-wop was "artistically and commercially viable" until the early 1960s, but continued to influence performers in other genres.[6]

Origins

Doo-wop has complex musical, social, and commercial origins.

Musical precedents

Doo-wop's style is a mixture of precedents in composition, orchestration, and vocals that figured in American popular music created by songwriters and vocal groups, both black and white, from the 1930s to the 1940s.

 
A typical doo-wop chord progression in C major[7]

Such composers as Rodgers and Hart (in their 1934 song "Blue Moon"), and Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser (in their 1938 "Heart and Soul") used a I–vi–ii–V-loop chord progression in those hit songs; composers of doo-wop songs varied this slightly but significantly to the chord progression I–vi–IV–V, so influential that it is sometimes referred to as the '50s progression. This characteristic harmonic layout was combined with the AABA chorus form typical for Tin Pan Alley songs.[8][9]

Hit songs by black groups such as the Ink Spots[10] ("If I Didn't Care", one of the best selling singles worldwide of all time,[11] and "Address Unknown") and the Mills Brothers ("Paper Doll", "You Always Hurt the One You Love" and "Glow Worm")[12] were generally slow songs in swing time with simple instrumentation. Doo-wop street singers generally performed without instrumentation, but made their musical style distinctive, whether using fast or slow tempos, by keeping time with a swing-like off-beat,[13] while using the "doo-wop" syllables as a substitute for drums and a bass vocalist as a substitute for a bass instrument.[7]

Doo-wop's characteristic vocal style was influenced by groups such as the Mills Brothers,[14] whose close four-part harmony derived from the vocal harmonies of the earlier barbershop quartet.[15]

The Four Knights' "Take Me Right Back to the Track" (1945), the Cats and the Fiddle's song "I Miss You So" (1939),[16] and the Triangle Quartette's even earlier record "Doodlin' Back" (1929) prefigured doo-wop's rhythm and blues sound long before doo-wop became popular.

Elements of doo-wop vocal style

In their book entitled "The Complete Book of Doo-Wop", co-authors Gribin and Schiff (who also wrote “Doo-Wop, the Forgotten Third of Rock 'n' Roll“), identify 5 features of doo-wop music: 1) it is vocal music made by groups; 2) it features a wide range of vocal parts, "usually from bass to falsetto"; 3) it includes nonsense syllables; 4) there is a simple beat and low key instrumentals; and 5) it has simple words and music.[17] While these features provide a helpful guide, they need not all be present in a given song for aficionados to consider it doo-wop, and the list does not include the aforementioned typical doo-wop chord progressions. Bill Kenny, lead singer of the Ink Spots, is often credited with introducing the "top and bottom" vocal arrangement featuring a high tenor singing the intro and a bass spoken chorus.[18] The Mills Brothers, who were famous in part because in their vocals they sometimes mimicked instruments,[19] were an additional influence on street vocal harmony groups, who, singing a cappella arrangements, used wordless onomatopoeia to mimic musical instruments.[20][21] For instance, "Count Every Star" by the Ravens (1950) includes vocalizations imitating the "doomph, doomph" plucking of a double bass. The Orioles helped develop the doo-wop sound with their hits "It's Too Soon to Know" (1948) and "Crying in the Chapel" (1953).

Origin of the name

Although the musical style originated in the late 1940s and was very popular in the 1950s, the term "doo-wop" itself did not appear in print until 1961, when it was used in reference to the Marcels' song, "Blue Moon", in The Chicago Defender,[22][23] just as the style's vogue was nearing its end. Though the name was attributed to radio disc jockey Gus Gossert, he did not accept credit, stating that "doo-wop" was already in use in California to categorize the music.[24][25]

"Doo-wop" is itself a nonsense expression. In the Delta Rhythm Boys' 1945 recording, "Just A-Sittin' And A-Rockin", it is heard in the backing vocal. It is heard later in the Clovers' 1953 release "Good Lovin'" (Atlantic Records 1000), and in the chorus of Carlyle Dundee & the Dundees' 1954 song "Never" (Space Records 201). The first hit record with "doo-wop" being harmonized in the refrain was the Turbans' 1955 hit, "When You Dance" (Herald Records H-458).[24][26] The Rainbows embellished the phrase as "do wop de wadda" in their 1955 "Mary Lee" (on Red Robin Records; also a Washington, D.C. regional hit on Pilgrim 703); and in their 1956 national hit, "In the Still of the Night", the Five Satins[27] sang across the bridge with a plaintive "doo-wop, doo-wah".[28]

Development

 
The Moonglows, 1956

The vocal harmony group tradition that developed in the United States post-World War II was the most popular form of rhythm and blues music among black teenagers, especially those living in the large urban centers of the eastern coast, in Chicago, and in Detroit. Among the first groups to perform songs in the vocal harmony group tradition were the Orioles, the Five Keys, and the Spaniels; they specialized in romantic ballads that appealed to the sexual fantasies of teenagers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The nonsense string of syllables, "doo doo doo doo-wop", from which the name of the genre was later derived, is used repeatedly in the song "Just A Sittin' And A Rockin", recorded by the Delta Rhythm Boys in December 1945.[29] By the mid-1950s, vocal harmony groups had transformed the smooth delivery of ballads into a performance style incorporating the nonsense phrase[30][23] as vocalized by the bass singers, who provided rhythmic movement for a cappella songs.[31] Soon, other doo-wop groups entered the pop charts, particularly in 1955, which saw such cross-over doo-wop hits as "Sincerely" by the Moonglows,[32] "Earth Angel" by the Penguins, the Cadillacs' "Gloria", the Heartbeats' "A Thousand Miles Away", Shep & the Limelites' "Daddy's Home",[33] the Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You", and the Jive Five's "My True Story".[34]

Teenagers who could not afford musical instruments formed groups that sang songs a cappella, performing at high school dances and other social occasions. They rehearsed on street corners and apartment stoops,[31] as well as under bridges, in high school washrooms, and in hallways and other places with echoes:[13] these were the only spaces with suitable acoustics available to them. Thus they developed a form of group harmony based in the harmonies and emotive phrasing of black spirituals and gospel music. Doo-wop music allowed these youths not only a means of entertaining themselves and others, but also a way of expressing their values and worldviews in a repressive white-dominated society, often through the use of innuendo and hidden messages in the lyrics.[35]

Particularly productive doo-wop groups were formed by young Italian-American men who, like their black counterparts, lived in rough neighborhoods (e.g., the Bronx and Brooklyn), learned their basic musical craft singing in church, and would gain experience in the new style by singing on street corners. New York was the capital of Italian doo-wop, and all its boroughs were home to groups that made successful records.[36]

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, many Italian-American groups had national hits: Dion and the Belmonts scored with "I Wonder Why", "Teenager in Love", and "Where or When";[37] the Capris made their name in 1960 with "There's a Moon Out Tonight"; Randy & the Rainbows, who charted with their Top #10 1963 single "Denise". Other Italian-American doo-wop groups were the Earls, the Chimes, the Elegants, the Mystics, the Duprees, Johnny Maestro & the Crests, and the Regents.

 
Herman Santiago, original lead singer of the Teenagers

Some doo-wop groups were racially mixed.[38] Puerto Rican Herman Santiago, originally slated to be the lead singer of the Teenagers, wrote the lyrics and the music for a song to be called "Why Do Birds Sing So Gay?", but whether because he was ill or because producer George Goldner thought that newcomer Frankie Lymon's voice would be better in the lead,[39] Santiago's original version was not recorded. To suit his tenor voice Lymon made a few alterations to the melody, and consequently the Teenagers recorded the song known as "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?". Chico Torres was a member of the Crests, whose lead singer, Johhny Mastrangelo, would later gain fame under the name Johnny Maestro.[40] Racially integrated groups with both black and white performers included the Del-Vikings, who had major hits in 1957 with "Come Go With Me" and "Whispering Bells", the Crests, whose "16 Candles" appeared in 1958, and the Impalas, whose "Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)" was a hit in 1959.[41]

Female doo-wop singers were much less common than males in the early days of doo-wop. Lillian Leach, lead singer of the Mellows from 1953 to 1958, helped pave the way for other women in doo-wop, soul and R&B.[42] Margo Sylvia was the lead singer for the Tune Weavers.[43]

Baltimore

Like other urban centers in the US during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Baltimore developed its own vocal group tradition. The city produced rhythm and blues innovators such as the Cardinals, the Orioles, and the Swallows.[44] The Royal Theatre in Baltimore and the Howard in Washington, D.C. were among the most prestigious venues for black performers on the so-called "Chitlin Circuit",[45] which served as a school of the performing arts for blacks who had migrated from the deep South, and even more so for their offspring. In the late 1940s, the Orioles rose from the streets and made a profound impression on young chitlin' circuit audiences in Baltimore. The group, formed in 1947, sang simple ballads in rhythm and blues harmony, with the standard arrangement of a high tenor singing over the chords of the blended mid-range voices and a strong bass voice. Their lead singer, Sonny Til, had a soft, high-pitched tenor, and like the rest of the group, was still a teenager at the time. His style reflected the optimism of young black Americans in the postmigration era. The sound they helped develop, later called '"doo-wop", eventually became a "sonic bridge" to reach a white teen audience.[46]

In 1948, Jubilee Records signed the Orioles to a contract, following which they appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scout radio show. The song they performed, "It's Too Soon to Know", often cited as the first doo-wop song,[47] went to number 1 on Billboard's "Race Records" chart, and number 13 on the pop charts, a crossover first for a black group.[48][49] This was followed in 1953 by "Crying in the Chapel", their biggest hit, which went to number 1 on the R&B chart and number 11 on the pop chart.[50] The Orioles were perhaps the first of the many doo-wop groups who named themselves after birds.[51]

The sexual innuendo in the Orioles' songs was less disguised than in the vocal group music of the swing era. Their stage choreography was also more sexually explicit, and their songs were simpler and more emotionally direct. This new approach to sex in their performances did not target the white teen audience at first—when the Orioles took the stage, they were appealing directly to a young black audience,[52] with Sonny Til using his entire body to convey the emotion in the lyrics of their songs. He became a teen sex symbol for black girls, who reacted by screaming and throwing pieces of clothing onto the stage when he sang. Other young male vocalists of the era took note and adjusted their own acts accordingly.[46] The Orioles were soon displaced by newer groups who imitated these pioneers as a model for success.[53][54]

The Swallows began in the late 1940s as a group of Baltimore teenagers calling themselves the Oakaleers. One of the members lived across the street from Sonny Til, who went on to lead the Orioles, and their success inspired the Oakaleers to rename themselves the Swallows.[51] Their song "Will You Be Mine", released in 1951, reached number 9 on the US Billboard R&B chart.[55] In 1952, the Swallows released "Beside You", their second national hit, which peaked at number 10 on the R&B chart.[55]

Some Baltimore doo-wop groups were connected with street gangs, and a few members were active in both scenes, such as Johnny Page of the Marylanders.[56] As in all the major urban centers of the US, many of the teen gangs had their own street corner vocal groups in which they took great pride and which they supported fiercely. Competitive music and dance was a part of African American street culture, and with the success of some local groups, competition increased, leading to territorial rivalries among performers. Pennsylvania Avenue served as a boundary between East and West Baltimore, with the East producing the Swallows and the Cardinals and the Blentones, while the West was home to the Orioles and the Four Buddies.[57]

Baltimore vocal groups gathered at neighborhood record stores, where they practiced the latest hits in hopes that the store owners' connections with record companies and distributors might land them an audition. A King Records talent scout discovered the Swallows as they were rehearsing in Goldstick's record store. Sam Azrael's Super Music Store and Shaw's shoeshine parlor were also favored hangouts for Baltimore vocal groups; Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun auditioned the Cardinals at Azrael's. Some groups cut demos at local studios and played them for recording producers, with the aim of getting signed to a record deal.[57]

Chicago

The city of Chicago was outranked as a recording center in the United States only by New York City in the early years of the music recording industry. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, independent record labels gained control of the black record market from the major companies, and Chicago rose as one of the main centers for rhythm and blues music. This music was a vital source for the youth music called rock 'n' roll. In the mid-1950s, a number of rhythm and blues acts performing in the vocal ensemble style later known as doo-wop began to cross over from the R&B charts to mainstream rock 'n' roll.[58] The Chicago record companies took note of this trend and scouted for vocal groups from the city that they could sign to their labels.[59] The record labels, record distributors, and nightclub owners of Chicago all had a part in developing the vocal potential of the doo-wop groups, but Chicago doo-wop was "created and nourished" on the street corners of the city's lower-class neighborhoods.[60]

The Chicago doo-wop groups, like those in New York, started singing on street corners and practiced their harmonies in tiled bathrooms, hallways, and subways,[61] but because they came originally from the deep South, the home of gospel and blues music, their doo-wop sound was more influenced by gospel and blues.[62]

Vee-Jay Records and Chess Records were the main labels recording doo-wop groups in Chicago. Vee-Jay signed the Dells, the El Dorados, the Magnificents, and the Spaniels, all of whom achieved national chart hits in the mid-1950s. Chess signed the Moonglows, who had the most commercial success (seven Top 40 R&B hits, six of those Top Ten[63]) of the 1950s doo-wop groups,[64] and the Flamingos, who had national hits as well.[65]

Detroit

In 1945,[66] Joe Von Battle opened Joe's Record Shop at 3530 Hastings Street in Detroit; the store had the largest selection of rhythm and blues records in the city, according to a 1954 Billboard business survey. Battle, a migrant from Macon, Georgia, established his shop as the first black-owned business in the area, which remained primarily Jewish up to the late 1940s.[67] Young aspiring performers would gather there in hopes of being discovered by the leading independent record company owners who courted Battle to promote and sell records, as well as to find new talent at his shop and studio. Battle's record labels included JVB, Von, Battle, Gone, and Viceroy;[68][69] he also had subsidiary arrangements with labels such as King and Deluxe. He supplied Syd Nathan with many blues and doo-wop masters recorded in his primitive back-of-the-store studio from 1948 to 1954. As the pivotal recording mogul in the Detroit area, Battle was an important player in the independent label network.[70]

Jack and Devora Brown, a Jewish couple, founded Fortune Records in 1946 and recorded a variety of eccentric artists and sounds; in the mid-1950s they became champions of Detroit rhythm and blues, including the music of local doo-wop groups. Fortune's premier act was the Diablos, featuring the soaring tenor of lead vocalist Nolan Strong, a native of Alabama. The group's most notable hit was "The Wind".[71] Strong, like other R&B and doo-wop tenors of the time, was profoundly influenced by Clyde McPhatter, lead singer of the Dominoes and later of the Drifters. Strong himself made a lasting impression on the young Smokey Robinson, who went out of his way to attend Diablo shows.[72]

In late 1957, seventeen-year-old Robinson, fronting a Detroit vocal harmony group called the Matadors, met the producer Berry Gordy, who was beginning to take up new styles, including doo-wop.[73] Gordy wanted to promote a black style of music that would appeal to both the black and white markets, performed by black musicians with roots in gospel, R&B, or doo-wop. He sought artists who understood that the music had to be updated to appeal to a broader audience and attain greater commercial success.[74] Early recordings by Gordy's Tamla Records, founded several months before he established the Motown Record Corporation in January 1959,[75] were of either blues or doo-wop performances.[76]

"Bad Girl", a 1959 doo-wop single by Robinson's group, the Miracles, was the first single released (and the only one released by this group) on the Motown label—all previous singles from the company (and all those following from the group) were released on the Tamla label. Issued locally on the Motown Records label, it was licensed to and released nationally by Chess Records because the fledgling Motown Record Corporation did not, at that time, have national distribution.[77] "Bad Girl" was the group's first national chart hit,[78] reaching #93 on the Billboard Hot 100.[79] Written by Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson and Motown Records' president Berry Gordy, "Bad Girl" was the first of several of the Miracles' songs performed in the doo-wop style during the late 1950s.

