CD Odyssey Disc 1823: Various Artists do Doo Wop
If there is a style of music that lifts your spirits more than Doo Wop, I don’t know what it is.
It’s been a lovely weekend full of musical encounters, planned and unplanned. Yesterday, I had an impromptu conversation about Austrian band Son of the Velvet Rat in the post office lineup, and later that evening spent time with friends sharing music.
Along the way I ran a few chores, and had the happy soundtrack of Doo Wop tunes to keep me company in the car. Here’s more about that.
Disc 1823 is…Doo Wop Vocal Group Greats
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Artist: Various Artists
Year of Release: 2005 but featuring music from 1951 to 1963
What’s up with the Cover? It’s Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers dressed up and ready to doo wop you in your earholes. Don’t worry – it feels good.
How I Came To Know It: There’s a section on my local record store (Ditch Records) where they have a whole pile of box sets from the golden age of the CD, when this was a thing people bought. Even though I’ve been buying CDs faithfully since the late eighties, I never got caught up in the box set hype, preferring to buy studio albums most of the time. Also box sets are awkwardly shaped and hard to file.
However, one day I was in the cramped corner of the store housing the box sets (the tyranny of vinyl requiring the majority of the space these days) when my eyes alighted on this treasure. Doo Wop doesn’t have a bunch of studio records (back in the day pop music was mostly singles) so this was a great way to get a whole bunch of songs from a genre I love but have very little of.
How It Stacks Up: This isn’t an album, it’s a compilation, and so can’t stack up.
Ratings: compilations also don’t get ratings, since they’re not true albums. Rules!
Three discs and 60 tunes is a lot of DooWop, but at no point over the past five days did I ever feel that volume as a burden. If there is a style of music that lifts your spirits more than Doo Wop, I don’t know what it is. This stuff makes you feel good. It is the summer sun and holidays of musical genres.
If you aren’t familiar with Doo Wop it was a style of American music in the fifties and early sixties that featured multi-part harmonies, nonsense words often sung as musical accompaniment in place of instruments, and chord progressions that traipse along in a way that is both predictable and uplifting (lots of triumphant fifths).
This is early pop music at its best, and like a lot of good pop music you can guess what’s going to come next in a tune and then feel delicious joy in being right. On repeat listens, you can sing along and frankly, it is hard not to. When Barry Mann sings “who put the bomp in the bomp, be bomp be bebomp” if you don’t immediate respond with “who put the dip in the dip de dip de dip” then there is something wrong with you.
In this collection we have a wide range of what Doo Wop represents, although don’t expect a wide range of topics. It is mostly romantic warbles about how much you love your gal (or your fella), with a few featuring unrequited love. Even those are pretty gentle stuff. No murder ballads or self-harm here, beyond maybe some impassioned sobbing into one’s pillow.
Some of these songs are deep down in my marrow from early childhood experiences, likely appearing on AM radio in my family car growing up (a sky blue 1961 Rambler). Tunes like Danny & the Juniors’ “At the Hop”, the Platters’ “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, the Shirelles “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” were instantly recognizable.
For all that familiarity, it was a joy to discover a host of other songs for the first time. I felt like I was getting a lucky peak into a simpler time – an idealized version of the fifties and sixties. The real version of those decades was a lot more complex, but listening to Doo Wop puts you in a dreamlike alternate universe where all things are rosier. A Pleasantville where the sun always shines, and milk never sours.
And while this music is simple fun, it also has had a lasting impact on music for generations to follow. Many of your favourite heavy bands of the seventies and eighties grew up on Doo Wop, and many bands twenty years later raided these records out of their parents’ or grandparents' record collection. I have a lovely version of Blue Oyster Cult guitarist Buck Dharma covering “Come Softly To Me”. Blind Guardian covers “Barbara Ann” in my last review. Even when bands aren’t always wearing it on their sleeves, you can be sure its working its happy magic under the surface.
Be warned that these songs have a heavy Pollyanna vibe. Doo Wop doesn’t veer into schmaltz so much as it is steeped in it. Art shouldn’t always be this easy and free, but in a complex modern world, it was nice to spend a few days in a stylized time where love is grand, and everyone has a swing in their step, and a song in their heart. Dip da dip da dip, indeed!
Best tracks: Come Back My Love, Out of Sight Out of Mind, Twilight Time, I Met Him on Sunday, Sixty-Minute Man, For Sentimental Reasons, I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Come Softly To Me, Little Darlin’, Don’t You Just Know It, Little Bitty Pretty One, Once Upon a Time