Theoretically Speaking, S5:E6:

What Makes Doo-Wop, Doo-Wop ?

So…

…bring us here:

To street corners in the 1950s.

Barbershop started with men gathering in, well, barber shops. In the 50s, teenagers in east coast cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, gathered under street lamps. As soon as it got dark enough for the lights to come on, groups would get together and sing.

And the groups with the best harmonies got the most girls. These singers are old men now, but still tell their stories with gleams in their eyes. They appreciated the brotherhood and camaraderie of singing with their neighbors, but the girls made it extra special.

Unlike barbershop, doo-wop harmonies didn’t go heavy on the dominant seventh chord.

They were more inspired by the crooners they heard on the radio, in terms of both rhythm and tone.

Early doo-wop followed the crooning style of slow ballads, but instead of a single singer and a band, doo-wop used four or more voices singing in harmony and no band at all.

Also, where barbershop groups sang in four part harmony, in doo-wop each member might have his own part separate from the others. There could be a long falsetto note over someone else singing “la las” or “na nas” or some other sound rhythmically. And these could be completely different from the main melody line.

The Orioles were the first doo-wop group to have a national hit with 1948’s “It’s Too Soon To Know.”

It was so popular that many groups covered it. 

I guess it’s better than having pennies thrown into your megaphone.

Many of these songs used the same chord pattern. It was a variant of the I-vi-ii-V pattern sometimes used in jazz, but they replaced the ii chord with a IV chord. In the key of C, that would be C, A minor, F, and G. You’ve heard it a million times whether you know it or not.

If you told a musician to play doo-wop chords, it’s probably what they’d play. Think of “Duke of Earl.“

Some groups learned that they sounded even better if they moved from the sidewalks to apartment building stairwells because the sound echoed off the walls. Bathrooms also added nice reverb. Subway stations, between trains, had good reverb, too, and that’s where The Crests were discovered in 1956. 

Studios often added reverb to make things sound bigger, and singing indoors mimics that studio reverb.

The speaker and the mic aren’t lined up directly across from each other, so the sound bounces off the walls irregularly before getting captured by the microphone.

The same sound hits the mic multiple times because it bounced off different surfaces. The few milliseconds difference adds warmth and makes everything sound bigger.

Though these groups usually sang a capella, instruments were often added in studio recordings.

A New York group called The Harp-Tones recorded two versions of “My Memories Of You.”

The recording industry had been around for over half a century, and through all that time they marketed music to adults.

There might be a kiddie song here or there, but no one thought about making music for teenagers. After all, teens didn’t have any money…

In 1956, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers became the first teenaged group to perform on national television. Appearing on The Frankie Laine Show, they burst into America’s living rooms by jumping over a wall to join the host. It was a youthful move, and unlike any entrance on television up to then. Kids noticed.

Unfortunately, the industry knew that kids and their parents didn’t understand how record contracts work. Artists signed their rights away without knowing, and without being told, what they were signing.

Anthony Gourdine of Little Anthony & The Imperials, whose first single “Tears On My Pillow” hit #4 and sold over a million copies, said, “Somebody got the money. It sure wasn’t me.”

Frankie Lymon was 13 years old when The Teenagers had their television debut. It led to more hits and tours but the band broke up the following year. There were many reasons, including their voices changing as they matured, but a main one was that their management thought Lymon could be a star on his own.

He had no hit songs without The Teenagers, and The Teenagers had no hits without Lymon.

Doo-wop songs often had a sing-speak part in the middle that talked directly to the singer’s object of desire.

These contrasting sections add variety and theatrical drama. In a way, it’s even more intimate than crooning. It’s tempting to say that these spoken parts were inspired by the recitative sections of operas, but it’s more likely to come from gospel.

Also, we can probably credit gospel’s call-and-response for the backing vocals in doo-wop. Instead of singing “Amen” or something similar, doo-wop groups used nonsense syllables, like “sh-boom,” “wah”, and of course, “doo.”

And “wop.”

The low volume of crooning allowed the harmonies to be softer than in barbershop.

So to get to the sweet voices under 1950s street lamps, we need the group harmonies of barbershop, the call-and-response and recitive of gospel, and the softer vocals of crooning. 

As with many of the genres we’ve looked at here, doo-wop was started in black communities.

Alan Freed was a radio DJ, first in Akron, then Cleveland, and then New York City.

His success is based on his love for white and black music, and playing both on the air. There was some backlash, especially in the south. 

Likewise, DJ Dick Clark began taking bands on the road in a series of bus tours.

On stage, black male singers had to look at the wall so they couldn’t be accused of looking at the local white women. The Flamingos had a huge hit with “I Only Have Eyes For You,” but they couldn’t put their photo on the album cover.

The Coasters, on their own tour, did a show in Dallas with a rope leading from the stage to the back of the hall, splitting the audience in two. Whites were on one side, and blacks were on the other. Integrated couples danced holding hands over the rope.

Audiences, kids really, recognized that music was only one part of society, and there was a whole lot more that needed to change. Removing a rope is one thing, fixing a broken society is another.

Doo-wop and blues and country and gospel merged into rock and roll. You can hear those doo-wop harmonies in the surf music of The Beach Boys, the soul of Motown, and even early Beatles. 

And it was The Beatles and the British invasion that killed doo-wop as a popular genre.

While its legacy is in every current boy band or girl group – even the ones from Korea – vocal harmony isn’t necessarily the focus anymore. It’s just an ingredient.

In 1969, Sha Na Na appeared at Woodstock.

That’s how much the 60s changed everything.

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