I was watching 80s cartoon themes on YouTube, and I realized that a lot of 80s cartoons had doo-wop in them, either in the theme, or in musical numbers.
Why did a lot of 80s cartoons have doo-wop?
Could you share an example with us?
A cappella acts we’re definitely a thing in the 1980’s.
Indeed – the Nylons were pretty popular, as was Rockapella. The latter performed on the PBS kids’ show “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” (based on the computer game), though that was in the '90s.
Muppet Babies and Heathcliff had doo-wop themes. G1 MLP had a couple of doo-wop songs in Call Upon the Seaponies, and Nothing Can Stop the Smooze.
What show is that? I don’t recognize the acronym.
Gen 1 of My Little Pony.
It also wasn’t a cartoon. However, their name, Rockapella, is how I learned what a-cappella was. To be clear, I don’t think I learned what a-cappella meant, but ‘do you know why they’re called Rockapella’ was a common factoid that was often passed around during the years the show was on the air.
Yeah, I should have clarified that.
Getting back to the OP, I think it was probably just a function of doo-wop having a resurgence in the '80s. In addition to the a cappella / doo-wop groups mentioned above, Levi’s had a popular ad campaign for 501 jeans in the '80s, some of which used doo-wop music.
Wasn’t there a rockabilly revival in the 80s?
In the early '80s, yes, largely via the Stray Cats.
Early 80s concurrent with post-punk/new wave. Often the same artists.
WAG but it seems to me that the people who would have been in charge of producing things like cartoons in the 80s are the same people who happened to grow up with doo-wop music
True – you reminded me that Dave Edmunds, among others, did some rockabilly songs.
This is what I came in to say but DCnDC put it more succinctly than I could have.
Nick absolutely LOVED using Doo-Wop bumpers for a couple of decades, up until the late 90’s.
Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” is running through my head right now and it got a lot of airplay where I lived around 1983 or 1984. In the 80s, the oldies stations still played a lot of songs from the late 50s and early 60s and no doubt children were familiar with many of these songs their parents listened to.
I think DCnDC is right about the people in charge of producing cartoons in the 80s happened to grow up with do-wop music. Kind of like how a lot of movies today use classic rock from what producers listened to when they were teens.
The Muppet Babies idea and theme song were inspired by a scene in 1984’s The Muppets Take Manhattan, which also featured baby muppets singing a doo-wop song:
I wonder if there was a particular doo-wop song in the 1980s that kicked off the genre’s resurgence in popularity. Maybe Billy Joel’s For the Longest Time (mentioned @Odesio) was it.
Then there’s Happy Days which was producing new episodes until 1984. And throughout the 70s Sha Na Na still had some popularity. Maybe do-wop just didn’t have time to fade from the public consciousness in the 80s as it largely has now.
When then IMO, translated nicely into a larger Swing revival that brought ska along with it. All a ton of fun music to listen to and made for great concerts. Brian Setzer opened for Tom Petty on one of his tours which was great. Seeing people all dressed up in '30-40’s era clothes and having clearly rehearsed their dancing for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was always entertaining.