Share Your Favorite Doo-Wop Oldie With Me?

[Biggirl]

People who are enjoying this thread may also enjoy The Sing Off on NBC. It’s a singing contest for a capella groups.

Here is last year’s winner, Nota, singing All I Want For Christmas.

This year I’m behind The Talk of the Town.

[gonzomax]

Yakkety Yak
Young Blood
My Prayer
Bo Diiddley
Bristol Stomp
Great Pretender
Rama Lama Ding Dong
16 Candles
Life Could be a Dream
Come Softly to me
Get a Job
I was my time.

[Johnny_Angel]

@Lute Skywatcher

Here’s a girl group in the realm of Doo-Wop:

Black & White Thunderbird

Flip Flip

Little Boy of Mine

Well, it’s vocal harmony anyway. Doo-wop is generally considered a sub genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll. If you like Doo-wop, chances are you’re going to like small-group vocal harmony in general. And it’s true, right? This clean, sweet completely unsexualized, unrebellious, totally white sound does have the difference that makes people talk about Doo-wop instead of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

@Zelski

I’ve got two I want to mention.

First off, the Platters are very famous for lots of good songs, but I feel that their best song by far is Twilight Time. However, this song seems to be overshadowed in most people’s minds by Only You (and You Alone), The Great Pretender, the Magic Touch, or Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, none of which are as nearly as beautiful.

I can hardly fault your choice here, but I would still pick out Smoke Gets in Your Eyes as the best of the Platters. And I can still summon from my childhood an amazement at what a good song it is. However, I am always bugged by the line “Laughing friends deride/Tears I cannot hide.” You get that in old songs – friends laughing at your pain. Were friends just assholes in the 50’s?

@Zelski

The other song I want to mention is not nearly so famous: the Jarmels singing A Little Bit of Soap. Great backup sounds, three verses, and an awesome reprise of the third verse with heart-rending lead vocals all packed into about two minutes.

I’m not sure even the Platters are famous anymore. I heard a DJ the other day say that his kids probably didn’t know the song Sh-boom, but his grandkids did because of the movie Cars. In addition to being an exemplar of the genre, it was the first song I ever heard suggested as “The First Rock ‘n’ roll Record”. But this stuff is just slipping out of the collective consciousness.

While this thread is still active, let me call attention to a group that I was not aware of and which never got play even during the surge of interest in Doo-wop of the 80’s even on oldies radio: The Nutmegs. For a group that produced some of the most astonishing harmonies of the Doo-wop era is too bizarre to be tragic – if you have not heard of the Nutmegs, I submit that alien visitations, if they turned out to be true, would be less astonishing than the fact that you have never heard of the Nutmegs. But maybe you’ll recognize one of these more often anthologized pieces:

The Nutmegs - Story Untold
The Nutmegs - A Ship of Love

But for the rest, I’ll skip the stuff that’s merely, in my opinion, good. This is the stuff I think you should be aware of. In a word, “Damn.”

The Nutmegs - My Sweet Dream
The Nutmegs - Down in Mexico (acapella) - from vinyl.
The Nutmegs - Hello - not as good as the acapella version which I don’t see on YouTube
The Nutmegs - Shifting Sands - A 1972 Acapella recording that surprisingly rivals the earlier recording. Damn.
The Nutmegs - The Way Love Should Be - there’s an acapella version out there, but even this version, damn.
The Nutmegs - Let me Tell You (acapella)
The Nutmegs - You’re Crying (acapella)

Sadly, I can’t find Wide Hoop Skirt on YouTube at all.