Los Angeles

Doo-wop groups also formed on the west coast of the United States, especially in California, where the scene was centered in Los Angeles. Independent record labels owned by black entrepreneurs such as Dootsie Williams and John Dolphin recorded these groups, most of which had formed in high schools. One such group, the Penguins, included Cleveland "Cleve" Duncan and Dexter Tisby, former classmates at Fremont High School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. They, along with Bruce Tate and Curtis Williams, recorded the song "Earth Angel" (produced by Dootsie Williams), which rose to number one on the R&B charts in 1954.[80]

Most of the Los Angeles doo-wop groups came out of the Fremont, Belmont, and Jefferson high schools. All of them were influenced by the Robins, a successful R&B group of the late 1940s and the 1950s who formed in San Francisco, or by other groups including the Flairs, the Flamingos (not the Chicago group) and the Hollywood Flames. Many other Los Angeles doo-wop groups of the time were recorded by Dootsie Williams' Dootone Records and by John Dolphin's Central Avenue record store, Dolphin's of Hollywood. These included the Calvanes,[81] the Crescendos, the Cuff Linx, the Cubans, the Dootones, the Jaguars, the Jewels, the Meadowlarks, the Silks, the Squires, the Titans, and the Up-Fronts. A few groups, such as the Platters and Rex Middleton's Hi-Fis, had crossover success.[82]

The Jaguars, from Fremont High School, was one of the first interracial vocal groups; it consisted of two African Americans, a Mexican American, and a Polish-Italian American. Doo-wop was popular with California Mexican Americans, who were attracted in the 1950s to its a capella vocals; the romantic style of the doo-wop groups appealed to them, as it was reminiscent of the traditional ballads and harmonies of Mexican folk music.[80][83]

In 1960, Art Laboe released one of the first oldies compilations, Memories of El Monte, on his record label, Original Sound. The record was a collection of classic doo-wop songs by bands that used to play at the dances Laboe organized at El Monte Legion Stadium in El Monte, California,[84] beginning in 1955. It included songs by local bands such as the Heartbeats and the Medallions. Laboe had become a celebrity in the Los Angeles area as a disc jockey for radio station KPOP, playing doo-wop and rhythm and blues broadcast from the parking lot of Scriverner's Drive-In on Sunset Boulevard.[85]

In 1962, Frank Zappa, with his friend Ray Collins, wrote the doo-wop song "Memories of El Monte". This was one of the first songs written by Zappa, who had been listening to Laboe's compilation of doo-wop singles. Zappa took the song to Laboe, who recruited the lead vocalist of the Penguins, Cleve Duncan, for a new iteration of the group, recorded it, and released it as a single on his record label.[85]

New York City

Early doo-wop music, dating from the late 1940s and early 1950s, was especially popular in the Northeast industrial corridor from New York to Philadelphia,[86] and New York City was the world capital of doo-wop.[87] There, African American groups such as the Ravens, the Drifters, the Dominoes, the Charts, and the so-called "bird groups", such as the Crows, the Sparrows, the Larks, and the Wrens, melded rhythm and blues with the gospel music they had grown up singing in church. Street singing was almost always a cappella; instrumental accompaniment was added when the songs were recorded.[86] The large numbers of blacks who had migrated to New York City as part of the Great Migration came mostly from Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. In the 1940s black youths in the city began to sing the rhythm and blues styling that came to be known as doo-wop.[88] Many of these groups were found in Harlem.[89]

Blacks were forced by legal and social segregation, as well as by the constraints of the built environment, to live in certain parts of New York City of the early 1950s. They identified with their own wards, street blocks and streets. Being effectively locked out of mainstream white society increased their social cohesion and encouraged creativity within the context of African American culture. Young singers formed groups and rehearsed their songs in public spaces: on street corners, apartment stoops, and subway platforms, in bowling alleys, school bathrooms, and pool halls, as well as at playgrounds and under bridges.[46]

Bobby Robinson, a native of South Carolina, was an independent record producer and songwriter in Harlem who helped popularize doo-wop music in the 1950s. He got into the music business in 1946 when he opened "Bobby's Record Shop" (later "Bobby's Happy House") on the corner of 125th Street[90][91] and Eighth Avenue, near the Apollo Theater, a noted venue for African-American performers. The Apollo held talent contests in which audience members indicated their favorites with applause. These were a major outlet for doo-wop performers to be discovered by record company talent scouts.[92] In 1951, Robinson started Robin Records, which later became Red Robin Records, and began recording doo-wop; he recorded the Ravens, the Mello-Moods, and many other doo-wop vocal groups.[93] He used the tiny shop to launch a series of record labels which released many hits in the US.[94] Robinson founded or co-founded Red Robin Records, Whirlin' Disc Records, Fury Records, Everlast Records, Fire Records and Enjoy Records.[95]

Arthur Godfrey's long-running (1946–1958) morning radio show on CBS, Talent Scouts, was a New York venue from which some doo-wop groups gained national exposure. In 1948, the Orioles, then known as the Vibra-Nairs, went to the city with Deborah Chessler, their manager and main songwriter, and appeared on the show. They won only third place, but Godfrey invited them back twice. Chessler leveraged a few demo recordings the group had cut, along with the recent radio exposure, to interest a distributor in marketing the group on an independent label. They cut six sides, one of which was a doo-wop ballad written by Chessler called "It's Too Soon to Know". It reached no. 1 on Billboard's national Most-Played Juke Box Race Records chart, and, in a first for a doo-wop song, the record crossed over to the mainstream pop chart, where it reached no. 13.[50]

The Du Droppers formed in Harlem in 1952. Members of the band were experienced gospel singers in ensembles dating to the 1940s, and were one of the oldest groups to record during the era. Among the Du Droppers' most enduring songs are "I Wanna Know" and "I Found Out (What You Do When You Go Round There)", which both reached number three on the Billboard R&B charts in 1953.

Frankie Lymon, lead vocalist of the Teenagers, was the first black teen idol who appealed to both black and white audiences. He was born in Harlem, where he began singing doo-wop songs with his friends on the streets. He joined a group, the Premiers, and helped members Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant rewrite a song they had composed to create "Why Do Fools Fall In Love", which won the group an audition with Gee Records. Santiago was too sick to sing lead on the day of the audition, consequently Lymon sang the lead on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" instead, and the group was signed as the Teenagers with Lymon as lead singer. The song quickly charted as the number one R&B song in the United States and reached number six on the pop chart in 1956,[96][97] becoming the number one pop hit in the United Kingdom as well.[98]

The Willows, an influential street corner group from Harlem, were a model for many of the New York City doo-wop acts that rose after them. Their biggest hit was "Church Bells May Ring", featuring Neil Sedaka, then a member of the Linc-Tones, on chimes. It reached number 11 on the US R&B chart in 1956.[99][100]

Although they never had a national chart hit, the Solitaires, best known for their 1957 hit single "Walking Along", were one of the most popular vocal groups in New York in the late 1950s.[101]

The heyday of the girl group era began in 1957 with the success of two teen groups from the Bronx, the Chantels and the Bobbettes. The six girls in the Bobettes, aged eleven to fifteen, wrote and recorded "Mr. Lee", a novelty tune about a schoolteacher that was a national hit. The Chantels were the second African-American girl group to enjoy nationwide success in the US. The group was established in the early 1950s by five students, all of them born in the Bronx,[102] who attended the Catholic St. Anthony of Padua School in the Bronx, where they were trained to sing Gregorian Chants.[103] Their first recording was "He's Gone" (1958), which made them the first pop rock girl group to chart. Their second single, "Maybe" hit the charts, No. 15 on Billboard's Hot 100.[104]

In 1960, the Chiffons began as a trio of schoolmates at James Monroe High School in the Bronx.[105] Judy Craig, fourteen years old, was the lead singer, singing with Patricia Bennett and Barbara Lee, both thirteen. In 1962, the girls met songwriter Ronnie Mack at the after-school center; Mack suggested they add Sylvia Peterson, who had sung with Little Jimmy & the Tops, to the group. The group was named the Chiffons when recording and releasing their first single, "He's So Fine". Written by Mack, it was released on the Laurie Records label in 1963. "He's So Fine" hit No. 1 in the US, selling over one million copies.[106]

Public School 99, which sponsored evening talent shows, and Morris High School were centers of musical creativity in the Bronx during the doo-wop era. Arthur Crier, a leading figure in the doo-wop scene in the Morrissania neighborhood,[107] was born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx; his mother was from North Carolina. Crier was a founding member of a doo-wop group called the Five Chimes, one of several different groups with that name,[108] and sang bass with the Halos and the Mellows.[109] Many years later he observed that there was a shift in the music sung on the streets from gospel to secular rhythm and blues between 1950 and 1952.[110]

New York was also the capital of Italian doo-wop, and all its boroughs were home to groups that made successful records. The Crests were from the Lower East Side in Manhattan; Dion and the Belmonts, the Regents, and Nino and the Ebb Tides were from the Bronx; the Elegants from Staten Island; the Capris from Queens; the Mystics, the Neons, the Classics, and Vito & the Salutations from Brooklyn.[111]

Although Italians were a much smaller proportion of the Bronx's population in the 1950s than Jews and the Irish, only they had significant influence as rock 'n' roll singers. Young people of other ethnicities were listening to rock 'n' roll, but it was Italian Americans who established themselves in performing and recording the music.[112] While relationships between Italian Americans and African Americans in the Bronx were sometimes fraught, there were many instances of collaboration between them.[113]

Italian Americans kept African Americans out of their neighborhoods with racial boundary policing and fought against them in turf wars and gang battles, yet they adopted the popular music of African Americans, treated it as their own, and were an appreciative audience for black doo-wop groups.[114] Similarities in language idioms, masculine norms, and public comportment[115] made it possible for African American and Italian American young men to mingle easily when societal expectations did not interfere. These cultural commonalities allowed Italian Americans to appreciate the singing of black doo-woppers in deterritorialized spaces, whether on the radio, on records, at live concerts, or in street performances.[116] Dozens of neighborhood Italian groups formed, some of which recorded songs at Cousins Records, a record shop turned label, on Fordham Road.[117] Italian American groups from the Bronx released a steady stream of doo-wop songs, including "Teenager In Love" and "I Wonder Why" by Dion and the Belmonts, and "Barbara Ann" by the Regents.[112] Johnny Maestro, the Italian American lead singer of the interracial Bronx group the Crests, was the lead on the hit "Sixteen Candles". Maestro said that he became interested in R&B vocal group harmony listening to the Flamingos, the Harptones, and the Moonglows on Alan Freed's radio show on WINS in New York. Freed's various radio and stage shows had a crucial role in creating a market for Italian doo-wop.[116]

Philadelphia

Young black singers in Philadelphia helped create the doo-wop vocal harmony style developing in the major cities of the US during the 1950s. Early doo-wop groups in the city included the Castelles, the Silhouettes, the Turbans, and Lee Andrews & the Hearts. They were recorded by small independent rhythm and blues record labels, and occasionally by more established labels in New York. Most of these groups had limited success, scoring only one or two hit songs on the R&B charts. They had frequent personnel changes and often moved from label to label hoping to achieve another hit.[118]

The migration of blacks to Philadelphia from the southern states of the US, especially South Carolina and Virginia, had a profound effect not only on the city's demographics, but on its music and culture as well. During the Great Migration, the black population of Philadelphia increased to 250,000 by 1940. Hundreds of thousands of southern African Americans migrated to the metropolitan area, bringing their secular and religious folk music with them. After World War II, the black population of the metro grew to about 530,000 by 1960.[119]

Black doo-wop groups had a major role in the evolution of rhythm and blues in early 1950s Philadelphia. Groups like the Castelles and the Turbans helped develop the music with their tight harmonies, lush ballads, and distinctive falsettos. Many of these vocal groups got together in secondary schools such as West Philadelphia High School, and performed at neighborhood recreation centers and teen dances.[119] The Turbans, Philadelphia's first nationally charting R&B group,[120] formed in 1953 when they were in their teens. They signed with Herald Records and recorded "Let Me Show You (Around My Heart)" with its B side, "When We Dance", in 1955.[121] "When We Dance" became a national hit, rising to no. 3 on the R&B charts and reaching the Top 40 on the pop charts.[122]

The Silhouettes' crossover hit "Get a Job", released in 1957, reached number one on the pop and R&B charts in February 1958, while Lee Andrews & the Hearts had hits in 1957 and 1958 with "Teardrops", "Long Lonely Nights", and "Try the Impossible".[118]

Kae Williams, a Philadelphia deejay, record label owner and producer, managed the doo-wop groups Lee Andrews & the Hearts, the Sensations, who sold nearly a million records in 1961 with the song Let Me In,[123] and the Silhouettes, who had a number 1 hit in 1958 with "Get a Job". After the nationally distributed Ember label acquired the rights to "Get a Job", Dick Clark began to play it on American Bandstand, and subsequently it sold over a million copies, topping the Billboard R&B singles chart and pop singles chart.[124]

Although American Bandstand's programming came to rely on the musical creations of black performers, the show marginalized black teens with exclusionary admissions policies until it moved to Los Angeles in 1964.[119] Featuring young whites dancing to music popularized by local deejays Georgie Woods and Mitch Thomas, with steps created by their black teenage listeners, Bandstand presented to its national audience an image of youth culture that erased the presence of black teenagers in Philadelphia's youth music scene.[125][126]

Broadcast from a warehouse on 46th and Market Street in West Philadelphia, most of American Bandstand's young dancers were Italian Americans who attended a nearby Catholic high school in South Philadelphia.[126] Like the rest of the entertainment industry, American Bandstand camouflaged the intrinsic blackness of the music in response to a national moral panic over rock 'n' roll's popularity with white teenagers, and the show's Italian American dancers and performers were deethnicized as "nice white kids", their Italian American youth identity submerged in whiteness.[127][128][129]

Dick Clark kept track of the national music scene through promoters and popular disc jockeys. In Philadelphia, he listened to Hy Lit, the lone white deejay at WHAT, and African American disc jockeys Georgie Woods and Douglas "Jocko" Henderson on WDAS. These were Philadelphia's two major black radio stations; they were black-oriented, but white-owned.[130][131]

The program director of WHAT, Charlie O'Donnell, hired Lit, who was Jewish, to deejay on the station in 1955, and Lit's career was launched. From there he went to WRCV and then around 1956 to WIBG, where over 70 percent of the radio audience in the listening area tuned in to his 6–10 p.m. program.[132]

Cameo Records and Parkway Records were major record labels based in Philadelphia from 1956 (Cameo) and 1958 (Parkway) to 1967 that released doo-wop records. In 1957, small Philadelphia record label XYZ had recorded "Silhouettes", a song by local group the Rays, which Cameo picked up for national distribution. It eventually reached number 3 on both the R&B Best Sellers chart and Billboard Top 100,[133][134] and also reached the top five on both the sales and airplay charts. It was the group's only top 40 hit.

