AN APPRECIATION

It is a warm spring evening in St. Nicholas Park in Harlem. It is 1954, and on radios all over the city can be heard the sounds of Doris Day's "Secret Love," Patti Page's "Cross Over The Bridge" and Frank Sinatra's "Young At Heart." But, in Harlem, something else is brewing.

A local singing group led by a local boy named Clyde McPhatter has made a hit record, "Money Honey," which, although only heard on weak-signaled stations at the right hand end of the radio dial, is a song of which every kid in Harlem is keenly aware. Clyde is a professional singer, trained by vocal coach Billy Ward to be lead vocalist in Ward's Dominoes. Clyde quit that group when his compensation failed to match his growing fame, moving on to form the Drifters from among his Harlem gospel singing buddies, who also wanted to make some money, honey.

Unlike Clyde and his Drifters, the Crows, from 142nd Street were not professionally trained. Also unlike the Drifters, the Crows were amateurs. What skill they possessed was learned from listening to juke box hits and from other ad hoc groups which practiced under street lamps, on front stoops and in parks, like St. Nicholas. Like the Drifters, the Crows also made a record, "Gee," which would be their only hit. Today, almost fifty years later, their record is still heard on radio stations and compiled among anthologies of 50s rock'n'roll which name the Crows as one of the progenitors of a musical sub-genre called doo-wop.

What we now know as doo-wop, a term coined in the 70s by disc jockey Gus Gossert to differentiate the music of these talented amateur vocal groups from their more professional counterparts, is akin to what the world of painting calls "Naive Art."

Like popular music, art is sold today to fractionalized groups. Abstract paintings are purchased by nouveau riche Scarsdale or Beverly Hills housewives in colors to match their drapes, while limousine liberals fill their homes with primitive paintings celebrating "the Masses." Another sub-genre, falling somewhere below Primitive, is Naive. These paintings, lacking in the niceties, such as perspective and balance, can command astonishingly high prices at galleries from patrons who display artwork of seemingly equal skill on their refrigerators made by their own preschoolers.

Certain doo-wop records, many of which are the most primitive or, if you will, naive of their kind, can also fetch a king's ransom when auctioned among the cognoscenti.

Critics of the music decry the simplistic--some say stupid--lyrics, the out-of-tune vocalizing and the lack of variety from one song to another. None of this bothers either the true fan of doo-wop, for whom the songs bring up nostalgic memories of long-ago romance, or the cynical investor/dealer, who jacks up the prices of original 45s to astronomical heights.

The stereotypical doo-wop fan is blue-collar New York. He is no more than one step or two up or down the socioeconomic ladder from the guys who made the record . When the records were new, he ventured to the Apollo or the Brooklyn Paramount to see guys just like himself sing and do their choreorgraphy.

In this sense, doo-wop is a true urban folk music, much of the deeper, inner meaning of the songs falling somewhere between the lines of the simple "moon/June" lyrics. The genre's core intended audience--while they may not understand why--do intuit or "get" these subtleties. They know in their hearts when it's authentic and, most of the time, when it is contrived. That is not to say that a "contrived" vocal group record could not have been successful in its day. Many were, because they were marketed and sold to the fans of mass pop music on mainstream network TV shows like American Bandstand, but these were not necessarily true doo-wop records.

For a doo-wop record or group to be authentic, it must have that primitive edge of an unschooled, streetcorner performance, what today would be termed "street cred." Thus, musically sophisticated vocal groups, like the Ravens or the Four Freshmen should not technically be considered doo-wop. A doo-wop group should be, above all else, self-taught. The very successful Platters are an anomaly, in that, while professionally coached by their manager, Buck Ram and led by Tony Williams, one of the great voices of the 50s, the background singers always retained that off-pitch sound of the streets.

Blues or gospel-derived groups, like the Drifters, the Midnighters or the "5" Royales, should not, in a strict definition, be catagorized as doo-wop either, as the performances of such "acts" are of the manipulative school of church entertainment, again, betraying a more sophisticated way of going about things than the doo-woppers, who simply sang their songs, hoping for the best from their audiences and learning the various show biz skills on the job.

Like the greatest rock'n'roll acts, the best doo-wop groups attempt to rise beyond their collective ability, failing to realize or accept that they do not possess the skills to reach their aesthetic goals. In this struggle-and-failure, there lies tremendous power and beauty, the kind we see when a third baseman leaps, parallel to the ground, to catch a line drive, or a centerfielder slams into the wall, trying to steal that home run, heedless of the likelihood of pain and possible injury.

What lends credence to the Rolling Stones' claim to be the World's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Band is the fact that, despite their desire to be Muddy Waters or Don Covay, they are not and cannot ever be.

Somewhere within their struggle and inevitable failure lies their greatness. Witness the Magnificent Men, a white Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 60s band who played for black audiences at the Apollo to standing ovations, thanks to their uncanny ability to mimic any of the great black soul performers of the day. They achieved what the Stones only attempted, yet who made it to the Big Time? Do you now understand why? And what makes a doo-wop group doo-wop?

You talk to the old doo-wop singers, you ask the right questions, the ones which let them know you're not just one more know-nothing fan/geek, and then you listen to what they have to say about their art. And make no mistake, what the best of them do and have done is Art, although most of them would scoff at the conceit.

Harlem's Cadillacs say their first inspiration to become singers came from the cowboy movies they attended for a quarter every Saturday afternoon as kids. In that darkened theater, they saw and heard Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers and, in those cinematic moments, the future of Earl Carroll, Bobby Phillips and the others was sealed.  Lee Andrews, lead singer of Lee Andrews & the Hearts of Philadelphia, will tell you that he wanted to be Bing Crosby and patterned his singing style after der Bingle. As with the Rolling Stones, the magic is to be found in that tiny space where hopeful struggle meets failed attempt.

There is great magic and beauty in doo-wop. You don't have to be a high-school drop-out to hear it. You just have to open your heart and reach back to who you were the first time you fell in love, for another of the main components of doo-wop is its utter, guileless sincerity. Whenever the performers veer off into the land of glib entertainment and become too slick--groups like the Rivierias or the Fidelitys come to mind--we no longer believe it. And that, I guess, is what it all comes down to: they must mean it and we have to believe.

Billy Vera, 2000