Doo Wop and Vocal Groups
Frankie Lymon: I’m Not A Juvenile Delinquent: The Death of Frankie Lymon
Obituary by Bill Millar, Soul Music Monthly, March 1968
THE LAST TWO months have been sad times for blues, rock and soul fans all the world over. All three idioms have had their brutal ...
Jive Five, The, Flamingos, The: The Jive Five: Where Are You Now
Comment by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, September 1969
To the editor, R 'n' B World, New York. ...
Cadillacs, The: The Cadillacs: Speedo's Back In Town
Interview by Bill Millar, Record Mirror, February 1972
EARL CARROLL is still a rocker. The other Coasters wear Afros but Mr. Earl's hair is black, shiny and slickered back. Thumbing through a copy ...
Persuasions, The: The Persuasions: Street Corner Symphony
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
THE PERSUASIONS ceased to be a pleasant, though strange, acappella curiosity with their last album, We Came to Play. That album took a more pop ...
Acappella: The Rise And Fall Of Acappella
Guide by Bill Millar, Record Mirror, June 1972
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, 1954. Five young men stood around a tape recorder in a church cellar and gang. They couldn't afford a band but wouldn't ...
Persuasions, The: The Persuasions: Street Corner Symphony (Island)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, International Times, June 1972
THE PERSUASIONS are a five-strong black vocal group who perform acappella. Their album Street Corner Symphony is just what it says: a set of songs ...
Persuasions, The: The Persuasions: Spread The Word (Capitol)
Review by Loraine Alterman, New York Times, December 1972
GHETTO KIDS don't have parents who can spare a few hundred dollars for an electric guitar like their suburban counterparts. But they do possess an ...
Clyde McPhatter: Atlantic Masters (Atlantic)
Review by Charlie Gillett, NME, March 1973
WELL, IS SINGING coming back or not? The signs are, maybe yes. Billy Paul, for instance, and the Chi-Lites, Stylistics, and Detroit Emeralds. ...
Coasters, The: The Coasters: Atlantic Masters (Atlantic).
Review by Charlie Gillett, NME, March 1973
HOW CRUEL fate is. At the very moment that Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are proving themselves to be perfectly tuned in to 1973, with ...
Review by Greg Shaw, Rolling Stone, March 1973
DION WAS the original punk. Stand him up next to his contemporary male teen idols – Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland, Bobby Rydell, ...
Review by Gene Sculatti, Creem, June 1973
YEARS AGO, Mad ran a feature on "What Kind of Parents Will Today's Teenagers Make?" It depicted a pair of graying, pot-bellied rockers in leathers, ...
Persuasions, The: The Persuasions: Big Legs 'n' Bad Asses
Profile and Interview by Andrew Tyler, NME, October 1973
WE'RE BACKSTAGE at Birmingham's Odeon, logjammed into a feeble grey van – a constable and sergeant at the controls – and now we're going to ...
Marcels, The: The Marcels: Bom Baba Bom
Retrospective by Penny Reel, Let It Rock, February 1975
1961. Rock'n'roll was dead and buried. The Beatles weren't even a twinkle in Epstein's eye. Pop was Kenny Ball and Anne Shelton, Acker Bilk and ...
Doo-wop: Still White & Alright
Retrospective by Bill Millar, Let It Rock, May 1975
FIRST, A BOOK. Despite the comparatively recent growth industry in rock'n'roll literature, we still don't have a half-way decent encyclopaedia worthy of the name. The ...
Darts, The: The Darts: Sheer Dart attack
Profile by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, October 1977
DOO-WOP was a term applied to the singing style of American R 'n' B vocal groups of the Fifties, originating in the fact that the ...
Persuasions, The: The Dying Art Of Friendly Persuasions
Interview by John Morthland, Rolling Stone, November 1977
NEW YORK – PERSUASIONS leader Jerry Lawson checked the refrigerator in his Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment one recent morning and found it nearly empty. ...