Several white Philadelphia doo-wop groups also had chart-toppers; the Capris had a regional hit with "God Only Knows" in 1954.[135] In 1958, Danny & the Juniors had a number-one hit with "At the Hop" and their song "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" reached the top twenty. In 1961, the Dovells reached the number two spot with "The Bristol Stomp", about teenagers in Bristol, Pennsylvania who were dancing a new step called "The Stomp".[118]

Jerry Blavat, a half-Jewish, half-Italian, popular deejay on Philadelphia radio, built his career hosting dances and live shows and gained a devoted local following. He soon had his own independent radio show, on which he introduced many doo-wop acts in the 1960s to a wide audience, including the Four Seasons, an Italian American group from Newark, New Jersey.[136][128]

Jamaica

The history of modern Jamaican music is relatively short. A sudden shift in its style began in the early 1950s with the importing of American rhythm and blues records to the island and the new availability of affordable transistor radios. Listeners whose tastes had been neglected by the lone Jamaican station at the time, RJR (Real Jamaican Radio), tuned into the R&B music being broadcast on the powerful nighttime signals of American AM radio stations,[137] especially WLAC in Nashville, WNOE in New Orleans, and WINZ in Miami.[138][139][140] On these stations Jamaicans could hear the likes of Fats Domino and doo-wop vocal groups.[141]

Jamaicans who worked as migrant agricultural workers in the southern US returned with R&B records, which sparked an active dance scene in Kingston.[139] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many working-class Jamaicans who could not afford radios attended sound system dances, large outdoor dances featuring a deejay (selector) and his selection of records. Enterprising deejays used mobile sound systems to create impromptu street parties.[142] These developments were the principal means by which new American R&B records were introduced to a mass Jamaican audience.[137]

The opening by Ken Khouri of Federal Studios, Jamaica's first recording facility, in 1954, marked the beginning of a prolific recording industry and a thriving rhythm and blues scene in Jamaica.[139] In 1957, American performers including Rosco Gordon and the Platters performed in Kingston.[137] In late August 1957, the doo-wop group Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords arrived in Kingston as part of the "Rock-a-rama" rhythm and blues troupe for two days of shows at the Carib Theatre. The Four Coins, a Greek American doo-wop group from Pittsburgh, did a show in Kingston in 1958.[143]

Like their American exemplars, many Jamaican vocalists began their careers by practicing harmonies in groups on street corners, before moving on to the talent contest circuit that was the proving ground for new talent in the days before the rise of the first sound systems.[144]

In 1959, while he was a student at Kingston College, Dobby Dobson wrote the doo-wop song "Cry a Little Cry" in honor of his shapely biology teacher, and recruited a group of his schoolmates to back him on a recording of the song under the name Dobby Dobson and the Deltas on the Tip-Top label. It climbed to number one on the RJR charts, where it spent some six weeks.[145]

The harmonizing of the American doo-wop groups the Drifters and the Impressions served as a vocal model for a newly formed (1963) group, the Wailers, in which Bob Marley sang lead while Bunny Wailer sang high harmony and Peter Tosh sang low harmony.[138] The Wailers recorded an homage to doo-wop in 1965 with their version of Dion and the Belmonts' "A Teenager in Love".[144] Bunny Wailer cited Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Platters, and the Drifters as early influences on the group. The Wailers covered Harvey and the Moonglows' 1958 doo-wop hit, "Ten Commandments of Love", on their debut album, Wailing Wailers, released in late 1965.[146] The same year, the Wailers cut the doo-wop song "Lonesome Feelings", with "There She Goes" on the B-side, as a single produced by Coxsone Dodd.[147]

Doo-wop and racial relations

The synthesis of music styles that evolved into what is now called rhythm and blues, previously labeled "race music" by the record companies, found a broad youth audience in the postwar years and helped to catalyze changes in racial relations in American society. By 1948, RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name "Blues and Rhythm". In 1949, Jerry Wexler, a reporter for Billboard magazine at the time, reversed the words and coined the name "Rhythm and Blues" to replace the term "Race Music" for the magazine's black music chart.[148]

One style of rhythm and blues was mostly vocal, with instrumental backing that ranged from a full orchestra to none. It was most often performed by a group, frequently a quartet, as in the black gospel tradition; utilizing close harmonies, this style was nearly always performed in a slow to medium tempo. The lead voice, usually one in the upper register, often sang over the driving, wordless chords of the other singers or interacted with them in a call-and-response exchange. Vocal harmony groups such as the Ink Spots embodied this style, the direct antecedent of doo-wop, which rose from inner city street corners in the mid-1950s and ranked high on the popular music charts between 1955 and 1959.[8]

White artists such as Elvis Presley performed and recorded covers of rhythm and blues songs created by African American artists that were marketed to a white audience.[149] One consequence of this cultural appropriation was to bring together audiences and artists who shared an interest in the music.[150] Black and white young people both wanted to see popular doo-wop acts perform, and racially mixed groups of youths would stand on inner city street corners and sing doo-wop songs a capella. This angered white supremacists, who considered rhythm and blues and rock and roll a danger to America's youth.[151][152][149]

The development of rhythm and blues coincided with the issue of racial segregation becoming more socially contentious in American society, while the black leadership increasingly challenged the old social order. The white power structure in American society and some executives in the corporately controlled entertainment industry saw rhythm and blues, rooted in black culture, as obscene,[153] and considered it a threat to white youth, among whom the genre was becoming increasingly popular.[154]

Jewish influence in doo-wop

Main article: Jewish influence in rhythm and blues

Jewish composers, musicians, and promoters had a prominent role in the transition to doo-wop and rock 'n' roll from jazz and swing in American popular music of the 1950s,[155] while Jewish businessmen founded many of the labels that recorded rhythm and blues during the height of the vocal group era.[156]

In the decade from 1944 to 1955, many of the most influential record companies specializing in "race" music, or rhythm and blues", as it later came to be known, were owned or co-owned by Jews.[157] It was the small independent record companies that recorded, marketed, and distributed doo-wop music.[158] For example, Jack and Devora Brown, a white Jewish couple in Detroit, founded Fortune Records in 1946, and recorded a variety of eccentric artists and sounds; in the mid-1950s they became champions of Detroit rhythm and blues, including the music of local doo-wop groups.[72]

A few other Jewish women were in the recording business, such as Florence Greenberg, who started the Scepter label in 1959, and signed the African American girl group, the Shirelles. The songwriting team of Goffin and King, who worked for Don Kirshner's Aldon music at 1650 Broadway (near the famed Brill Building at 1619),[159] offered Greenberg a song, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?", which was recorded by the Shirelles and rose to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1961. During the early 1960s, Scepter was the most successful independent record label.[160]

Deborah Chessler, a young Jewish sales clerk interested in black music, became the manager and songwriter for the Baltimore doo-wop group the Orioles. They recorded her song "It's Too Soon to Know" and it reached no. 1 on Billboard's race records charts in November 1948.[161]

Some record company owners such as Herman Lubinsky had a reputation for exploiting black artists.[162] Lubinsky, who founded Savoy Records in 1942, produced and recorded the Carnations, the Debutantes, the Falcons, the Jive Bombers, the Robins, and many others. Although his entrepreneurial approach to the music business and his role as a middleman between black artists and white audiences created opportunities for unrecorded groups to pursue wider exposure,[162] he was reviled by many of the black musicians he dealt with.[163] Historians Robert Cherry and Jennifer Griffith maintain that regardless of Lubinsky's personal shortcomings, the evidence that he treated African American artists worse in his business dealings than other independent label owners did is unconvincing. They contend that in the extremely competitive independent record company business during the postwar era, the practices of Jewish record owners generally were more a reflection of changing economic realities in the industry than of their personal attitudes.[162]

New York rockers Lou Reed, Joey and Tommy Ramone, and Chris Stein were doo-wop fans, as were many other Jewish punks and proto-punks. Reed recorded his first lead vocals in 1962 on two doo-wop songs, "Merry Go Round" and "Your Love", which were not released at the time.[164] A few years later, Reed worked as a staff songwriter writing bubblegum and doo-wop songs in the assembly-line operation at Pickwick Records in New York.[165]

Doo-wop influence on punk and proto-punk rockers

The R&B and doo-wop music that informed early rock 'n' roll was racially appropriated in the 1970s just as blues-based rock had been in the 1950s and 1960s. Generic terms such as "Brill Building music" obscure the roles of the black producers, writers, and groups like the Marvelettes and the Supremes, who were performing similar music and creating hits for the Motown label, but were categorized as soul. According to ethnomusicologist Evan Rapport, before 1958 more than ninety percent of doo-wop performers were African-American, but the situation changed as large numbers of white groups began to enter the performance arena.[166]

 
The Ramones in Toronto (1976)

This music was embraced by punk rockers in the 1970s, as part of a larger societal trend among white people in the US of romanticizing it as music that belonged to a simpler (albeit non-existent) time of racial harmony before the social upheaval of the 1960s. White Americans had a nostalgic fascination with the 1950s and early 1960s that entered mainstream culture beginning in 1969 when Gus Gossert started to broadcast early rock and roll and doo-wop songs on New York's WCBS-FM radio station. This trend reached its peak in racially segregated commercial productions such as American Graffiti, Happy Days, and Grease, which was double-billed with the Ramones' B-movie feature Rock 'n' Roll High School in 1979.[166]

Early punk rock adaptations of the 12-bar aab pattern associated with California surf or beach music, done within eight-, sixteen-, and twenty-four bar forms, were made by bands such as the Ramones, either as covers or as original compositions. Employing stylistic conventions of 1950s and 1960s doowop and rock and roll to signify the period referenced, some punk bands used call-and-response background vocals and doo-wop style vocables in songs, with subject matter following the example set by rock and roll and doo-wop groups of that era: teenage romance, cars, and dancing. Early punk rockers sometimes portrayed these nostalgic 1950s tropes with irony and sarcasm according to their own lived experiences, but they still indulged the fantasies evoked by the images.[167]

By 1963 and 1964, proto-punk rocker Lou Reed was working the college circuit, leading bands that played covers of three-chord hits by pop groups and "anything from New York with a classic doo-wop feel and a street attitude".[168]

Jonathan Richman, founder of the influential proto-punk band the Modern Lovers, cut the album Rockin' and Romance (1985) with acoustic guitar and doo-wop harmonies. His song "Down in Bermuda" for example, was directly influenced by "Down in Cuba" by the Royal Holidays. His album Modern Lovers 88 (1987), with doo-wop stylings and Bo Diddley rhythms, was recorded in acoustic trio format.[169]

Popularity

 
The Cleftones during their participation in the doo-wop festival celebrated in May 2010 at the Benedum Center.

Doo-wop groups achieved 1951 R&B chart hits with songs such as "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and His Dominoes, "Where Are You?" by the Mello-Moods, "The Glory of Love" by the Five Keys, and "Shouldn't I Know" by the Cardinals.

Doo-wop groups played a significant role in ushering in the rock and roll era when two big rhythm and blues hits by vocal harmony groups, "Gee" by the Crows, and "Sh-Boom" by the Chords, crossed over onto the pop music charts in 1954.[93] "Sh-Boom" is considered to have been the first rhythm-and-blues record to break into the top ten on the Billboard charts, reaching #5; a few months later, a white group from Canada, the Crew Cuts, released their cover of the song, which reached #1 and remained there for nine weeks.[170] This was followed by several other white artists covering doo-wop songs performed by black artists, all of which scored higher on the Billboard charts than did the originals. These include "Hearts of Stone" by the Fontaine Sisters (# 1), "At My Front Door" by Pat Boone (# 7), "Sincerely" by the McGuire Sisters (# 1), and "Little Darlin'" by the Diamonds (# 2). Music historian Billy Vera points out that these recordings are not considered to be doo-wop.[171]

"Only You" was released in June 1955 by pop group the Platters.[172] That same year the Platters had a number one pop chart hit with "The Great Pretender", released on 3 November.[173] In 1956, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers appeared on the Frankie Laine show in New York, which was televised nationally, performing their hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?". Frankie Laine referred to it as "rock and roll"; Lymon's extreme youth appealed to a young and enthusiastic audience. His string of hits included: "I Promise to Remember", "The ABC's of Love" and "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent".

Up tempo doo-wop groups such as the Monotones",[174] the Silhouettes, and the Marcels had hits that charted on Billboard. All-white doo-wop groups would appear and also produce hits: The Mello-Kings in 1957 with "Tonight, Tonight", the Diamonds in 1957 with the chart-topping cover song "Little Darlin'" (original song by an African American group), the Skyliners in 1959 with "Since I Don't Have You", the Tokens in 1961 with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

The peak of doo-wop might have been in the late 1950s; in the early 1960s the most notable hits were Dion's "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Lovers Who Wander" and "Ruby Baby"[175] and the Marcels' "Blue Moon".[176] There was a revival of the nonsense syllable form of doo-wop in the early 1960s, with popular records by the Marcels, the Rivingtons, and Vito & the Salutations. The genre reached the self-referential stage, with songs about the singers ("Mr. Bass Man" by Johnny Cymbal) and the songwriters ("Who Put the Bomp?" by Barry Mann), in 1961.

Doo-wop's influence

Other pop R&B groups, including the Coasters, the Drifters, the Midnighters, and the Platters, helped link the doo-wop style to the mainstream, and to the future sound of soul music. The style's influence is heard in the music of the Miracles, particularly in their early hits such as "Got A Job" (an answer song to "Get a Job"),[177] "Bad Girl", "Who's Loving You", "(You Can) Depend on Me", and "Ooo Baby Baby". Doo-wop was a precursor to many of the African-American musical styles seen today. Having evolved from pop, jazz and blues, doo-wop influenced many of the major rock and roll groups that defined the latter decades of the 20th century, and laid the foundation for many later musical innovations.

Doo-wop's influence continued in soul, pop, and rock groups of the 1960s, including the Four Seasons, girl groups, and vocal surf music performers such as the Beach Boys. In the Beach Boys' case, doo-wop influence is evident in the chord progression used on part of their early hit "Surfer Girl".[178][179] The Beach Boys later acknowledged their debt to doo-wop by covering the Regents' 1961 #7 hit, "Barbara Ann" with their #2 cover of the song in 1966.[180] In 1984, Billy Joel released "The Longest Time", a clear tribute to doo-wop music.[181]

Revivals

 
Kathy Young with the Earth Angels performing Kathy's hit "A Thousand Stars" during the festival of this genre celebrated at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in May 2010

Although the ultimate longevity of doo-wop has been disputed,[182][183] at various times in the 1970s–1990s the genre saw revivals, with artists being concentrated in urban areas, mainly in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, and Los Angeles. Revival television shows and boxed CD sets such as the "Doo Wop Box" set 1–3 have rekindled interest in the music, the artists, and their stories.

Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, released in late 1968,[32] is a concept album of doo-wop music recorded by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention performing as a fictitious Chicano doo-wop band called Ruben & the Jets. In collaboration with Zappa, singer Ruben Guevara went on to start a real band called Ruben and the Jets.[184] An early notable revival of "pure" doo-wop occurred when Sha Na Na appeared at the Woodstock Festival. Soul group the Trammps recorded "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" in 1972.

Over the years other groups have had doo-wop or doo-wop-influenced hits, such as Robert John's 1972 version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", Darts successful revival of the doo-wop standards "Daddy Cool" and "Come Back My Love" in the late 1970s, Toby Beau's 1978 hit "My Angel Baby", and Billy Joel's 1984 hit "The Longest Time". Soul and funk bands such as Zapp released the single ("Doo Wa Ditty (Blow That Thing)/A Touch of Jazz (Playin' Kinda Ruff Part II)"). The last doo-wop record to reach the top ten on the U.S. pop charts was "It's Alright" by Huey Lewis and the News, a doo-wop adaptation of the Impressions' 1963 Top 5 smash hit. It reached number 7 on the U.S. Billboard Adult contemporary chart in June 1993. Much of the album had a doo-wop flavor. Another song from the By the Way sessions to feature a doo-wop influence was a cover of "Teenager In Love", originally recorded by Dion and the Belmonts. The genre would see another resurgence in popularity in 2018, with the release of the album "Love in the Wind" by Brooklyn-based band, the Sha La Das, produced by Thomas Brenneck for the Daptone Record label.

