I guess I started liking rock n roll around 1955 , when Alan Freed was on the radio.. It was 1010 WINS on AM radio. It was on in the evening. Bill Haley and the Comets were rockin' with Rock Around the Clock. They say that song was the start of Rock and Roll. 1955 had a weird mix of music, Bill Haley, then non- rock and roll like the Four Aces singing Love is a Many Splendid Thing. A favorite of my parents. The Penguins doing the classic Oldie called Earth Angel. Chuck Berry doing Maybelline. Then Johnny Desmond doing a weird song like Yellow Rose of Texas. I would take my portable radio, a big Emerson and blast it. I remember that radio, it was light and dark brown plastic, it took flashlight batteries, and it had a plug that hid away inside it , when you wanted to go portable. We would carry these fairly big portables to school to listen to the World Series. I remember listening to the 1956 World Series when Don Larsen pitched a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. I think it was the only post season no- hitter EVER until 2010 when Roy Halladay did it. Back to radios and music. These radios were smaller than boom boxes, and they had tubes inside them. Then in 1959, my Uncle Jack bought me the most awesome radio. It was Japanese. It was a SONY. This was an unheard of company. All radios were American or German before Sony came along.This radio did not have tubes, it was an 8 transistor radio. It was so thin. Thinner than a pack of cigarettes About 5inches long, 1/2 inch thick maybe 3.5 inches high. That's about how I remember it, I could probably look it up and get the exact specs but basically this thing was small and cool.
It started the trend of tiny radios.It was an AM radio, FM existed but mostly for classical music. In 1956 Rock and Roll was really going strong, now most of the records playing were more to my liking. You had Little Richard singin Long Tall Sally, and Elvis Presley doing Hound Dog. The Dells singing O What a Night, the great Doo Wop tune In the Still of the Night by the 5 Satins. Frankie Lymon with Why Do Fools Fall in Love and I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent.Elvis had about 6 hits maybe more in 1956. Alan Freed was going strong. I'd keep a radio under my pillow, listening to Come Go With Me by the Del Vikings or Over the Mountain by Johnny and Joe. My mom would think i was sleeping but I'd be rockin' out. There were great Doo Wop type tunes before 1955, but I didnt know about them until the early 60s, songs like The Wind by the Diablos (1954), Goodnite Sweetheart by the Spaniels (1954) Sincerely by the Moonglows (1954). The 50s had the great DOO WOP hits. a few of my favorites were Could This Be Magic by the Dubs (1957), Tonite Tonite by MelloKings (1957), I'm so Young by the Students (1958), There Goes My Baby by the Drifters(1958), Teardrops by Lee Andrews and the Hearts (1957) Dedicated to the one I Love by the Shirelles (1959), 1000 Miles Away by the Heartbeats(1956) and Teenager in Love by Dion and the Belmonts (1959) .
OK , yeah I know I can go on and on with great songs. Time went on and from 1963- 1965 me and my friends discovered great echos in the hallways of the projects. There was a song i think by Billy Joel about "lookin for an echo". That was so true. All we wanted to do was hit harmony. 3 guys was good for harmony. You had a baritone and 2nd tenor and a 1st tenor. If we had a few more singers we had a bass, a falsetto, and a lead singer. The harmony was what counted. It was kind of strange but for our purposes we didnt need a lead singer with a great voice, we just needed him to lead us so we could do the background. The first songs most of us would do, were songs that we all sang the words to like Fine Little Girl by the Arcades, or You Baby You by the Excellents. We also liked to do songs like Roaches. " Roaches crawlin over my motherf'n walls tryin to get to my mother fn balls,etc
