The 70s: Them schoolboy pops pull out all the stops on a Friday night

Proof that I am a child of the 70s is that my favorite doo-wop album was released in 1971. Maybe it took me that long to get it.

Doo-wop, ostensibly deeply rooted in the 50s and 60s, was the sound of teenagers harmonizing on the street corner when singers actually had to be able to sing. The sound of an innocent age: teenagers in love in the still of the night.

And it sadly sort of died when the British Invasion arrived.

When I lived in the Bronx in the early 90s, I wandered over to Little Italy and Belmont Avenue and tried to imagine these sounds flowing through the streets. What a time that must have been. 

Dion's backup group, a decade after their heyday, provided a deeply satisfying and moving compendium of the music that brims with heart and more than a little soul. 

"Cigars. Acappella, Candy" is a record is full of purity, spirit and humor, as evidenced by their version of "My Sweet Lord" that includes "He's So Fine." Yes, of course the tunes meld beautifully. "Street Corner Symphony," the medley that ends the album, summarizes doo-wop and provides a fitting epitaph for the music itself.

This was doo-wop's last gasp. But what it glorious one it was.

Did I forget to mention that the entire record is acappella, except for one instrument? 

A kazoo.

Wild and innocent

Well, the usual end-of-year best song and album lists are coming out and, as par for the course, most of it seems like a foreign language to me. Oh, I’ve heard a few things from Arcade Fire, Cee Lo Green, Vampire Weekend and the Black Keys, among others.

All I can say is . . . really? It all does less than zero for me. It’s just not there, and it can’t all be old age.

Or can it?

So, I go back; back when the music did something for me. Caused me to dream, to laugh and to cry.

Doo wop seemed ancient was I first became really aware of it, sometime in the mid-60s.

So what does make it now that it is 45 years later?

To pop culture, it certainly is from another long, long ago era, almost Paleozoic.

Still, the best examples of this music resonate deeply and emotionally with me: I can hear the sounds of a first crush, heartbreak, love, longing and an innocence that has forever vanished from the American landscape. This was freedom, filled with endless possibilities and the Sound of Young America long before Motown.

As with many other cultural things from the past, I used to think doo wop was the stuff of ridicule, only treasured by nostalgia-fueled yahoos spinning 45s at sock hops. Until I heard what I had been missing and became one of them.

With today’s cacophonous and often vile musical scene assaulting the airwaves, my kids (and many others) may never understand the purity and essence of doo wop.

But it won’t be my from my lack of trying.

Farther On’s top 11 doo-wop songs of all time:

11. There’s a Moon Out Tonight – The Capris (featuring a trademark of great doo-wop, a brilliant ending)
10. Little Star – the Elegants (never has a song based on a nursery rhyme sounded so good)
9. Denise – Randy and the Rainbows (where have you gone, Denice LeFrak?)
8. In the Still of the Night – the Five Satins (only 4 Satins in this video; the national anthem of make-out music in the 50s)
7. I Wonder Why – Dion and the Belmonts (the unforgettable opening is one of the great moments in rock and roll history. And Dion: cool personified)
6. Whispering Bells – the Dell Vikings (“plays his guitar like a ringin’ a bell”)
5. Since I Don’t Have You – the Skyliners (two minutes and forty-one seconds of heartache, complete with swelling swings and piano triplets)
4. Earth Angel – the Penguins (what a coda: “You, you, you”)
3. A Thousand Miles Away – The Heartbeats (a cappella! “rat a tat…”)
2. So Much in Love – the Tymes (first romance set to music, just beautiful)
1. My True Story – the Jive Five (“love will make you happy, love will make you cry;” one of the greatest records ever made)

Strictly 100: Number 13 – Doo wop