This column first appeared in October 2009.
My sister called me some months ago; she was at a concert, and a song that one of the “bands” sang reminded her of my friend and me. The band was singing, “What’s Your Name,” by Don and Juan, and we owned that song. We were “doo-wop” singers.
My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “doo-wop” in this way:
“A style of pop music marked by the use of nonsense phrases as the main line or as harmony, which originated in the US in the 1950s.”
My buddy and I did not know that what we sang was “doo-wop,” as the term was not in vogue on the streets we roamed. We just found every hollow hallway and sang, “doo doo wop- (snap, snap) doo doo wop…”
Whatever our musical tastes were in the Sixties, we remember the groups that sang in that way, for we loved the harmonic convergence of voices. We bought the 45s, and played them in our rooms, hoping that our parents would not come in, and listened for the harmonies.
When I was young, we had “groups”: guys (mostly) who came together to sing. We were not “boy bands,” and we emulated The Penguins (“Earth Angel”), Frankie Lyman and The Teenagers, (“Why Do Fools Fall In Love”), The Flamingos, (“If I Can’t Have You”), the Skyliners, (“Since I Don’t Have You”), The Marcels, (“Blue Moon”), The Jive Five, (“My True Story”) and The Five Satins (“In The Still Of the Night”).
When I was a student at Indiana University Southeast, I joined the University Chorale. It was a disaster. I can sing, but I cannot read music. Doo-wop singers did not read; we sang. We listened for the harmony, and entered the moment at the time that music would be made.
It might be commonly assumed that doo-wop music was made exclusively by black artists, but there were many memorable white bands. The Capris sang “There’s A Moon Out Tonight”; The Fleetwoods hit the charts with “Come Softly to Me.” Mr. Blue and The Crests were one of the first integrated doo-wop groups — black, Puerto Rican and Italian, and scored with “Sixteen Candles.”
I have sung at weddings and funerals, in churches and at casual gatherings; my musical tastes are eclectic, ranging from straight-ahead jazz to alt-rock. My iPod may be a mystery to my eldest daughter, but my sister remembers the years of my youth, when my friend and I made every hollow hallway our doo-wop Carnegie Hall.
cjon3acd@att.net