Doo-Wop Regains the Ears of American Listeners

Of all the roots in the headwaters of rock ‘n’ roll, it is by far the most basic:

A blend of voices, a tune, a rhythm.

Rap may need only a turntable and a microphone, but doo-wop needs only a microphone.

Named after the nonsense words that often formed the backing vocals (“wop” being prominent in Dion’s “I Wonder Why”), doo-wop grew out of the black vocal-harmony groups of the late 1940s.

It flourished commercially at the end of the ‘50s and early ‘60s before the electric guitar, Motown and, especially, the British invasion wiped it off the charts.

Cherished by collectors and die-hard fans, doo-wop never quite went away. But it’s never returned with the impact it has today, either.

Rhino Records’ first “Doo-Wop” boxed set, released in 1994, was its first set to go gold in sales, with more than half a million sold. Rhino followed its success with a second set in 1996 that was nearly as successful, and “Doo-Wop, Box III” (Rhino, four discs, $69.95) has just been unleashed.

Doo-wop’s biggest boost recently came from the TV special “Doo-Wop 50,” produced by WQED television in Pittsburgh. In what may be the most influential TV special since “Motown 25,” “Doo-Wop 50” became the most lucrative fund-raiser in public television history, drawing more than $20 million in pledges.

Richard Nader, the man who created the oldies concert format in New York more than 30 years ago, credits the PBS special for doo-wop mania.

“Nobody had seen any of these acts on TV since Dick Clark played them in 1960, ’61 and ‘62,” he says. “And it was perfectly suited for the PBS demographic, [people] in their 40s, 50s and 60s.”

The program brought some groups together that had not sung in years and revived careers in a way they never thought possible.

“Every one of the acts--the Skyliners, Penguins, Dubs, Chantels’ Arlene Smith--reported that they had increased bookings and increased demand in places they thought they’d never work,” Nader says. “It meant a whole rejuvenation of their careers.”

It also meant new markets for the kind of doo-wop revivals Nader has been putting together in mostly the New York area for decades.

The era is ready for a doo-wop revival because the baby boomers who enjoyed the original sounds are at the perfect age to be reflective of those days, Nader says.

And for them, “the slow songs of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s are more in tune with their physical movements and capacities and memories than the fast songs.”

Nader was the one who created the Rock and Roll Revival concerts in 1969, at which Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino played to bigger audiences than in their ‘50s heyday. Rick Nelson, in his song “Garden Party,” described one such event.

For years, Nader says, he wouldn’t think of booking a big revival show without a high-energy headliner such as Berry, Lewis or Domino, who were all prominently featured in his 1971 concert film “Let the Good Times Roll.” But doo-wop’s sudden popularity has made them unnecessary.

“The music that satisfies the audience’s nostalgic urge are the ballads, the doo-wops, the group harmonies,” Nader says.

Further, the songs that stir the most memories don’t necessarily have to be the No. 1 songs. He points to the Five Satins’ “In the Still of the Night.” The classic song, recorded in a New Haven, Conn., church basement, never got higher than No. 17 in 1955 but has been consistently voted the No. 1 song of all time by oldies fans of New York’s WCBS in recent decades.

Singers of Yesteryear Stick to the Old Tunes

How do the singers hold up, though? And how many groups have original members?

“They’re actually better,” says Nader. “They have richer voices; they’re stronger; they’re often veterans on the circuit and worked together for 10, 25 or 30 years.

“The only weak part is there are sometimes young musicians backing them up who don’t have the recollection or the feeling for the original sound,” Nader says. “They might have an electronic keyboard instead of a piano, or the sax riff won’t be right. But the vocals will knock your socks off.”

As far as the authenticity of the groups, he says, “I always have two or three of the originals in each group.”

Nader prohibits the acts from presenting any new material. “People are not there to hear that,” Nader says, as Rick Nelson found out. “He disrupted the nostalgic atmosphere of the evening to play ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ on piano.”

Will the vocal harmony groups of today--the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and 98 Degrees--warrant the kind of lifelong devotion that will mean revival tours 40 years into the new century?

“I don’t know if the memories are the same today as they were 40 years ago, with the senses bombarded by TV, telephone, faxes, computers. Our lives are attached to many other things as well as to music these days.”

The third “Doo-Wop” boxed set from Rhino was in the works before the success of the PBS show, says James Austin, a Rhino executive who helped compile the box. But the success of the show certainly heightened a sense of anticipation for the set.

More than 200 songs were included on the first two “Doo-Wop” boxes, he says, but Rhino was still able to begin the new one with more than two dozen charting doo-wop songs that didn’t make the first two, including such big hits as the Platters’ “(You’ve Got) The Magic Touch,” the Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby” and Dion’s “Donna the Prima Donna.”

What is it about doo-wop that engenders all this excitement?

“A lot of today’s music has gotten away from the kind of spontaneity that doo-wop had,” Austin says. “Doo-wop had good harmony and good, clever songwriting. And people love good harmony. It evokes a good time, a good feeling. You really have to hate doo-wop to not respond to it. Almost anybody can hear a doo-wop song; it really reaches a place no other music does.”