Doo-wop is popular among barbershoppers and collegiate a cappella groups due to its easy adaptation to an all-vocal form. Doo-wop experienced a resurgence in popularity at the turn of the 21st century with the airing of PBS's doo-wop concert programs: Doo Wop 50, Doo Wop 51, and Rock, Rhythm, and Doo Wop. These programs brought back, live on stage, some of the better known doo-wop groups of the past. In addition to the Earth Angels, doo-wop acts in vogue in the second decade of the 2000s range from the Four Quarters[185] to Street Corner Renaissance.[186]Bruno Mars and Meghan Trainor are two examples of current artists who incorporate doo-wop music into their records and live performances. Mars says he has "a special place in [his] heart for old-school music".[187]

The formation of the hip-hop scene beginning in the late 1970s strongly parallels the rise of the doo-wop scene of the 1950s, particularly mirroring it in the emergence of the urban street culture of the 1990s. According to Bobby Robinson, a well-known producer of the period:

Doo-wop originally started out as the black teenage expression of the '50s and rap emerged as the black teenage ghetto expression of the '70s. Same identical thing that started it – the doowop groups down the street, in hallways, in alleys and on the corner. They'd gather anywhere and, you know, doo-wop doowah da dadada. You'd hear it everywhere. So the same thing started with rap groups around '76 or so. All of a sudden, everywhere you turned you'd hear kids rapping. In the summertime, they'd have these little parties in the park. They used to go out and play at night and kids would be out there dancing. All of a sudden, all you could hear was, hip hop hit the top don't stop. It's kids – to a great extent mixed-up and confused – reaching out to express themselves. They were forcefully trying to express themselves and they made up in fantasy what they missed in reality.[188]

See also

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Further reading

  • Baptista, Todd R. (1996). Group Harmony: Behind the Rhythm and Blues. New Bedford, Massachusetts: TRB Enterprises. ISBN 0-9631722-5-5.
  • Baptista, Todd R. (2000). Group Harmony: Echoes of the Rhythm and Blues Era. New Bedford, Massachusetts: TRB Enterprises. ISBN 0-9706852-0-3.
  • Cummings, Tony (1975). The Sound of Philadelphia. London: Eyre Methuen.
  • Engel, Ed (1977). White and Still All Right. Scarsdale, New York: Crackerjack Press.
  • Gribin, Anthony J., and Matthew M. Shiff (1992). Doo-Wop: The Forgotten Third of Rock 'n Roll. Iola, Wisconsin: Krause Publications.
  • Keyes, Johnny (1987). Du-Wop. Chicago: Vesti Press.
  • Lepri, Paul (1977). The New Haven Sound 1946–1976. New Haven, Connecticut: [self published].
  • McCutcheon, Lynn Ellis (1971). Rhythm and Blues. Arlington, Virginia.
  • Warner, Jay (1992). The Da Capo Book of American Singing Groups. New York: Da Capo Press.

