Hello Oldies Lovers,
Back in the early '90's I shifted from buying 45s to mostly buying CDs as it became much easier finding songs I was looking for on a CD compilation than on the single. I had sold my first 45 collection in the early 80's and had been trying to find many of the singles I had in my original collection. I did however continue buying singles, just not at the same rate I had been up until that point.
One of the singles I picked up in the early 90's is today's doowop single. I was flipping through records in my friend Mike's record store when I came across a single by a group called the Boyfriends, who I had never heard of before. I decided to sample it on the record player set up in Mike's store for that very purpose. As soon as I dropped the needle on "Let's Fall In Love" I knew it was a keeper! I flipped the record over to check out the other side (a great Calypso beat doowop called "Oh Lana") and I noticed it was written by Joe Barsalona, a name I recognized as a member of the Five Discs. I knew the name because I had a Five Discs album and on one of the live cuts the lead singer introduced all the group members. It would be several years later when I began doing research for my old web site that I discovered that the Boyfriends were in fact the Five Discs.
The Five Discs' story began back in 1954 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. Baritone singer Joe Barsalona, second tenor Tony Basile, first tenor Paul Albano and lead singer Joe Brocco teamed up to form a street corner group calling themselves the Flames. They were inspired by a couple of other groups from the neighborhood: the Paragons and the Royaltones.
They started as an all-white Italian group until a couple members from the recently disbanded black group the Love Notes joined them. Mario de Andrade and Andrew Jackson were idolized by the Flames and when the opportunity to have them join them came up, a quick reshuffling resulted in a new lineup featuring Mario as lead and Andrew as the bass singer. Thus they became one of the first racially mixed vocal groups.
The group practiced on street corners, back alleys, subway stations and class rooms at Junior High School 73, with Mario teaching the group how to sing harmony. They cut a few demos in 1956, including the song "I Remember", which would later be released on 3 different labels.
By 1960 Mario and Andrew left the group and they added a new lead singer named Lenny Hutter, who had been with a group called the Chalets, and a new bass singer named James Russell. The new lineup recorded "Come On Baby" in 1961 for the Yale record label, but when the record flopped Lenny Hutter left the group.
John Carbone then joined on as the group's lead singer and they recorded two classics which were written by Mario de Andrade, "Adios" and "My Baby Loves Me", which were released on the Calo label in 1961. Again, the record went nowhere and the group moved onto Cheer Records, which was a subsidiary of Blast Records. It was at this time Charlie DiBella replaced Russell as the new bass singer. Shortly after the release of their classic "Never Let You Go" in 1962, Eddie Parducci replaced John Carbone as lead singer and the group moved on for a short stint with Kapp Records. With the change of personnel and new label, they changed the name of the group to The Boyfriends in hopes of better fortune.
Unfortunately the record fared no better and would be the only release as The Boyfriends. So that's the story of how this record came to be.
Lead singer Eddie Parducci not pictured.
Today's doowop single: Kapp K-569 Let's Fall In Love b/w Oh Lana, was released in 1963.
Today's teen single is a song I first discovered on the first volume of the "Teen-Age Dreams" CD series put out by Frank Thieme of Germany. That CD came out in the mid-90's around the time I was just starting up my old web site. I was drawn to the CD because a couple of the songs I had singles of in my old collection were on the compilation and thus my education in the "teen" genre began. Up to that point in time I had never heard of songs referred to as "teeners". A collector friend I had just become acquainted with kept referring to songs as "teeners" and finally one day I had to ask him, "What the hell is a teener?" He explained to me that it was the way reviewers in publications like Billboard and Cash Box described the pop songs geared to the teenagers of the 50's and early 60's and that the term caught on and was now used by collectors of those records. While I personally am not fond of the term, I understand why they use it to describe this style of music popular with the teens of that era and I now use it for that purpose.
My collecting habits have kind of gone full circle as I began collecting CDs to get copies of songs I used to have on 45s and now I am back to collecting 45s looking to find vinyl copies of songs I discovered on all these CDs! Today's single is one such example. This song is the perfect example of the "teen" sound popular in the late 50's and early 60's and when a song's opening is a background chorus of "ooh wah-wah ooh wah-wah ooh sha-dooby-doo" you know it's got to be good!
Like most of these "teen" records, finding information on the singer is often impossible (it seems like every other teenager in the era cut a record!) and that's the case with today's singer, Dick Webb. Apart from having one previous single release on the Madison record label in 1959, I could find no information about him. That was somewhat surprising because today's single was released on the well established Epic record label and I was able, courtesy of 45cat.com, to find a picture sleeve for the record.
Today's teen single: Epic 5-9397 - Land Of Teenage Love b/w Just One More Kiss by Dick Webb. It was released in August of 1960.
I hope you enjoy today's selections and you can purchase mp3 files of today's singles in my digital store.
Till next time, Rock On!
Dave
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