Darts, The: The Darts: Getting To The Point With The Darts
Profile by John Tobler, ZigZag, December 1977
THIS IS GOING to be a two part feature. This is the first part, as the more astute among you have probably already worked out, ...
Prisonaires, The: The Prisonaires: Five Beats Behind Bars
Retrospective by Martin Hawkins, Melody Maker, January 1978
With doo-wop increasing in popularity, MARTIN HAWKINS reveals the 'inside' story of the Prisonaires, one of the South's finest vocal harmony groups. ...
Retrospective by Bill Millar, History of Rock, The, 1982
White vocal groups of the Fifties embraced a variety of styles and sounds, ranging from adult pop groups (the Ames Brothers, the Four Aces, the ...
Sleevenotes by Pete Grendysa, Bear Family, 1991
THE AMERICAN RHYTHM & blues vocal group was a development of the Pop groups that enjoyed heavy popularity from the 1910's into the 1950's. When ...
Del Vikings, The: The Del Vikings
Retrospective by Pete Grendysa, Goldmine, February 1992
THE GOLDEN DREAM of rock 'n' roll goes like this: a few guys or girls get together, work out some songs, are discovered and recorded, ...
Sleevenotes by Pete Grendysa, Bear Family, 1995
IN JANUARY, 1956, a skinny and bespectacled 16-year old laid down his dollar and got 11 cents change and a shiny new 45rpm record (resplendent ...
Ruben and the Jets: For Real/Con Safos
Review by Miles, MOJO, May 1995
WHEN FRANK ZAPPA released his 1968 Cruising With Ruben & The Jets album of parodies of '50s R&B and doo wop, a number of radio ...
Sleevenotes by Pete Grendysa, MCA Records, 1997
THEY DIDN'T ROCK; they didn't roll. Their singing had nothing of the street corner or local school yard about it. With roots in a little-known ...
Sleevenotes by Pete Grendysa, Collectables, 1999
ON A COLD JANUARY NIGHT in 1970, a journey of thousands of miles finally came to an end. It was just another crime statistic in ...
Sleevenotes by Pete Grendysa, Collectables, 2000
DURING THE HEIGHT of the vocal group era, groups could be found singing on every streetcorner, hoping to be discovered and make that one big ...
Persuasions, The: The Persuasions: Perpetual Harmony
Profile and Interview by j. poet, San Francisco Chronicle, May 2006
"THE PERSUASIONS! Aren't you that old do-wop group?" ...
Clyde McPhatter, Drifters, The: Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters
Sleevenotes by Gene Sculatti, Collector's Choice Music, August 2007
"I fell in love with the man's voice. I toured with the group and watched Clyde and listened; finally I got a chance to join ...
Dells, The: Originals: The Dells
Retrospective by Mike Atherton, Echoes, 2008
THE RAYS, formed by five youngsters from Harvey, Illinois in 1952, were just one of the thousands of doo-wop groups springing up in America's cities ...
Sleevenotes by Gene Sculatti, Collector's Choice Music, July 2008
"I WAS 12 years old when I first heard Frankie Lymon singing 'Why Do Fools Fall in Love' on my grandmother's radio," wrote Ronnie Spector ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Catalog for Doug Aitken's Song 1 exhibition, June 2012
I WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD – a glam-rock brat awakening to the golden innocence of pre-Beatles American pop – when I shelled out for the ...
back to LIBRARY
Best Databases: RBP is Runner-up in Best Niche category
Video: Johnny Marr talks about Rock's Backpages
download eBooks and audio interviews
RBP on Spotify: The genius of Judee Sill
RBP Album Club in Chicago, June 30th: Paul Yamada and Liam (Plush) Hayes celebrate a Curtis Mayfield classic
Essential Listening: Roy Trakin meets the Replacements in '87
Essential Reading: Andrew Smith's history of the first dotcom boom
RBP Album Club, July 11th: Nick Hornby and Nick Coleman celebrate Southside Johnny's debut
Join the Facebook group now