February 14, 2023
other, uses, disambiguation, also, spelled, doowop, genre, rhythm, blues, music, that, originated, african, american, communities, during, 1940s, mainly, large, cities, united, states, including, york, philadelphia, pittsburgh, chicago, baltimore, newark, detr. For other uses see Doo Wop disambiguation Doo wop also spelled doowop and doo wop is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African American communities during the 1940s 2 mainly in the large cities of the United States including New York Philadelphia Pittsburgh Chicago Baltimore Newark Detroit Washington DC and Los Angeles 3 4 It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation Lyrics are simple usually about love sung by a lead vocal over background vocals and often featuring in the bridge a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved Harmonic singing of nonsense syllables such as doo wop is a common characteristic of these songs 5 Gaining popularity in the 1950s doo wop was artistically and commercially viable until the early 1960s but continued to influence performers in other genres 6 Doo wopFrankie Lymon and the TeenagersStylistic originsRhythm and blues 1 Cultural origins1940s 1950s African American communities across some major cities on the East CoastDerivative formsBeach musicbeatBrill Buildingpop rockpower popsoulvocal surfRegional scenesNew York CityPhiladelphiaChicagoBaltimoreLos AngelesCincinnatiPittsburghOther topics50s chord progression Contents 1 Origins 1 1 Musical precedents 1 2 Elements of doo wop vocal style 1 3 Origin of the name 2 Development 2 1 Baltimore 2 2 Chicago 2 3 Detroit 2 4 Los Angeles 2 5 New York City 2 6 Philadelphia 2 7 Jamaica 3 Doo wop and racial relations 4 Jewish influence in doo wop 5 Doo wop influence on punk and proto punk rockers 6 Popularity 7 Doo wop s influence 8 Revivals 9 See also 10 References 11 Further readingOrigins EditDoo wop has complex musical social and commercial origins Musical precedents EditDoo wop s style is a mixture of precedents in composition orchestration and vocals that figured in American popular music created by songwriters and vocal groups both black and white from the 1930s to the 1940s source Audio playback is not supported in your browser You can download the audio file A typical doo wop chord progression in C major 7 Such composers as Rodgers and Hart in their 1934 song Blue Moon and Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser in their 1938 Heart and Soul used a I vi ii V loop chord progression in those hit songs composers of doo wop songs varied this slightly but significantly to the chord progression I vi IV V so influential that it is sometimes referred to as the 50s progression This characteristic harmonic layout was combined with the AABA chorus form typical for Tin Pan Alley songs 8 9 Hit songs by black groups such as the Ink Spots 10 If I Didn t Care one of the best selling singles worldwide of all time 11 and Address Unknown and the Mills Brothers Paper Doll You Always Hurt the One You Love and Glow Worm 12 were generally slow songs in swing time with simple instrumentation Doo wop street singers generally performed without instrumentation but made their musical style distinctive whether using fast or slow tempos by keeping time with a swing like off beat 13 while using the doo wop syllables as a substitute for drums and a bass vocalist as a substitute for a bass instrument 7 Doo wop s characteristic vocal style was influenced by groups such as the Mills Brothers 14 whose close four part harmony derived from the vocal harmonies of the earlier barbershop quartet 15 The Four Knights Take Me Right Back to the Track 1945 the Cats and the Fiddle s song I Miss You So 1939 16 and the Triangle Quartette s even earlier record Doodlin Back 1929 prefigured doo wop s rhythm and blues sound long before doo wop became popular Elements of doo wop vocal style Edit In their book entitled The Complete Book of Doo Wop co authors Gribin and Schiff who also wrote Doo Wop the Forgotten Third of Rock n Roll identify 5 features of doo wop music 1 it is vocal music made by groups 2 it features a wide range of vocal parts usually from bass to falsetto 3 it includes nonsense syllables 4 there is a simple beat and low key instrumentals and 5 it has simple words and music 17 While these features provide a helpful guide they need not all be present in a given song for aficionados to consider it doo wop and the list does not include the aforementioned typical doo wop chord progressions Bill Kenny lead singer of the Ink Spots is often credited with introducing the top and bottom vocal arrangement featuring a high tenor singing the intro and a bass spoken chorus 18 The Mills Brothers who were famous in part because in their vocals they sometimes mimicked instruments 19 were an additional influence on street vocal harmony groups who singing a cappella arrangements used wordless onomatopoeia to mimic musical instruments 20 21 For instance Count Every Star by the Ravens 1950 includes vocalizations imitating the doomph doomph plucking of a double bass The Orioles helped develop the doo wop sound with their hits It s Too Soon to Know 1948 and Crying in the Chapel 1953 Origin of the name Edit Although the musical style originated in the late 1940s and was very popular in the 1950s the term doo wop itself did not appear in print until 1961 when it was used in reference to the Marcels song Blue Moon in The Chicago Defender 22 23 just as the style s vogue was nearing its end Though the name was attributed to radio disc jockey Gus Gossert he did not accept credit stating that doo wop was already in use in California to categorize the music 24 25 Doo wop is itself a nonsense expression In the Delta Rhythm Boys 1945 recording Just A Sittin And A Rockin it is heard in the backing vocal It is heard later in the Clovers 1953 release Good Lovin Atlantic Records 1000 and in the chorus of Carlyle Dundee amp the Dundees 1954 song Never Space Records 201 The first hit record with doo wop being harmonized in the refrain was the Turbans 1955 hit When You Dance Herald Records H 458 24 26 The Rainbows embellished the phrase as do wop de wadda in their 1955 Mary Lee on Red Robin Records also a Washington D C regional hit on Pilgrim 703 and in their 1956 national hit In the Still of the Night the Five Satins 27 sang across the bridge with a plaintive doo wop doo wah 28 Development Edit The Moonglows 1956 The vocal harmony group tradition that developed in the United States post World War II was the most popular form of rhythm and blues music among black teenagers especially those living in the large urban centers of the eastern coast in Chicago and in Detroit Among the first groups to perform songs in the vocal harmony group tradition were the Orioles the Five Keys and the Spaniels they specialized in romantic ballads that appealed to the sexual fantasies of teenagers in the late 1940s and early 1950s The nonsense string of syllables doo doo doo doo wop from which the name of the genre was later derived is used repeatedly in the song Just A Sittin And A Rockin recorded by the Delta Rhythm Boys in December 1945 29 By the mid 1950s vocal harmony groups had transformed the smooth delivery of ballads into a performance style incorporating the nonsense phrase 30 23 as vocalized by the bass singers who provided rhythmic movement for a cappella songs 31 Soon other doo wop groups entered the pop charts particularly in 1955 which saw such cross over doo wop hits as Sincerely by the Moonglows 32 Earth Angel by the Penguins the Cadillacs Gloria the Heartbeats A Thousand Miles Away Shep amp the Limelites Daddy s Home 33 the Flamingos I Only Have Eyes for You and the Jive Five s My True Story 34 Teenagers who could not afford musical instruments formed groups that sang songs a cappella performing at high school dances and other social occasions They rehearsed on street corners and apartment stoops 31 as well as under bridges in high school washrooms and in hallways and other places with echoes 13 these were the only spaces with suitable acoustics available to them Thus they developed a form of group harmony based in the harmonies and emotive phrasing of black spirituals and gospel music Doo wop music allowed these youths not only a means of entertaining themselves and others but also a way of expressing their values and worldviews in a repressive white dominated society often through the use of innuendo and hidden messages in the lyrics 35 Particularly productive doo wop groups were formed by young Italian American men who like their black counterparts lived in rough neighborhoods e g the Bronx and Brooklyn learned their basic musical craft singing in church and would gain experience in the new style by singing on street corners New York was the capital of Italian doo wop and all its boroughs were home to groups that made successful records 36 By the late 1950s and early 1960s many Italian American groups had national hits Dion and the Belmonts scored with I Wonder Why Teenager in Love and Where or When 37 the Capris made their name in 1960 with There s a Moon Out Tonight Randy amp the Rainbows who charted with their Top 10 1963 single Denise Other Italian American doo wop groups were the Earls the Chimes the Elegants the Mystics the Duprees Johnny Maestro amp the Crests and the Regents Herman Santiago original lead singer of the Teenagers Some doo wop groups were racially mixed 38 Puerto Rican Herman Santiago originally slated to be the lead singer of the Teenagers wrote the lyrics and the music for a song to be called Why Do Birds Sing So Gay but whether because he was ill or because producer George Goldner thought that newcomer Frankie Lymon s voice would be better in the lead 39 Santiago s original version was not recorded To suit his tenor voice Lymon made a few alterations to the melody and consequently the Teenagers recorded the song known as Why Do Fools Fall in Love Chico Torres was a member of the Crests whose lead singer Johhny Mastrangelo would later gain fame under the name Johnny Maestro 40 Racially integrated groups with both black and white performers included the Del Vikings who had major hits in 1957 with Come Go With Me and Whispering Bells the Crests whose 16 Candles appeared in 1958 and the Impalas whose Sorry I Ran All the Way Home was a hit in 1959 41 Female doo wop singers were much less common than males in the early days of doo wop Lillian Leach lead singer of the Mellows from 1953 to 1958 helped pave the way for other women in doo wop soul and R amp B 42 Margo Sylvia was the lead singer for the Tune Weavers 43 Baltimore Edit Like other urban centers in the US during the late 1940s and early 1950s Baltimore developed its own vocal group tradition The city produced rhythm and blues innovators such as the Cardinals the Orioles and the Swallows 44 The Royal Theatre in Baltimore and the Howard in Washington D C were among the most prestigious venues for black performers on the so called Chitlin Circuit 45 which served as a school of the performing arts for blacks who had migrated from the deep South and even more so for their offspring In the late 1940s the Orioles rose from the streets and made a profound impression on young chitlin circuit audiences in Baltimore The group formed in 1947 sang simple ballads in rhythm and blues harmony with the standard arrangement of a high tenor singing over the chords of the blended mid range voices and a strong bass voice Their lead singer Sonny Til had a soft high pitched tenor and like the rest of the group was still a teenager at the time His style reflected the optimism of young black Americans in the postmigration era The sound they helped develop later called doo wop eventually became a sonic bridge to reach a white teen audience 46 In 1948 Jubilee Records signed the Orioles to a contract following which they appeared on Arthur Godfrey s Talent Scout radio show The song they performed It s Too Soon to Know often cited as the first doo wop song 47 went to number 1 on Billboard s Race Records chart and number 13 on the pop charts a crossover first for a black group 48 49 This was followed in 1953 by Crying in the Chapel their biggest hit which went to number 1 on the R amp B chart and number 11 on the pop chart 50 The Orioles were perhaps the first of the many doo wop groups who named themselves after birds 51 The sexual innuendo in the Orioles songs was less disguised than in the vocal group music of the swing era Their stage choreography was also more sexually explicit and their songs were simpler and more emotionally direct This new approach to sex in their performances did not target the white teen audience at first when the Orioles took the stage they were appealing directly to a young black audience 52 with Sonny Til using his entire body to convey the emotion in the lyrics of their songs He became a teen sex symbol for black girls who reacted by screaming and throwing pieces of clothing onto the stage when he sang Other young male vocalists of the era took note and adjusted their own acts accordingly 46 The Orioles were soon displaced by newer groups who imitated these pioneers as a model for success 53 54 The Swallows began in the late 1940s as a group of Baltimore teenagers calling themselves the Oakaleers One of the members lived across the street from Sonny Til who went on to lead the Orioles and their success inspired the Oakaleers to rename themselves the Swallows 51 Their song Will You Be Mine released in 1951 reached number 9 on the US Billboard R amp B chart 55 In 1952 the Swallows released Beside You their second national hit which peaked at number 10 on the R amp B chart 55 Some Baltimore doo wop groups were connected with street gangs and a few members were active in both scenes such as Johnny Page of the Marylanders 56 As in all the major urban centers of the US many of the teen gangs had their own street corner vocal groups in which they took great pride and which they supported fiercely Competitive music and dance was a part of African American street culture and with the success of some local groups competition increased leading to territorial rivalries among performers Pennsylvania Avenue served as a boundary between East and West Baltimore with the East producing the Swallows and the Cardinals and the Blentones while the West was home to the Orioles and the Four Buddies 57 Baltimore vocal groups gathered at neighborhood record stores where they practiced the latest hits in hopes that the store owners connections with record companies and distributors might land them an audition A King Records talent scout discovered the Swallows as they were rehearsing in Goldstick s record store Sam Azrael s Super Music Store and Shaw s shoeshine parlor were also favored hangouts for Baltimore vocal groups Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun auditioned the Cardinals at Azrael s Some groups cut demos at local studios and played them for recording producers with the aim of getting signed to a record deal 57 Chicago Edit The city of Chicago was outranked as a recording center in the United States only by New York City in the early years of the music recording industry During the late 1940s and early 1950s independent record labels gained control of the black record market from the major companies and Chicago rose as one of the main centers for rhythm and blues music This music was a vital source for the youth music called rock n roll In the mid 1950s a number of rhythm and blues acts performing in the vocal ensemble style later known as doo wop began to cross over from the R amp B charts to mainstream rock n roll 58 The Chicago record companies took note of this trend and scouted for vocal groups from the city that they could sign to their labels 59 The record labels record distributors and nightclub owners of Chicago all had a part in developing the vocal potential of the doo wop groups but Chicago doo wop was created and nourished on the street corners of the city s lower class neighborhoods 60 The Chicago doo wop groups like those in New York started singing on street corners and practiced their harmonies in tiled bathrooms hallways and subways 61 but because they came originally from the deep South the home of gospel and blues music their doo wop sound was more influenced by gospel and blues 62 Vee Jay Records and Chess Records were the main labels recording doo wop groups in Chicago Vee Jay signed the Dells the El Dorados the Magnificents and the Spaniels all of whom achieved national chart hits in the mid 1950s Chess signed the Moonglows who had the most commercial success seven Top 40 R amp B hits six of those Top Ten 63 of the 1950s doo wop groups 64 and the Flamingos who had national hits as well 65 Detroit Edit In 1945 66 Joe Von Battle opened Joe s Record Shop at 3530 Hastings Street in Detroit the store had the largest selection of rhythm and blues records in the city according to a 1954 Billboard business survey Battle a migrant from Macon Georgia established his shop as the first black owned business in the area which remained primarily Jewish up to the late 1940s 67 Young aspiring performers would gather there in hopes of being discovered by the leading independent record company owners who courted Battle to promote and sell records as well as to find new talent at his shop and studio Battle s record labels included JVB Von Battle Gone and Viceroy 68 69 he also had subsidiary arrangements with labels such as King and Deluxe He supplied Syd Nathan with many blues and doo wop masters recorded in his primitive back of the store studio from 1948 to 1954 As the pivotal recording mogul in the Detroit area Battle was an important player in the independent label network 70 Jack and Devora Brown a Jewish couple founded Fortune Records in 1946 and recorded a variety of eccentric artists and sounds in the mid 1950s they became champions of Detroit rhythm and blues including the music of local doo wop groups Fortune s premier act was the Diablos featuring the soaring tenor of lead vocalist Nolan Strong a native of Alabama The group s most notable hit was The Wind 71 Strong like other R amp B and doo wop tenors of the time was profoundly influenced by Clyde McPhatter lead singer of the Dominoes and later of the Drifters Strong himself made a lasting impression on the young Smokey Robinson who went out of his way to attend Diablo shows 72 In late 1957 seventeen year old Robinson fronting a Detroit vocal harmony group called the Matadors met the producer Berry Gordy who was beginning to take up new styles including doo wop 73 Gordy wanted to promote a black style of music that would appeal to both the black and white markets performed by black musicians with roots in gospel R amp B or doo wop He sought artists who understood that the music had to be updated to appeal to a broader audience and attain greater commercial success 74 Early recordings by Gordy s Tamla Records founded several months before he established the Motown Record Corporation in January 1959 75 were of either blues or doo wop performances 76 Bad Girl a 1959 doo wop single by Robinson s group the Miracles was the first single released and the only one released by this group on the Motown label all previous singles from the company and all those following from the group were released on the Tamla label Issued locally on the Motown Records label it was licensed to and released nationally by Chess Records because the fledgling Motown Record Corporation did not at that time have national distribution 77 Bad Girl was the group s first national chart hit 78 reaching 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 79 Written by Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson and Motown Records president Berry Gordy Bad Girl was the first of several of the Miracles songs performed in the doo wop style during the late 1950s Los Angeles Edit Doo wop groups also formed on the west coast of the United States especially in California where the scene was centered in Los Angeles Independent record labels owned by black entrepreneurs such as Dootsie Williams and John Dolphin recorded these groups most of which had formed in high schools One such group the Penguins included Cleveland Cleve Duncan and Dexter Tisby former classmates at Fremont High School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles They along with Bruce Tate and Curtis Williams recorded the song Earth Angel produced by Dootsie Williams which rose to number one on the R amp B charts in 1954 80 Most of the Los Angeles doo wop groups came out of the Fremont Belmont and Jefferson high schools All of them were influenced by the Robins a successful R amp B group of the late 1940s and the 1950s who formed in San Francisco or by other groups including the Flairs the Flamingos not the Chicago group and the Hollywood Flames Many other Los Angeles doo wop groups of the time were recorded by Dootsie Williams Dootone Records and by John Dolphin s Central Avenue record store Dolphin s of Hollywood These included the Calvanes 81 the Crescendos the Cuff Linx the Cubans the Dootones the Jaguars the Jewels the Meadowlarks the Silks the Squires the Titans and the Up Fronts A few groups such as the Platters and Rex Middleton s Hi Fis had crossover success 82 The Jaguars from Fremont High School was one of the first interracial vocal groups it consisted of two African Americans a Mexican American and a Polish Italian American Doo wop was popular with California