Talk:Doo-wop/Archive 1

comment
Ok, (I have to remember my signup password...I'm "Calimar 1"). Anyway, I added the section about Mills Bros and Ink Spots, and then the "bird groups", as that was the origin of this genre. It is very difficult to pinpoint the first doo wop although I point that out in the artical.

Vocables
Hello! Great article. I am proposing an edit. What the article calls nonsense syllables are actually called vocables. Please edit to vocables. If no one has any objections to this change, I will put the edit in after a few weeks of having this posting on the talk page. Let me know what you think. Two articles could be linked with the word vocable. Either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocable or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-lexical_vocables_in_music.If nonsense syllables is a term within doo wop, and there is a wish to retain it, the sentence can be structured in such a way so as to use both. For example: "... vocables, or nonsense syllables,..." If nonsense syllables is the term within the do wop community, including vocables and one of the links will help those outside it better understand the musical form. Finally does nonsense syllables sound fun to some, but condescending to others? 96.234.10.9 (talk) 18:11, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Comment
Comment and correction only. The Turbans are saying Doo Wah not Doo Wop in the mentioned song When you dance. Mickeydanny (talk) 00:32, 27 February 2010 (UTC) Mike Shannon.

Discussion
I'd like to second the idea that "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" a.k.a. "Mbube" was the first Doo-wop song. The 1939 recording in South Africa by Solomon Linda and the Gallo Record Company was well known. By 1948 the song had sold about 100,000 copies in Africa and among black South African immigrants in Great Britain. Surely this song recording leaked to the US and was heard by many African Americans. GoodExplainer —Preceding undated comment added 20:17, 23 March 2011 (UTC).

Calimar 1.

EDIT Update: Added stuff about recordings, estimated recordings done between 1947 and 1964...also added section about Italain doo-wop, and white/ and mutli-racial (black and white) doo wop. Added stuff about Kiddie doo wop, Frankie Lymon, Lewis Lymon. Bunch of stuff about other groups. Added more about its African American roots, gospel; Churches in Urban... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.159.39.142 (talk) 15:48, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Update: Someone fixed a bunch of my writings...thank you! not all of my facts were worded right, and my spelling is atrocious! Also, it seems many have come in and added many facts that I never knew, so that is appreciated whoever you are! -

I have heard the suggestion, from a musician friend, that the choral backups to popular music necessitated by the musicians' strike of 1942-1943 created a niche for vocal imitation of instrumentation and may be related to the emergence of doo-wop. Any corroboration of this would add measurably to the article. Incidentally, I just did some copyediting cleanup of it--nothing major. There is some disagreement as to the spelling of "Night/Nite" in the Five Satins recording, "In the Still of the Night/Nite" (which in fact only features four of them). My musician friend has the original published sheet music for it, where it's spelled "Night." I could only find one CD that lists the song with the spelling "Nite"; all the others use "Night," and I fixed it accordingly. Jordansmith 21:55, 24 December 2006 (UTC)jordansmith

I would like to see this article updated to include the most recent doo-wop hit. I believe it was "It's Alright" by Huey Lewis and the News, which reached #4 on the U.S. Billboard charts in June 1993. Since doo-wop is an American invention, I believe only the U.S. chart should be used, and only a chart position of 10 or better should be considered a hit.

I will wait to see if any one has a more recent example, or if anyone objects to the criteria before I edit the article. --Freshmutt 22:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

While the song is more of am amalgam/tribute, should there be a mention of Lauryn Hill's 'Doo wop (that thing')?--88.218.14.45 23:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone made the connection between Doo-Wop and Solomon Linda's song, Mbube ? Mbube was written and recorded in South Africa in, or shortly after, 1939. It was an acapella piece and is the basis of the Token's hit, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Linda's group was called The Evening Birds - much like later doo-wop group names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.224.190 (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not intended to be an article, but only an observation.

Your existing artile on doo-wop credits the influence of the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers, but neglects to mention The Cats & the Fiddle, whose ballad style was much closer to doo-wop ballad style than anything the other two groups did.

The Cats a& the Fiddle accompanied themselves with two guitars, a 10-stringed ukulele-like instrument called a tipple, and a double bass (a.k.a. as a "bull fiddle," hence the group's name). Their up-tempo recordings were very jazzy, featuring some scat singing and the like; but their ballads, especially "I Miss You So" (1940), were the REAL antecedents of the Fifties and Early Sixties doo-wop ballad style.