We used to hear some of the groups that made it , when we went to 35th St. beach in Rockaway and hear the Shangra La's ( leader of the pack) singing. Or around Manhattan Beach the Emotions singing Echo. Vito and the Salutations were real good and they sang Unchained Melody. There was a guy named Speedo from Canarsie who was the lead of the Impalas ( Sorry , I Ran All The Way Home) he started a group called The Caravelles, they were amazing. I went to see them in Bushwick at the 7 Martyrs Church. Me and my friends stood out in the crowd, since we were the only white folk there. But hey , it was harmony and we loved harmony. Joey and the Excitements were a fantastic ENY group. Nino and the Ebbtides were from ENY and had a hit called Jukebox Saturday Nite. Mike and the Holidays who were friends of mine had an album out. Mike had an amazingly great voice. One nite me, Elk, Moony, Woody, and Mike were singing in Elk's house. It was being recorded, we did When We Got Married by the Dreamlovers, it was absolutely amazing. That was the best harmony I was ever part of. My regular group was the Escapades formally Al and the Candlelites. I sang bass for that group. Did a thing like Bom Bom Dip Di Dip di Dip BoDoDDo Bom, that was my part when we did My Girl by the Eternals a fast version of it. That was me Fuzzy, Mass, Big Wick and Lil Wick. we had good harmony, but low harmony. When Me Mass and Woody hit harmony it was higher notes and really good. Me and a guy named Chup had good harmony together and with Woody hittin the high notes it was all good. We liked singing, " just to kinds of people in the world( by Little Anthony), Your Way ( Camelots). My group Johnny and the Pumps, well we did Sunday Kind of Love (DelVikings) one guy in the group had a heavy Brooklyn accent and the first line of the song said THROUGH with my old love and he would say TROO with my old love, if we didnt laugh we got through the song. That group was discoverd by this guy Frank , he became our manager and we recorded a few demos. We had high hopes of becoming famous. We sang and sang. Our friends Johnny and the Moonlites a Puerto Rican group was really good, we used to hear them sing at concerts in Bklyn and they got an album made. Most of the time we would meet up, and just sing backgrounds like bom bo bom shoobee doo wah, bom bo bom shoobee doo wah,,, we didnt need words, just notes. The song Bells of Rosa Rita by the Admirations was a good Doo Wop song because they would chime off "ring out , ring out ring out" several times in the song. When groups did that you could really hear the harmony. Cleveland Street Boys sang well, they used to do a song about Reindeers drinking from a crystal stream, was real nice. They were a neighborhood gang, and 4 or 5 of them used to sing. I sang with them a few times.
If we got some wine, aka "singin juice" oh it helped us hit the high notes, and it sounded better.
Singing was one of the main things we did. We loved it. And those of us who were into the singin, or the listening to the Doo Wop sounds, still love it. We used to go to Times Square record store in Manhattan to buy what they called "credit records". These were hard to get records, and they would put a price on them. Stormy Weather by the 5 sharps was worth $500. If you had it youd get that much credit in the store. Slim , Anita, and Harold worked there. It was famous for Doo Wop.
We used to steal alot of 45's from parties, and from record stores. My friend Crutch taught me that you dont steal one record, you should pile up a bunch and take 20 at a time. we had record stealing jackets, with big slits in the lining to just throw them in. Crutch was never suspected, because he was on crutches. That's the Polio dude I've talked about. He was the best. Anyway, we all had huge record collections. The singing Doo Wop even continued into the college days at LIU singing with a few of the guys "People Get Ready" by the Chambers brothers. And Super Bowl Sundays I still get together with Mooney , Woody and Chup and hit some harmony.
The Doo Wop lead singers had great voices. Then in the 60s, aside from Soul Music and Blues, the rock singers like Beatles, Stones ( who I love), etc, didnt have good voices, and couldnt hit harmony. They sang alot in unison , which is soooo not harmony. 50's groups all wore the same thing. All the bands dressed alike. That's why the movie "Up in Smoke" cracked me up when they needed outfits to play and they got waiter outfits , it was hilarious to me. The Stones were the first group I know of that went on TV, "the Clay Cole Show" and all wore different clothes, sweatshirts, jeans, t shirts, all wore different things. I really thought that was so great. Eric Burden and The Animals were the next ones to wear what they wanted ( House of the Rising Sun). Rock and Roll took a turn from Doo Wop, but it was a great turn.
The Danny and the Juniors song says it all " Rock and Roll is here to stay , it will never die"
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