Mexican Americans who were attracted in the 1950s to its a capella vocals the romantic style of the doo wop groups appealed to them as it was reminiscent of the traditional ballads and harmonies of Mexican folk music 80 83 In 1960 Art Laboe released one of the first oldies compilations Memories of El Monte on his record label Original Sound The record was a collection of classic doo wop songs by bands that used to play at the dances Laboe organized at El Monte Legion Stadium in El Monte California 84 beginning in 1955 It included songs by local bands such as the Heartbeats and the Medallions Laboe had become a celebrity in the Los Angeles area as a disc jockey for radio station KPOP playing doo wop and rhythm and blues broadcast from the parking lot of Scriverner s Drive In on Sunset Boulevard 85 In 1962 Frank Zappa with his friend Ray Collins wrote the doo wop song Memories of El Monte This was one of the first songs written by Zappa who had been listening to Laboe s compilation of doo wop singles Zappa took the song to Laboe who recruited the lead vocalist of the Penguins Cleve Duncan for a new iteration of the group recorded it and released it as a single on his record label 85 New York City Edit Early doo wop music dating from the late 1940s and early 1950s was especially popular in the Northeast industrial corridor from New York to Philadelphia 86 and New York City was the world capital of doo wop 87 There African American groups such as the Ravens the Drifters the Dominoes the Charts and the so called bird groups such as the Crows the Sparrows the Larks and the Wrens melded rhythm and blues with the gospel music they had grown up singing in church Street singing was almost always a cappella instrumental accompaniment was added when the songs were recorded 86 The large numbers of blacks who had migrated to New York City as part of the Great Migration came mostly from Georgia Florida and the Carolinas In the 1940s black youths in the city began to sing the rhythm and blues styling that came to be known as doo wop 88 Many of these groups were found in Harlem 89 Blacks were forced by legal and social segregation as well as by the constraints of the built environment to live in certain parts of New York City of the early 1950s They identified with their own wards street blocks and streets Being effectively locked out of mainstream white society increased their social cohesion and encouraged creativity within the context of African American culture Young singers formed groups and rehearsed their songs in public spaces on street corners apartment stoops and subway platforms in bowling alleys school bathrooms and pool halls as well as at playgrounds and under bridges 46 Bobby Robinson a native of South Carolina was an independent record producer and songwriter in Harlem who helped popularize doo wop music in the 1950s He got into the music business in 1946 when he opened Bobby s Record Shop later Bobby s Happy House on the corner of 125th Street 90 91 and Eighth Avenue near the Apollo Theater a noted venue for African American performers The Apollo held talent contests in which audience members indicated their favorites with applause These were a major outlet for doo wop performers to be discovered by record company talent scouts 92 In 1951 Robinson started Robin Records which later became Red Robin Records and began recording doo wop he recorded the Ravens the Mello Moods and many other doo wop vocal groups 93 He used the tiny shop to launch a series of record labels which released many hits in the US 94 Robinson founded or co founded Red Robin Records Whirlin Disc Records Fury Records Everlast Records Fire Records and Enjoy Records 95 Arthur Godfrey s long running 1946 1958 morning radio show on CBS Talent Scouts was a New York venue from which some doo wop groups gained national exposure In 1948 the Orioles then known as the Vibra Nairs went to the city with Deborah Chessler their manager and main songwriter and appeared on the show They won only third place but Godfrey invited them back twice Chessler leveraged a few demo recordings the group had cut along with the recent radio exposure to interest a distributor in marketing the group on an independent label They cut six sides one of which was a doo wop ballad written by Chessler called It s Too Soon to Know It reached no 1 on Billboard s national Most Played Juke Box Race Records chart and in a first for a doo wop song the record crossed over to the mainstream pop chart where it reached no 13 50 The Du Droppers formed in Harlem in 1952 Members of the band were experienced gospel singers in ensembles dating to the 1940s and were one of the oldest groups to record during the era Among the Du Droppers most enduring songs are I Wanna Know and I Found Out What You Do When You Go Round There which both reached number three on the Billboard R amp B charts in 1953 Frankie Lymon lead vocalist of the Teenagers was the first black teen idol who appealed to both black and white audiences He was born in Harlem where he began singing doo wop songs with his friends on the streets He joined a group the Premiers and helped members Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant rewrite a song they had composed to create Why Do Fools Fall In Love which won the group an audition with Gee Records Santiago was too sick to sing lead on the day of the audition consequently Lymon sang the lead on Why Do Fools Fall in Love instead and the group was signed as the Teenagers with Lymon as lead singer The song quickly charted as the number one R amp B song in the United States and reached number six on the pop chart in 1956 96 97 becoming the number one pop hit in the United Kingdom as well 98 The Willows an influential street corner group from Harlem were a model for many of the New York City doo wop acts that rose after them Their biggest hit was Church Bells May Ring featuring Neil Sedaka then a member of the Linc Tones on chimes It reached number 11 on the US R amp B chart in 1956 99 100 Although they never had a national chart hit the Solitaires best known for their 1957 hit single Walking Along were one of the most popular vocal groups in New York in the late 1950s 101 The heyday of the girl group era began in 1957 with the success of two teen groups from the Bronx the Chantels and the Bobbettes The six girls in the Bobettes aged eleven to fifteen wrote and recorded Mr Lee a novelty tune about a schoolteacher that was a national hit The Chantels were the second African American girl group to enjoy nationwide success in the US The group was established in the early 1950s by five students all of them born in the Bronx 102 who attended the Catholic St Anthony of Padua School in the Bronx where they were trained to sing Gregorian Chants 103 Their first recording was He s Gone 1958 which made them the first pop rock girl group to chart Their second single Maybe hit the charts No 15 on Billboard s Hot 100 104 In 1960 the Chiffons began as a trio of schoolmates at James Monroe High School in the Bronx 105 Judy Craig fourteen years old was the lead singer singing with Patricia Bennett and Barbara Lee both thirteen In 1962 the girls met songwriter Ronnie Mack at the after school center Mack suggested they add Sylvia Peterson who had sung with Little Jimmy amp the Tops to the group The group was named the Chiffons when recording and releasing their first single He s So Fine Written by Mack it was released on the Laurie Records label in 1963 He s So Fine hit No 1 in the US selling over one million copies 106 Public School 99 which sponsored evening talent shows and Morris High School were centers of musical creativity in the Bronx during the doo wop era Arthur Crier a leading figure in the doo wop scene in the Morrissania neighborhood 107 was born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx his mother was from North Carolina Crier was a founding member of a doo wop group called the Five Chimes one of several different groups with that name 108 and sang bass with the Halos and the Mellows 109 Many years later he observed that there was a shift in the music sung on the streets from gospel to secular rhythm and blues between 1950 and 1952 110 New York was also the capital of Italian doo wop and all its boroughs were home to groups that made successful records The Crests were from the Lower East Side in Manhattan Dion and the Belmonts the Regents and Nino and the Ebb Tides were from the Bronx the Elegants from Staten Island the Capris from Queens the Mystics the Neons the Classics and Vito amp the Salutations from Brooklyn 111 Although Italians were a much smaller proportion of the Bronx s population in the 1950s than Jews and the Irish only they had significant influence as rock n roll singers Young people of other ethnicities were listening to rock n roll but it was Italian Americans who established themselves in performing and recording the music 112 While relationships between Italian Americans and African Americans in the Bronx were sometimes fraught there were many instances of collaboration between them 113 Italian Americans kept African Americans out of their neighborhoods with racial boundary policing and fought against them in turf wars and gang battles yet they adopted the popular music of African Americans treated it as their own and were an appreciative audience for black doo wop groups 114 Similarities in language idioms masculine norms and public comportment 115 made it possible for African American and Italian American young men to mingle easily when societal expectations did not interfere These cultural commonalities allowed Italian Americans to appreciate the singing of black doo woppers in deterritorialized spaces whether on the radio on records at live concerts or in street performances 116 Dozens of neighborhood Italian groups formed some of which recorded songs at Cousins Records a record shop turned label on Fordham Road 117 Italian American groups from the Bronx released a steady stream of doo wop songs including Teenager In Love and I Wonder Why by Dion and the Belmonts and Barbara Ann by the Regents 112 Johnny Maestro the Italian American lead singer of the interracial Bronx group the Crests was the lead on the hit Sixteen Candles Maestro said that he became interested in R amp B vocal group harmony listening to the Flamingos the Harptones and the Moonglows on Alan Freed s radio show on WINS in New York Freed s various radio and stage shows had a crucial role in creating a market for Italian doo wop 116 Philadelphia Edit Young black singers in Philadelphia helped create the doo wop vocal harmony style developing in the major cities of the US during the 1950s Early doo wop groups in the city included the Castelles the Silhouettes the Turbans and Lee Andrews amp the Hearts They were recorded by small independent rhythm and blues record labels and occasionally by more established labels in New York Most of these groups had limited success scoring only one or two hit songs on the R amp B charts They had frequent personnel changes and often moved from label to label hoping to achieve another hit 118 The migration of blacks to Philadelphia from the southern states of the US especially South Carolina and Virginia had a profound effect not only on the city s demographics but on its music and culture as well During the Great Migration the black population of Philadelphia increased to 250 000 by 1940 Hundreds of thousands of southern African Americans migrated to the metropolitan area bringing their secular and religious folk music with them After World War II the black population of the metro grew to about 530 000 by 1960 119 Black doo wop groups had a major role in the evolution of rhythm and blues in early 1950s Philadelphia Groups like the Castelles and the Turbans helped develop the music with their tight harmonies lush ballads and distinctive falsettos Many of these vocal groups got together in secondary schools such as West Philadelphia High School and performed at neighborhood recreation centers and teen dances 119 The Turbans Philadelphia s first nationally charting R amp B group 120 formed in 1953 when they were in their teens They signed with Herald Records and recorded Let Me Show You Around My Heart with its B side When We Dance in 1955 121 When We Dance became a national hit rising to no 3 on the R amp B charts and reaching the Top 40 on the pop charts 122 The Silhouettes crossover hit Get a Job released in 1957 reached number one on the pop and R amp B charts in February 1958 while Lee Andrews amp the Hearts had hits in 1957 and 1958 with Teardrops Long Lonely Nights and Try the Impossible 118 Kae Williams a Philadelphia deejay record label owner and producer managed the doo wop groups Lee Andrews amp the Hearts the Sensations who sold nearly a million records in 1961 with the song Let Me In 123 and the Silhouettes who had a number 1 hit in 1958 with Get a Job After the nationally distributed Ember label acquired the rights to Get a Job Dick Clark began to play it on American Bandstand and subsequently it sold over a million copies topping the Billboard R amp B singles chart and pop singles chart 124 Although American Bandstand s programming came to rely on the musical creations of black performers the show marginalized black teens with exclusionary admissions policies until it moved to Los Angeles in 1964 119 Featuring young whites dancing to music popularized by local deejays Georgie Woods and Mitch Thomas with steps created by their black teenage listeners Bandstand presented to its national audience an image of youth culture that erased the presence of black teenagers in Philadelphia s youth music scene 125 126 Broadcast from a warehouse on 46th and Market Street in West Philadelphia most of American Bandstand s young dancers were Italian Americans who attended a nearby Catholic high school in South Philadelphia 126 Like the rest of the entertainment industry American Bandstand camouflaged the intrinsic blackness of the music in response to a national moral panic over rock n roll s popularity with white teenagers and the show s Italian American dancers and performers were deethnicized as nice white kids their Italian American youth identity submerged in whiteness 127 128 129 Dick Clark kept track of the national music scene through promoters and popular disc jockeys In Philadelphia he listened to Hy Lit the lone white deejay at WHAT and African American disc jockeys Georgie Woods and Douglas Jocko Henderson on WDAS These were Philadelphia s two major black radio stations they were black oriented but white owned 130 131 The program director of WHAT Charlie O Donnell hired Lit who was Jewish to deejay on the station in 1955 and Lit s career was launched From there he went to WRCV and then around 1956 to WIBG where over 70 percent of the radio audience in the listening area tuned in to his 6 10 p m program 132 Cameo Records and Parkway Records were major record labels based in Philadelphia from 1956 Cameo and 1958 Parkway to 1967 that released doo wop records In 1957 small Philadelphia record label XYZ had recorded Silhouettes a song by local group the Rays which Cameo picked up for national distribution It eventually reached number 3 on both the R amp B Best Sellers chart and Billboard Top 100 133 134 and also reached the top five on both the sales and airplay charts It was the group s only top 40 hit Several white Philadelphia doo wop groups also had chart toppers the Capris had a regional hit with God Only Knows in 1954 135 In 1958 Danny amp the Juniors had a number one hit with At the Hop and their song Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay reached the top twenty In 1961 the Dovells reached the number two spot with The Bristol Stomp about teenagers in Bristol Pennsylvania who were dancing a new step called The Stomp 118 Jerry Blavat a half Jewish half Italian popular deejay on Philadelphia radio built his career hosting dances and live shows and gained a devoted local following He soon had his own independent radio show on which he introduced many doo wop acts in the 1960s to a wide audience including the Four Seasons an Italian American group from Newark New Jersey 136 128 Jamaica Edit The history of modern Jamaican music is relatively short A sudden shift in its style began in the early 1950s with the importing of American rhythm and blues records to the island and the new availability of affordable transistor radios Listeners whose tastes had been neglected by the lone Jamaican station at the time RJR Real Jamaican Radio tuned into the R amp B music being broadcast on the powerful nighttime signals of American AM radio stations 137 especially WLAC in Nashville WNOE in New Orleans and WINZ in Miami 138 139 140 On these stations Jamaicans could hear the likes of Fats Domino and doo wop vocal groups 141 Jamaicans who worked as migrant agricultural workers in the southern US returned with R amp B records which sparked an active dance scene in Kingston 139 In the late 1940s and early 1950s many working class Jamaicans who could not afford radios attended sound system dances large outdoor dances featuring a deejay selector and his selection of records Enterprising deejays used mobile sound systems to create impromptu street parties 142 These developments were the principal means by which new American R amp B records were introduced to a mass Jamaican audience 137 The opening by Ken Khouri of Federal Studios Jamaica s first recording facility in 1954 marked the beginning of a prolific recording industry and a thriving rhythm and blues scene in Jamaica 139 In 1957 American performers including Rosco Gordon and the Platters performed in Kingston 137 In late August 1957 the doo wop group Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords arrived in Kingston as part of the Rock a rama rhythm and blues troupe for two days of shows at the Carib Theatre The Four Coins a Greek American doo wop group from Pittsburgh did a show in Kingston in 1958 143 Like their American exemplars many Jamaican vocalists began their careers by practicing harmonies in groups on street corners before moving on to the talent contest circuit that was the proving ground for new talent in the days before the rise of the first sound systems 144 In 1959 while he was a student at Kingston College Dobby Dobson wrote the doo wop song Cry a Little Cry in honor of his shapely biology teacher and recruited a group of his schoolmates to back him on a recording of the song under the name Dobby Dobson and the Deltas on the Tip Top label It climbed to number one on the RJR charts where it spent some six weeks 145 The harmonizing of the American doo wop groups the Drifters and the Impressions served as a vocal model for a newly formed 1963 group the Wailers in which Bob Marley sang lead while Bunny Wailer sang high harmony and Peter Tosh sang low harmony 138 The Wailers recorded an homage to doo wop in 1965 with their version of Dion and the Belmonts A Teenager in Love 144 Bunny Wailer cited Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers the Platters and the Drifters as early influences on the group The Wailers covered Harvey and the Moonglows 1958 doo wop hit Ten Commandments of Love on their debut album Wailing Wailers released in late 1965 146 The same year the Wailers cut the doo wop song Lonesome Feelings with There She Goes on the B side as a single produced by Coxsone Dodd 147 Doo wop and racial relations EditThe synthesis of music styles that evolved into what is now called rhythm and blues previously labeled race music by the record companies found a broad youth audience in the postwar years and helped to catalyze changes in racial relations in American society By 1948 RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name Blues and Rhythm In 1949 Jerry Wexler a reporter for Billboard magazine at the time reversed the words and coined the name Rhythm and Blues to replace the term Race Music for the magazine s black music chart 148 One style of rhythm and blues was mostly vocal with instrumental backing that ranged from a full orchestra to none It was most often performed by a group frequently a quartet as in the black gospel tradition utilizing close harmonies this style was nearly always performed in a slow to medium tempo The lead voice usually one in the upper register often sang over the driving wordless chords of the other singers or interacted with them in a call and response exchange Vocal harmony groups such as the Ink Spots embodied this style the direct antecedent of doo wop which rose from inner city street corners in the mid 1950s and ranked high on the popular music charts between 1955 and 1959 8 White artists such as Elvis Presley performed and recorded covers of rhythm and blues songs created by African American artists that were marketed to a white audience 149 One consequence of this cultural appropriation was to bring together audiences and artists who shared an interest in the music 150 Black and white young people both wanted to see popular doo wop acts perform and racially mixed groups of youths would stand on inner city street corners and sing doo wop songs a capella This angered white supremacists who considered rhythm and blues and rock and roll a danger to America s youth 151 152 149 The development of rhythm and blues coincided with the issue of racial segregation becoming more socially contentious in American society while the black leadership increasingly challenged the old social order The white power structure