 * I couldn't find an article on this group. I think you should write a page for the Cats & the Fiddle and then see about adding them to this article. I've heard of the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers, but not The Cats & the Fiddle. Maybe they had a doo-wop sound, but did they really influence other musicians?


 * I agree that the Cats and the Fiddle should be included, their influence is undeniable especially the song "Gangbusters" which has a "doo-wheet" chourus in the beginning. I also agree that an article about them should be written so that a link can be included. 12.176.164.211 17:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)darbycrash

I made a minor edit to the "history" section. While no one would argue that poverty at the time struck blacks especially hard, it is a strong exaggeration to say that black teenagers never could afford to buy instruments. The rest of my edit was an alteration to the style of the writing. Feel free to change that part back if you think it flows better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.115.1.4 (talk) 13:06, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Accepted term
"Old town was the accepted term for a long time, but it never really caught on." Huh? How can it have been the accepted term if it never caught on? I don't see that the sentence makes sense as it is - can it be clarified? Who called it that, and who didn't? leevclarke (talk) 04:27, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Something else entirely, yet related
Yes, being a fan of Wildwood, New Jersey, I clicked on the link for Doo-Wop, and it came here. While I am sure that this Doo-Wop is related too my Doo-Wop, my Doo-Wop is a style of architecture (or something) that is unique (?) to Wildwood, New Jersey. While an entire article of its own would be great, I think that a mention of this style of music's influence on this architecture would be helpful (I could do it myself, but I don't know anything about it, other than that it exists... if it isn't just some made-up creation of the Wildwood Tourist Community, but even then, it exists now). Anyway, I am just blathering away here... Sorry.

Rust Belt?
"...doo-wop emerged from the streets of north-eastern Rust Belt cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore."

The term "rust belt" didn't exist when doo-wop emerged. I think using the term "rust belt" in this context suggests that doo-wop is a product of industrial decline, when, if anything, the opposite is true. I suggest changing it to simply this.

"...doo-wop emerged from the streets of north-eastern cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore."

--Tedd (talk) 17:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * No comment in several months, so I have made the change.--Tedd (talk) 02:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Stylistic Origins
Re the line about: "Some of the singers imitated instruments... an example of this includes "Count Every Star" by The Ravens (1950), which includes vocalizations imitating the 'doomph', 'doomph' plucking of a double bass" (how one plucked note can create two sounds, I'll never know). However, if you listen to Glenn Miller's music from the late 30's on, you will hear the real origin of the "sound" of "doowop". Miller's trombones (himself included) regularly played with on/off, on/off mutes (often using the rubber part of a plunger) creating the sound of ooh-WAH, ooh-WAH, ooh-WAH, ooh-WAH- similar to the way a WAH-WAH pedal works from the sixties. The pedal, moving up and down, and the mutes, on and off, alternate the treble and bass frequencies creating the oooh-WAH sound.Dcrasno (talk) 17:08, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

FRANKIE LAINE SHOW
Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers didn't appear on "Frankie Laine Time" (the correct name of Laine's show). They actually appeared on the "Shower of Stars" show, on which Frankie Laine was acting as the guest host that week. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.160.67.13 (talk) 20:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Ravens/Orioles
The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock & Roll listed these two as the most popular of the early 50's r&b vocal groups.... Oddly enough it is also the name of the two professional sports teams in Baltimore (coincidence? you be the judge).....

05:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.148.109 (talk)

1960s copy editing
The English in this one-paragraph section was awkward. I cleaned up some grammar and spelling problems of this and the following section, "Total Number of Recordings," without touching any of the information. Billfalls (talk) 20:05, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The Five Satins: Accuracy
The title of the doo-wop song by the Five Satins is correctly spelled "In the Still of the Nite," not "In the Still of the Night." (The latter is the spelling of the Cole Porter song covered by Dion and the Belmonts.)

Promotional material
I've twice had to revert the inclusion of unencyclopedic promotional material about a group called Kenny Vance and the Planotones. It's clearly promotional and of no encyclopedic value, and has the counter-productive effect of ensuring that editors may look very closely at WP's entries on Mr. Vance in the future. But it's not quite vandalism, so other editors might like to express an opinion about it before it's removed again. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:44, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've expressed my opinion by removing it again. Rothorpe (talk) 18:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It's kind of too bad about this... Kenny Vance is actually an almost-famous guy with a decent, scantily sourced Wiki article. Vance recorded Looking for an Echo, which was included on Rhino's Doo-Wop Box compilation #3.  The SPA adding the promo material isn't doing Kenny any favors here.  --Seduisant (talk) 20:15, 6 December 2012 (UTC)