in American society and some executives in the corporately controlled entertainment industry saw rhythm and blues rooted in black culture as obscene 153 and considered it a threat to white youth among whom the genre was becoming increasingly popular 154 Jewish influence in doo wop EditMain article Jewish influence in rhythm and blues Jewish composers musicians and promoters had a prominent role in the transition to doo wop and rock n roll from jazz and swing in American popular music of the 1950s 155 while Jewish businessmen founded many of the labels that recorded rhythm and blues during the height of the vocal group era 156 In the decade from 1944 to 1955 many of the most influential record companies specializing in race music or rhythm and blues as it later came to be known were owned or co owned by Jews 157 It was the small independent record companies that recorded marketed and distributed doo wop music 158 For example Jack and Devora Brown a white Jewish couple in Detroit founded Fortune Records in 1946 and recorded a variety of eccentric artists and sounds in the mid 1950s they became champions of Detroit rhythm and blues including the music of local doo wop groups 72 A few other Jewish women were in the recording business such as Florence Greenberg who started the Scepter label in 1959 and signed the African American girl group the Shirelles The songwriting team of Goffin and King who worked for Don Kirshner s Aldon music at 1650 Broadway near the famed Brill Building at 1619 159 offered Greenberg a song Will You Love Me Tomorrow which was recorded by the Shirelles and rose to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1961 During the early 1960s Scepter was the most successful independent record label 160 Deborah Chessler a young Jewish sales clerk interested in black music became the manager and songwriter for the Baltimore doo wop group the Orioles They recorded her song It s Too Soon to Know and it reached no 1 on Billboard s race records charts in November 1948 161 Some record company owners such as Herman Lubinsky had a reputation for exploiting black artists 162 Lubinsky who founded Savoy Records in 1942 produced and recorded the Carnations the Debutantes the Falcons the Jive Bombers the Robins and many others Although his entrepreneurial approach to the music business and his role as a middleman between black artists and white audiences created opportunities for unrecorded groups to pursue wider exposure 162 he was reviled by many of the black musicians he dealt with 163 Historians Robert Cherry and Jennifer Griffith maintain that regardless of Lubinsky s personal shortcomings the evidence that he treated African American artists worse in his business dealings than other independent label owners did is unconvincing They contend that in the extremely competitive independent record company business during the postwar era the practices of Jewish record owners generally were more a reflection of changing economic realities in the industry than of their personal attitudes 162 New York rockers Lou Reed Joey and Tommy Ramone and Chris Stein were doo wop fans as were many other Jewish punks and proto punks Reed recorded his first lead vocals in 1962 on two doo wop songs Merry Go Round and Your Love which were not released at the time 164 A few years later Reed worked as a staff songwriter writing bubblegum and doo wop songs in the assembly line operation at Pickwick Records in New York 165 Doo wop influence on punk and proto punk rockers EditThe R amp B and doo wop music that informed early rock n roll was racially appropriated in the 1970s just as blues based rock had been in the 1950s and 1960s Generic terms such as Brill Building music obscure the roles of the black producers writers and groups like the Marvelettes and the Supremes who were performing similar music and creating hits for the Motown label but were categorized as soul According to ethnomusicologist Evan Rapport before 1958 more than ninety percent of doo wop performers were African American but the situation changed as large numbers of white groups began to enter the performance arena 166 The Ramones in Toronto 1976 This music was embraced by punk rockers in the 1970s as part of a larger societal trend among white people in the US of romanticizing it as music that belonged to a simpler albeit non existent time of racial harmony before the social upheaval of the 1960s White Americans had a nostalgic fascination with the 1950s and early 1960s that entered mainstream culture beginning in 1969 when Gus Gossert started to broadcast early rock and roll and doo wop songs on New York s WCBS FM radio station This trend reached its peak in racially segregated commercial productions such as American Graffiti Happy Days and Grease which was double billed with the Ramones B movie feature Rock n Roll High School in 1979 166 Early punk rock adaptations of the 12 bar aab pattern associated with California surf or beach music done within eight sixteen and twenty four bar forms were made by bands such as the Ramones either as covers or as original compositions Employing stylistic conventions of 1950s and 1960s doowop and rock and roll to signify the period referenced some punk bands used call and response background vocals and doo wop style vocables in songs with subject matter following the example set by rock and roll and doo wop groups of that era teenage romance cars and dancing Early punk rockers sometimes portrayed these nostalgic 1950s tropes with irony and sarcasm according to their own lived experiences but they still indulged the fantasies evoked by the images 167 By 1963 and 1964 proto punk rocker Lou Reed was working the college circuit leading bands that played covers of three chord hits by pop groups and anything from New York with a classic doo wop feel and a street attitude 168 Jonathan Richman founder of the influential proto punk band the Modern Lovers cut the album Rockin and Romance 1985 with acoustic guitar and doo wop harmonies His song Down in Bermuda for example was directly influenced by Down in Cuba by the Royal Holidays His album Modern Lovers 88 1987 with doo wop stylings and Bo Diddley rhythms was recorded in acoustic trio format 169 Popularity Edit The Cleftones during their participation in the doo wop festival celebrated in May 2010 at the Benedum Center Doo wop groups achieved 1951 R amp B chart hits with songs such as Sixty Minute Man by Billy Ward and His Dominoes Where Are You by the Mello Moods The Glory of Love by the Five Keys and Shouldn t I Know by the Cardinals Doo wop groups played a significant role in ushering in the rock and roll era when two big rhythm and blues hits by vocal harmony groups Gee by the Crows and Sh Boom by the Chords crossed over onto the pop music charts in 1954 93 Sh Boom is considered to have been the first rhythm and blues record to break into the top ten on the Billboard charts reaching 5 a few months later a white group from Canada the Crew Cuts released their cover of the song which reached 1 and remained there for nine weeks 170 This was followed by several other white artists covering doo wop songs performed by black artists all of which scored higher on the Billboard charts than did the originals These include Hearts of Stone by the Fontaine Sisters 1 At My Front Door by Pat Boone 7 Sincerely by the McGuire Sisters 1 and Little Darlin by the Diamonds 2 Music historian Billy Vera points out that these recordings are not considered to be doo wop 171 Only You was released in June 1955 by pop group the Platters 172 That same year the Platters had a number one pop chart hit with The Great Pretender released on 3 November 173 In 1956 Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers appeared on the Frankie Laine show in New York which was televised nationally performing their hit Why Do Fools Fall in Love Frankie Laine referred to it as rock and roll Lymon s extreme youth appealed to a young and enthusiastic audience His string of hits included I Promise to Remember The ABC s of Love and I m Not a Juvenile Delinquent Up tempo doo wop groups such as the Monotones 174 the Silhouettes and the Marcels had hits that charted on Billboard All white doo wop groups would appear and also produce hits The Mello Kings in 1957 with Tonight Tonight the Diamonds in 1957 with the chart topping cover song Little Darlin original song by an African American group the Skyliners in 1959 with Since I Don t Have You the Tokens in 1961 with The Lion Sleeps Tonight The peak of doo wop might have been in the late 1950s in the early 1960s the most notable hits were Dion s Runaround Sue The Wanderer Lovers Who Wander and Ruby Baby 175 and the Marcels Blue Moon 176 There was a revival of the nonsense syllable form of doo wop in the early 1960s with popular records by the Marcels the Rivingtons and Vito amp the Salutations The genre reached the self referential stage with songs about the singers Mr Bass Man by Johnny Cymbal and the songwriters Who Put the Bomp by Barry Mann in 1961 Doo wop s influence EditOther pop R amp B groups including the Coasters the Drifters the Midnighters and the Platters helped link the doo wop style to the mainstream and to the future sound of soul music The style s influence is heard in the music of the Miracles particularly in their early hits such as Got A Job an answer song to Get a Job 177 Bad Girl Who s Loving You You Can Depend on Me and Ooo Baby Baby Doo wop was a precursor to many of the African American musical styles seen today Having evolved from pop jazz and blues doo wop influenced many of the major rock and roll groups that defined the latter decades of the 20th century and laid the foundation for many later musical innovations Doo wop s influence continued in soul pop and rock groups of the 1960s including the Four Seasons girl groups and vocal surf music performers such as the Beach Boys In the Beach Boys case doo wop influence is evident in the chord progression used on part of their early hit Surfer Girl 178 179 The Beach Boys later acknowledged their debt to doo wop by covering the Regents 1961 7 hit Barbara Ann with their 2 cover of the song in 1966 180 In 1984 Billy Joel released The Longest Time a clear tribute to doo wop music 181 Revivals Edit Kathy Young with the Earth Angels performing Kathy s hit A Thousand Stars during the festival of this genre celebrated at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in May 2010 Although the ultimate longevity of doo wop has been disputed 182 183 at various times in the 1970s 1990s the genre saw revivals with artists being concentrated in urban areas mainly in New York City Chicago Philadelphia Newark and Los Angeles Revival television shows and boxed CD sets such as the Doo Wop Box set 1 3 have rekindled interest in the music the artists and their stories Cruising with Ruben amp the Jets released in late 1968 32 is a concept album of doo wop music recorded by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention performing as a fictitious Chicano doo wop band called Ruben amp the Jets In collaboration with Zappa singer Ruben Guevara went on to start a real band called Ruben and the Jets 184 An early notable revival of pure doo wop occurred when Sha Na Na appeared at the Woodstock Festival Soul group the Trammps recorded Zing Went the Strings of My Heart in 1972 Over the years other groups have had doo wop or doo wop influenced hits such as Robert John s 1972 version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight Darts successful revival of the doo wop standards Daddy Cool and Come Back My Love in the late 1970s Toby Beau s 1978 hit My Angel Baby and Billy Joel s 1984 hit The Longest Time Soul and funk bands such as Zapp released the single Doo Wa Ditty Blow That Thing A Touch of Jazz Playin Kinda Ruff Part II The last doo wop record to reach the top ten on the U S pop charts was It s Alright by Huey Lewis and the News a doo wop adaptation of the Impressions 1963 Top 5 smash hit It reached number 7 on the U S Billboard Adult contemporary chart in June 1993 Much of the album had a doo wop flavor Another song from the By the Way sessions to feature a doo wop influence was a cover of Teenager In Love originally recorded by Dion and the Belmonts The genre would see another resurgence in popularity in 2018 with the release of the album Love in the Wind by Brooklyn based band the Sha La Das produced by Thomas Brenneck for the Daptone Record label Doo wop is popular among barbershoppers and collegiate a cappella groups due to its easy adaptation to an all vocal form Doo wop experienced a resurgence in popularity at the turn of the 21st century with the airing of PBS s doo wop concert programs Doo Wop 50 Doo Wop 51 and Rock Rhythm and Doo Wop These programs brought back live on stage some of the better known doo wop groups of the past In addition to the Earth Angels doo wop acts in vogue in the second decade of the 2000s range from the Four Quarters 185 to Street Corner Renaissance 186 Bruno Mars and Meghan Trainor are two examples of current artists who incorporate doo wop music into their records and live performances Mars says he has a special place in his heart for old school music 187 The formation of the hip hop scene beginning in the late 1970s strongly parallels the rise of the doo wop scene of the 1950s particularly mirroring it in the emergence of the urban street culture of the 1990s According to Bobby Robinson a well known producer of the period Doo wop originally started out as the black teenage expression of the 50s and rap emerged as the black teenage ghetto expression of the 70s Same identical thing that started it the doowop groups down the street in hallways in alleys and on the corner They d gather anywhere and you know doo wop doowah da dadada You d hear it everywhere So the same thing started with rap groups around 76 or so All of a sudden everywhere you turned you d hear kids rapping In the summertime they d have these little parties in the park They used to go out and play at night and kids would be out there dancing All of a sudden all you could hear was hip hop hit the top don t stop It s kids to a great extent mixed up and confused reaching out to express themselves They were forcefully trying to express themselves and they made up in fantasy what they missed in reality 188 See also Edit United States portal Music portalList of doo wop musicians Scat singing Vocalese 50s progression also known as the Doo wop progression BoogieReferences Edit 1 Encyclopedia com Philip Gentry 2011 Doo Wop In Emmett G Price III Tammy Lynn Kernodle Horace Joseph Maxile eds Encyclopedia of African American Music ABC CLIO p 298 ISBN 978 0 313 34199 1 Stuart L Goosman 17 July 2013 Group Harmony The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm and Blues University of Pennsylvania Press p x ISBN 978 0 8122 0204 5 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 30 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 David Goldblatt 2013 Nonsense in Public Places Songs of Black Vocal Rhythm and Blues or Doo Wop The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Wiley 71 1 105 ISSN 0021 8529 JSTOR 23597540 Doo wop is characterized by simple lyrics usually about the trials and ecstasies of young love sung by a lead vocal against a background of repeated nonsense syllables Hoffmann F Roots of Rock Doo Wop In Survey of American Popular Music modified for the web by Robert Birkline Retrieved 17 September 2011 a b Stuart L Goosman 17 July 2013 Group Harmony The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm and Blues University of Pennsylvania Press p 193 ISBN 978 0 8122 0204 5 a b Bernard Gendron 1986 2 Theodor Adorno Meets the Cadillacs In Tania Modleski ed Studies in Entertainment Critical Approaches to Mass Culture Indiana University Press pp 24 25 ISBN 0 253 35566 4 Ralf von Appen Markus Frei Hauenschild 2015 AABA Refrain Chorus Bridge Prechorus Song Forms and their Historical Development In Samples Online Publikationen der Gesellschaft fur Popularmusikforschung German Society for Popular Music Studies e V Ed by Ralf von Appen Andre Doehring and Thomas Phleps Vol 13 p 6 The Ink Spots The Ink Spots Biography Albums Streaming Links AllMusic Retrieved 10 October 2019 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 18 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 Whitburn Joel Joel Whitburn s Top Pop Records 1940 1955 Record Research Menomanee Wisconsin 1973 p 37 a b James A Cosby 19 May 2016 Devil s Music Holy Rollers and Hillbillies How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll McFarland pp 190 191 ISBN 978 1 4766 6229 9 When done in swing time early doo wop became a popular form of rock and roll and it was often slowed down to provide dance hits throughout the 1950s and the genre was personified by successful groups like The Coasters and The Drifters Gage Averill 8 July 2003 John Shepherd ed Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume II Performance and Production Vol 11 Close Harmony Singing A amp C Black p 124 ISBN 978 0 8264 6322 7 Gage Averill 20 February 2003 Four Parts No Waiting A Social History of American Barbershop Quartet Oxford University Press p 167 ISBN 978 0 19 028347 6 Larry Birnbaum 2013 Before Elvis The Prehistory of Rock n Roll Rowman amp Littlefield p 168 ISBN 978 0 8108 8638 4 Gribin Dr Anthony j and Dr Matthew M Schiff The Complete Book of Doo Wop Collectables Narberth PA USA 2009 p 17 Norman Abjorensen 25 May 2017 Historical Dictionary of Popular Music Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 249 ISBN 978 1 5381 0215 2 Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 45 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 29 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 Virginia Dellenbaugh 30 March 2017 From Earth Angel to Electric Lucifer Castrati Doo Wop and the Vocoder In Julia Merrill ed Popular Music Studies Today Proceedings of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music 2017 Springer p 76 ISBN 978 3 658 17740 9 Robert Pruter 1996 Doowop The Chicago Scene University of Illinois Press p xii ISBN 978 0 252 06506 4 a b Deena Weinstein 27 January 2015 Rock n America A Social and Cultural History University of Toronto Press p 58 ISBN 978 1 4426 0018 8 a b Where d We Get the Name Doo wop electricearl com Retrieved 18 August 2007 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 28 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 27 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 The Five Satins The Five Satins Biography Albums Streaming Links AllMusic Retrieved 10 October 2019 Georgina Gregory 3 April 2019 Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity Taylor amp Francis p 31 ISBN 978 0 429 64845 8 Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 24 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 Anthony J Gribin Matthew M Schiff January 2000 The Complete Book of Doo Wop Krause p 7 ISBN 978 0 87341 829 4 a b Colin A Palmer Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 2006 Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History the Black Experience in the Americas Macmillan Reference USA p 1534 ISBN 978 0 02 865820 9 a b Gilliland John 1969 Show 11 Big Rock Candy Mountain Early rock n roll vocal groups amp Frank Zappa audio Pop Chronicles University of North Texas Libraries Track 5 Shep amp the Limelites Biography AllMusic Retrieved 10 August 2020 The Jive Five The Jive Five Biography Albums Streaming Links AllMusic Retrieved 10 October 2019 Reiland Rabaka 3 May 2016 Civil Rights Music The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement Lexington Books p 127 128 ISBN 978 1 4985 3179 5 Simone Cinotto 1 April 2014 Making Italian America Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities Fordham University Press p 198 ISBN 978 0 8232 5626 6 Brock Helander 1 January 2001 The Rockin 60s The People Who Made the Music Schirmer Trade Books p 200 ISBN 978 0 85712 811 9 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers pp 47 48 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 Steve Sullivan 4 October 2013 Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings Scarecrow Press p 616 ISBN 978 0 8108 8296 6 Simone Cinotto 1 April 2014 Making Italian America Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities Fordham University Press pp 207 208 ISBN 978 0 8232 5626 6 Greg Bower 27 January 2014 Doo wop In Lol Henderson Lee Stacey eds Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century Routledge p 179 ISBN 978 1 135 92946 6 Hinckley David 29 April 2013 Lillian Leach Boyd singer for The Mellows dead at 76 New York Daily News Archived from the original on 3 May 2013 Reebee Garofalo 2001 VI Off the Charts In Rachel Rubin Jeffrey Paul Melnick ed American Popular Music New Approaches to the Twentieth Century Amherst Univ of Massachusetts Press p 125 ISBN 1 55849 268 2 Joe Sasfy 21 November 1984 Doo Wop Harmony The Washington Post Retrieved 17 November 2020 Staff 12 June 1985 Comeback On Chitlin Circuit The New York Times Retrieved 17 November 2020 a b c John Michael Runowicz 2010 Forever Doo wop Race Nostalgia and Vocal Harmony University of Massachusetts Press pp 38 41 ISBN 978 1 55849 824 2 Vladimir Bogdanov Chris Woodstra Stephen Thomas Erlewine 2002 All Music Guide to Rock The Definitive Guide to Rock Pop and Soul Backbeat Books p 1306 ISBN 978 0 87930 653 3 Michael Olesker 1 November 2013 Front Stoops in the Fifties Baltimore Legends Come of Age JHU Press pp 39 40 ISBN 978 1 4214 1161 3 Colin Larkin 27 May 2011 The Encyclopedia of Popular Music Omnibus Press p 31 ISBN 978 0 85712 595 8 a b Albin Zak 4 October 2012 I Don t Sound Like Nobody Remaking Music in 1950s America University of Michigan Press pp 89 90 ISBN 978 0 472 03512 0 a b Rick Simmons 8 August 2018 Carolina Beach Music Encyclopedia McFarland pp 259 260 ISBN 978 1 4766 6767 6 Steve Sullivan 4 October 2013 Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings Scarecrow Press p 379 ISBN 978 0 8108 8296 6 Chuck Mancuso David Lampe 1996 Popular Music and the Underground Foundations of Jazz Blues Country and Rock 1900 1950 Kendall Hunt Publishing Company p 440 ISBN 978 0 8403 9088 2 Lawrence Pitilli 2 August 2016 Doo Wop Acappella A Story of Street Corners Echoes and Three Part Harmonies Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers pp 24 25 ISBN 978 1 4422 4430 6 a b Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 303 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 Stuart L Goosman 9 March 2010 Group Harmony The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm and Blues University of Pennsylvania Press p 47 ISBN 978 0 8122 2108 4 a b Ward Brian 1998 Just My Soul Responding Rhythm and Blues Black Consciousness and Race University of California Press pp 62 63 ISBN 0 520 21298 3 Johnny Keys 15 January 2019 Du Wop In Theo Cateforis ed The Rock History Reader Taylor amp Francis p 20 ISBN 978 1 315 39480 0 Robert Pruter 1996 Doowop The Chicago Scene University of Illinois Press p 1 ISBN 978 0 252 06506 4 Pruter 1996 pp 2 10 Pruter 1996 pp 2 17 Anthony J Gribin Matthew M Schiff 2000 The Complete Book of Doo Wop Krause p 136 ISBN 978 0 87341 829 4 Whitburn Joel The Billboard Book of TOP 40 R amp B and Hip Hop Hits Billboard Books New York 2006 p 407 John Collis 15 October 1998 The Story of Chess Records Bloomsbury USA p 106 ISBN 978 1 58234 005 0 Clark Bucky Halker 2004 Rock Music www encyclopedia chicagohistory org Chicago Historical Society Retrieved 9 October 2020 Marsha Music 5 June 2017 Joe s Record Shop In Joel Stone ed Detroit 1967 Origins Impacts Legacies Wayne State University Press p 63 ISBN 978 0 8143 4304 3 Tony Fletcher 2017 In the Midnight Hour The Life amp Soul of Wilson Pickett Oxford University Press p 27 ISBN 978 0 19 025294 6 Lars Bjorn Jim Gallert 2001 Before Motown A History of Jazz in Detroit 1920 60 University of Michigan Press p 173 ISBN 0 472 06765 6 Edward M Komara 2006 Encyclopedia of the Blues Psychology Press p 555 ISBN 978 0 415 92699 7 John Broven 11 August 2011 Record Makers and Breakers Voices of the Independent Rock n Roll Pioneers University of Illinois Press pp 135 321 ISBN 978 0 252 09401 9 Brian Ward 6 July 1998 Just My Soul Responding Rhythm and Blues Black Consciousness and Race Relations University of California Press p 464 ISBN 978 0 520 21298 5 a b M L Liebler S R Boland 2016 3 The Pre Motown Sounds Heaven was Detroit From Jazz to Hip hop and Beyond Wayne State University Press pp 100 104 ISBN 978 0 8143 4122 3 Andrew Flory 30 May 2017 I Hear a Symphony Motown and Crossover R amp B University of Michigan Press p 26 ISBN 978 0 472 03686 8 Joe Stuessy Scott David Lipscomb 2006 Rock and Roll Its History and Stylistic Development Pearson Prentice Hall p 209 ISBN 978 0 13 193098 8 Lee Cotten 1989 The Golden Age of American Rock n Roll Pierian Press p 169 ISBN 978 0 9646588 4 4 Alex MacKenzie 2009 The Life and Times of the Motown Stars Together Publications LLP p 146 ISBN 978 1 84226 014 2 Colin Larkin 1997 The Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music Virgin p 309 ISBN 978 0 7535 0149 8 Bill Dahl 28 February 2011 Motown The Golden Years More than 100 rare photographs Penguin Publishing Group p 243 ISBN 978 1 4402 2557 4 Rick Simmons 8 August 2018 Carolina Beach Music Encyclopedia McFarland p 234 ISBN 978 1 4766 6767 6 a b Anthony Macias 11 November 2008 Mexican American Mojo Popular Music Dance and Urban Culture in Los Angeles 1935 1968 Duke University Press pp 182 183 ISBN 978 0 8223 8938 5 Mitch Rosalsky 2002 Encyclopedia of Rhythm amp Blues and Doo Wop Vocal Groups Scarecrow Press p 45 ISBN 978 0 8108 4592 3 Barney Hoskyns 2009 Waiting for the Sun A Rock n Roll History of Los Angeles Backbeat Books p 33 ISBN 978 0 87930 943 5 Ruben Funkahuatl Guevara 13 April 2018 Confessions of a Radical Chicano Doo Wop Singer University of California Press p 83 ISBN 978 0 520 96966 7 Barry Miles 1970 Zappa p 71 ISBN 9780802142153 a b Jude P Webre 14 February 2020 Memories of El Monte Art Laboe s Charmed Life on the Air In Romeo Guzman Carribean Fragoza Alex Sayf Cummings Ryan Reft eds East of East The Making of Greater El Monte Rutgers University Press pp 227 231 ISBN 978 1 978805 48 4 a b Albrecht Robert 15 March 2019 Doo wop Italiano Towards an understanding and appreciation of Italian American vocal groups of the late 1950s and early 1960s Popular Music and Society 42 2 3 doi 10 1080 03007766 2017 1414663 S2CID 191844795 Retrieved 7 November 2020 Anthony J Gribin Matthew M Schiff 2000 The Complete Book of Doo wop Krause p 136 ISBN 978 0 87341 829 4 Dick Weissman Richard Weissman 2005 New York and the Doo wop Groups Blues The Basics Psychology Press pp 95 96 ISBN 978 0 415 97068 6 Arnold Shaw 1978 Honkers and Shouters The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues Macmillan p xix ISBN 978 0 02 610000 7 John Eligon 21 August 2007 An Old Record Shop May Fall Victim to Harlem s Success Published 2007 The New York Times Retrieved 7 November 2020 Christopher Morris Music entrepreneur Bobby Robinson dies at 93 Variety Archived from the original on 15 January 2011 Albin Zak 4 October 2012 I Don t Sound Like Nobody Remaking Music in 1950s America University of Michigan Press p 89 ISBN 978 0 472 03512 0 a b Dave Headlam 2002 Appropriations of blues and gospel in popular music In Allan Moore Jonathan Cross eds The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music Cambridge University Press p 172 ISBN 978 0 521 00107 6 David Hinckley 8 January 2011 Harlem legend dead Bobby Robinson owner of Happy House on 125th St New York Daily News Retrieved 6 November 2020 Alan B Govenar 2010 Lightnin Hopkins His Life and Blues Chicago Review Press p 126 ISBN 978 1 55652 962 7 Shirelle Phelps ed August 1999 Contemporary Black Biography Gale Research Incorporated pp 137 139 ISBN 978 0 7876 2419 4 Jessie Carney Smith 1 December 2012 Black Firsts 4 000 Ground Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events Visible Ink Press p 46 ISBN 978 1 57859 424 5 Peter Besel 2 December 2018 Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers 1954 1957 Archived from the original on 7 November 2020 Retrieved 7 November 2020 The Willows Church Bells May Ring Chart Positions Retrieved 23 August 2018 Cousin Bruce Morrow Rich Maloof 2007 Doo Wop The Music the Times the Era Sterling Publishing Company Inc p 132 ISBN 978 1 4027 4276 7 Marv Goldberg The Solitaires Marv Goldberg s R amp B Notebooks Retrieved 31 March 2015 While never achieving the national stature of many of their contemporaries the Solitaires managed to outlast most of them in a career that saw them as one of the top vocal groups on the New York scene Frank W Hoffmann 2005 Rhythm and Blues Rap and Hip hop Infobase Publishing p 38 ISBN 978 0 8160 6980 4 Sheila Weller 8 April 2008 Girls Like Us Carole King Joni Mitchell Carly Simon And the Journey of a Generation Simon and Schuster p 56 ISBN 978 1 4165 6477 5 Clay Cole October 2009 Sh Boom The Explosion of Rock n Roll 1953 1968 Wordclay p 208 ISBN 978 1 60037 638 2 Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 265 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 Joseph Murrells 1978 The Book of Golden Discs 2nd ed London Barrie and Jenkins Ltd p 157 ISBN 0 214 20512 6 Mark Naison 2004 From Doo Wop to Hip Hop The Bittersweet Odyssey of African Americans in the South Bronx Socialism and Democracy Socialism and Democracy 18 2 Retrieved 7 November 2020 Philip Groia 1983 They All Sang on the Corner A Second Look at New York City s Rhythm and Blues Vocal Groups P Dee Enterprises p 130 ISBN 978 0 9612058 0 5 Carolyn McLaughlin 21 May 2019 South Bronx Battles Stories of Resistance Resilience and Renewal University of California Press p 110 ISBN 978 0 520 96380 1 Arthur Crier 25 September 2015 Interview with the Bronx African American History Project Oral Histories Fordham University 10 Archived from the original on 20 June 2020 Retrieved 7 November 2020 Simone Cinotto 1 April 2014 Italian Doo Wop Sense of place Politics of Style and Racial Crossovers in Postwar New York City Making Italian America Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities Fordham University Press p 198 ISBN 978 0 8232 5626 6 a b Mark Naison 29 January 2019 Italian Americans in Bronx Doo Wop The Glory and the Paradox Occasional Essays Fordham University 2 4 Archived from the original on 6 November 2020 Retrieved 6 November 2020 John Gennari 18 March 2017 Who Put the Wop in Doo wop Flavor and Soul Italian America at Its African American Edge University of Chicago Press pp 8 9 ISBN 978 0 226 42832 1 Donald Tricarico 24 December 2018 Guido Culture and Italian American Youth From Bensonhurst to Jersey Shore Springer p 38 ISBN 978 3 030 03293 7 John Gennari 18 March 2017 Flavor and Soul Italian America at Its African American Edge University of Chicago Press pp 22 23 48 71 90 95 ISBN 978 0 226 42832 1 a b Simone Cinotto 1 April 2014 Italian Doo Wop Sense of place Politics of Style and Racial Crossovers in Postwar New York City Making Italian America Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities Fordham University Press p 204 ISBN 978 0 8232 5626 6 Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 434 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 a b c Jack McCarthy 2016 Doo Wop philadelphiaencyclopedia org Rutgers University Archived from the original on 21 September 2020 Retrieved 3 November 2020 a b c Emmett G Price III Tammy Kernodle Horace J Maxile Jr eds 17 December 2010 Encyclopedia of African American Music ABC CLIO p 727 ISBN 978 0 313 34200 4 Nick Talevski 7 April 2010 Rock Obituaries Knocking On Heaven s Door Music Sales p 19 ISBN 978 0 85712 117 2 The Turbans on Herald Records archive org Internet Archive 2011 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Bob Leszczak 10 October 2013 Who Did It First Great Rhythm and Blues Cover Songs and Their Original Artists Scarecrow Press p 238 ISBN 978 0 8108 8867 8 Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 287 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 John Jackson 3 June 1999 American Bandstand Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock n Roll Empire Oxford University Press p 120 ISBN 978 0 19 028490 9 Matthew F Delmont 22 February 2012 The Nicest Kids in Town American Bandstand Rock n Roll and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia University of California Press pp 15 16 21 ISBN 978 0 520 95160 0 a b John A Jackson 23 September 2004 A House on Fire The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul Oxford University Press USA pp 13 14 ISBN 978 0 19 514972 2 George J Leonard Pellegrino D Acierno 1998 The Italian American Heritage A Companion to Literature and Arts Taylor amp Francis pp 437 438 ISBN 978 0 8153 0380 0 a b John Gennari 27 September 2017 Groovin A Riff on Italian Americans in Popular Music and Jazz In William J Connell Stanislao G Pugliese eds The Routledge History of Italian Americans Taylor amp Francis p 580 ISBN 978 1 135 04670 5 Donald Tricarico 24 December 2018 Guido Culture and Italian American Youth From Bensonhurst to Jersey Shore Springer pp 37 38 ISBN 978 3 030 03293 7 John Jackson 3 June 1999 American Bandstand Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock n Roll Empire Oxford University Press p 51 ISBN 978 0 19 028490 9 Jack McCarthy 2016 Radio DJs philadelphiaencyclopedia org Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia Rutgers University Archived from the original on 19 March 2017 Retrieved 12 November 2020 Julia Hatmaker 15 June 2017 25 memorable DJs and radio personalities from Philadelphia s past pennlive Advance Local Media Retrieved 12 November 2020 Joel Whitburn 2004 Top R amp B Hip Hop Singles 1942 2004 Record Research p 484 Jay Warner 2006 American Singing Groups A History from 1940s to Today Hal Leonard Corporation p 284 ISBN 978 0 634 09978 6 Colin Larkin 2000 The Encyclopedia of Popular Music Brown Marion Dilated Peoples MUZE p 175 ISBN 978 0 19 531373 4 Jerry Blavat 13 August 2013 You Only Rock Once My Life in Music Running Press p 157 ISBN 978 0 7624 5018 3 a b c Paul Kauppila 2006 From Memphis to Kingston An Investigation into the Origin of Jamaican Ska PDF Social and Economic Studies 55 1 amp 2 78 83 Archived PDF from the original on 15 May 2021 Retrieved 15 November 2020 a b Grant Fared 1998 Wailin Soul In Monique Guillory Richard Green eds Soul Black Power Politics and Pleasure NYU Press pp 67 69 ISBN 978 0 8147 3084 3 a b c Brad Fredericks American Rhythm and Blues Influence on Early Jamaican Musical Style debate uvm edu Archived from the original on 17 October 2000 Retrieved 15 November 2020 Clinton Lindsay 20 July 2014 Jamaican records fill R amp B gap jamaica gleaner com Archived from the original on 20 July 2014 Retrieved 15 November 2020 David Lee Joyner 27 June 2008 American Popular Music McGraw Hill Education p 252 ISBN 978 0 07 352657 7 Michael Campbell James Brody 27 February 2007 Rock and Roll An Introduction Cengage Learning p 339 ISBN 978 1 111 79453 8 Robert Witmer 1987 Local and Foreign The Popular Music Culture of Kingston Jamaica before Ska Rock Steady and Reggae Latin American Music Review Revista de Musica Latinoamericana 8 1 13 doi 10 2307 948066 ISSN 0163 0350 JSTOR 948066 Retrieved 15 November 2020 a b Sean O Hagan 12 October 2020 A thousand teardrops how doo wop kickstarted Jamaica s pop revolution The Guardian Guardian News amp Media Archived from the original on 12 October 2020 Retrieved 16 November 2020 Roy Black 22 February 2015 Roy Black Column Dobby Dobson The Gleaner Kingston Jamaica Retrieved 16 November 2020 Richie Unterberger September 2017 Bob Marley and the Wailers The Ultimate Illustrated History Voyageur Press pp 15 30 31 ISBN 978 0 7603 5241 0 Dave Thompson 2002 Reggae amp Caribbean Music Backbeat Books p 361 ISBN 978 0 87930 655 7 Bob Gulla 16 January 2008 Icons of R amp B and Soul An Encyclopedia of the Artists who Revolutionized Rhythm ABC CLIO pp xi xii ISBN 978 0 313 34044 4 a b Richard Taruskin 14 August 2006 Music in the Late Twentieth Century The Oxford History of Western Music Oxford University Press p 313 ISBN 978 0 19 979593 2 Michael T Bertrand 2000 Race Rock and Elvis University of Illinois Press p 10 ISBN 978 0 252 02586 0 Mike Hill July 1997 Whiteness A Critical Reader NYU Press p 138 ISBN 978 0 8147 3545 9 David M Jones 6 February 2020 23 Bring It on Home Constructions of Social Class in Rhythm and Blues and Soul Music 1949 1980 In Ian Peddie ed The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Social Class Bloomsbury Publishing p 768 ISBN 978 1 5013 4537 1 Michael T Bertrand 2000 Race Rock and Elvis University of Illinois Press pp 66 68 ISBN 978 0 252 02586 0 Amy Absher 16 June 2014 The Black Musician and the White City Race and Music in Chicago 1900 1967 University of Michigan Press pp 101 103 ISBN 978 0 472 11917 2 David A Rausch 1996 Friends Colleagues and Neighbors Jewish Contributions to American History Baker Books p 139 ISBN 978 0 8010 1119 1 Ari Katorza 21 January 2016 Walls of Sounds Leiber amp Stoller Phil Spector the Black Jewish Alliance and the Enlarging of America In Amalia Ran Moshe Morad eds Mazal Tov Amigos Jews and Popular Music in the Americas Brill pp 83 86 88 ISBN 978 90 04 20477 5 Jonathan Karp 20 August 2012 Blacks Jews and the Business of Race Music 1945 1955 In RebeccaKobrin ed Chosen Capital The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism Rutgers University Press p 141 ISBN 978 0 8135 5329 0 John Michael Runowicz 2010 Forever Doo wop Race Nostalgia and Vocal Harmony University of Massachusetts Press pp 45 48 ISBN 978 1 55849 824 2 Ken Emerson 26 September 2006 Always Magic in the Air The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era Penguin Publishing Group pp 11 13 ISBN 978 1 101 15692 6 Jon Stratton 5 July 2017 Jews Race and Popular Music Taylor amp Francis p 43 ISBN 978 1 351 56170 9 Eric L Goldstein Deborah R Weiner 28 March 2018 On Middle Ground A History of the Jews of Baltimore JHU Press p 281 ISBN 978 1 4214 2452 1 a b c Robert Cherry Jennifer Griffith Summer 2014 Down to Business Herman Lubinsky and the Postwar Music Industry Journal of Jazz Studies 10 1 1 4 doi 10 14713 JJS V10I1 84 S2CID 161459134 Barbara J Kukla 2002 Swing City Newark Nightlife 1925 50 Rutgers University Press p 153 ISBN 978 0 8135 3116 8 Steven Lee Beeber 2006 The Heebie jeebies at CBGB s A Secret History of Jewish Punk Chicago Review Press p 43 ISBN 978 1 55652 613 8 Steven Lee Beeber 2006 The Heebie jeebies at CBGB s A Secret History of Jewish Punk Chicago Review Press p 16 ISBN 978 1 55652 613 8 a b Evan Rapport 24 November 2020 Damaged Musicality and Race in Early American Punk University Press of Mississippi pp 106 107 ISBN 978 1 4968 3123 1 Evan Rapport 24 November 2020 Damaged Musicality and Race in Early American Punk University Press of Mississippi pp 116 117 ISBN 978 1 4968 3123 1 Peter Doggett 25 November 2013 Lou Reed The Defining Years Omnibus Press p 46 ISBN 978 1 78323 084 6 Vladimir Bogdanov Chris Woodstra Stephen Thomas Erlewine eds 2002 All Music Guide to Rock The Definitive Guide to Rock Pop and Soul Backbeat Books p 942 ISBN 978 0 87930 653 3 Ellen Koskoff 25 September 2017 The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music The United States and Canada Taylor amp Francis p 591 ISBN 978 1 351 54414 6 The Doo Wop Box I Rhino Records Inc liner notes by Bob Hyde Billy Vera and others 1993 Holden Stephen 29 May 1994 POP VIEW The Deep Forbidden Music How Doo Wop Casts Its Spell The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 26 September 2017 Buck Ram manager of Penguins and Platters interviewed on the Pop Chronicles 1969 The Monotones The Monotones Biography Albums Streaming Links AllMusic Retrieved 10 October 2019 Joel Whitburn 2010 The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits Billboard Books p 190 ISBN 978 0 8230 8554 5 Joel Whitburn 2010 The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits Billboard Books p 880 ISBN 978 0 8230 8554 5 Gilliland John 1969 Show 25 The Soul Reformation Phase two the Motown story Part 4 audio Pop Chronicles University of North Texas Libraries Philip Lambert 19 March 2007 Inside the Music of Brian Wilson The Songs Sounds and Influences of the Beach Boys Founding Genius Bloomsbury Publishing p 28 ISBN 978 1 4411 0748 0 Philip Lambert 7 October 2016 Good Vibrations Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in Critical Perspective University of Michigan Press pp 66 67 ISBN 978 0 472 11995 0 Whitburn Joel The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits Billboard Books New York 1992 pp 42 amp 381 Fred Schruers 17 November 2015 Billy Joel The Definitive Biography Crown Archetype p 172 ISBN 978 0 8041 4021 8 Applebome Peter 29 February 2012 A Doo Wop Shop Prepares to Close Signaling the End of a Fading Genre The New York Times Retrieved 5 March 2012 Levinson Paul 4 March 2012 Doo Wop Forever Infinite Regress Retrieved 21 March 2012 Ruben Funkahuatl Guevara 13 April 2018 Confessions of a Radical Chicano Doo Wop Singer University of California Press p 81 83 ISBN 978 0 520 96966 7 Newman Steve 13 January 2010 Four Quarters on a roll YourOttawaRegion com Retrieved 29 April 2012 McNeir D Kevin 26 April 2012 Street Corner Renaissance takes doo wop to new levels The Miami Times Archived from the original on 28 January 2013 Retrieved 29 April 2012 Mikael Wood 28 July 2013 Review Bruno Mars brings Moonshine Jungle to Staples Center Los Angeles Times Retrieved 4 June 2014 David Toop 13 April 2000 4 The evolving language of rap In John Potter Jonathan Cross eds The Cambridge Companion to Singing Cambridge University Press p 43 ISBN 978 0 521 62709 2 Further reading EditThis further reading section may contain inappropriate or excessive suggestions that may not follow Wikipedia s guidelines Please ensure that only a reasonable number of balanced topical reliable and notable further reading suggestions are given removing less relevant or redundant publications with the same point of view where appropriate Consider utilising appropriate texts as inline sources or creating a separate bibliography article May 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message Baptista Todd R 1996 Group Harmony Behind the Rhythm and Blues New Bedford Massachusetts TRB Enterprises ISBN 0 9631722 5 5 Baptista Todd R 2000 Group Harmony Echoes of the Rhythm and Blues Era New Bedford Massachusetts TRB Enterprises ISBN 0 9706852 0 3 Cummings Tony 1975 The Sound of Philadelphia London Eyre Methuen Engel Ed 1977 White and Still All Right Scarsdale New York Crackerjack Press Gribin Anthony J and Matthew M Shiff 1992 Doo Wop The Forgotten Third of Rock n Roll Iola Wisconsin Krause Publications Keyes Johnny 1987 Du Wop Chicago Vesti Press Lepri Paul 1977 The New Haven Sound 1946 1976 New Haven Connecticut self published McCutcheon Lynn Ellis 1971 Rhythm and Blues Arlington Virginia Warner Jay 1992 The Da Capo Book of American Singing Groups New York Da Capo Press 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