If someone was to ask what my favorite type of music was I would likely say hip hop out of instinct, but if I answered truthfully I would be more inclined to say doo-wop. Genres that emphasize vocals, especially in unique deliveries or complex arrangements, seem to pique my interest much more quickly than others. Doo-wop, in all of its deceptive simplicity, was the first of this sort to do so.
Hearing The Penguins' Earth Angel in Back to the Future as a kid was instantly mesmerizing despite not having any clue what it was that I was listening to. The style somehow had a warm and familiar feel - in part due to its influence on most layered harmonies in music since, from The Supremes to Bone Thugs n' Harmony. The effortlessness with which the singers seemed to weave in and out of each other and the overall ethereal atmosphere were what drew me in initially, but over the years I have come to appreciate it much more fully for its surprisingly nuanced depth.
Often misperceived and denounced as mere bubblegum pop jingles due to the genre's light-hearted, onomatopoeic name (though, to be sure, some of its best songs are of this nature), it is really quite layered and conflicted in its lyrical substance. Laying at the pivot point of early rock n' roll and soul music, it is a sound recklessly youthful and desperately sincere all at once. At its very core the entire genre is about longing, giving it an inherent nostalgia which has only been exacerbated by the subsequent romanticism the 50s have undergone. The unabashed rawness, smokiness and fuzziness of the production solidify this warm, nostalgic atmosphere that instantly transports the listener.
Nowhere is this captured more convincingly perhaps than on The Playmates' Jo Ann with its crying saxophone - the desperate yearning of the singer mirrored by that of his nostalgic listeners. This alignment of performer and audience is articulated by Little Caesar & The Romans in Those Oldies But Goodies: "The songs of the past bring back memories of you / Forever they will haunt me, but what can I do?". The songs about haunting memories become haunting memories themselves; and the vast wealth of doo-wop songs that are optimistic about love (often exceedingly so) become tainted with a certain fatalism after one is familiar with the darker dispositions of the style that come to light in the aftermath of such misguided faith.
It is imperative to realize, however, that the vast majority of doo-wop singers were males between the ages of 12 and 25 at the time of recording. Thus, it's unsurprising that the ubiquitous experience of adolescent naiveté encountering its first real test in heartbreak is captured by their music better than any other. This theme is tackled directly in many of doo-wop's most recognizable hits, such as A Teenager In Love by Dion & The Belmonts or My True Story by The Jive Five, where the artists woefully see love's turbulence seeping into all other aspects of their lives.
But despite this inevitably being a recipe for melodrama, the music is capable of being dark and heavy in a very real way that it seldom gets credit for because of how elated it sounds on the surface. Most fascinating of all are the characters that embody this dichotomy of the genre - Billy Myles' The Joker and The Platters' The Great Pretender both suffer a jovial facade for the sake of normalcy when internally they are torn and depressed.
The tragic Joker "...plays a winning part, while memories crush his heart / Yet he goes on laughing like a clown". He vows: "...till you're mine once again, dear / Make-believe is all my life will be / Ha ha ha ha ha ha". The Joker is willing to live this duplicitous, 'make-believe' life in an effort to maintain his own sanity (which, given his maniacal laughing, may already be in question). His outward gaiety is merely a defense mechanism against his own anxiety; he is determined to act as though nothing has changed in order to prevent truly experiencing the grief this woman's departure has caused him. A shallow response to disguise the deep, internal anguish - this is the essence of doo-wop's struggle.
Ostensibly the music appears upbeat and hopeful most of the time. But when one immerses themselves in it they discover the melancholic tones dispersed throughout, as if the artists were much more distraught than than they were willing to let on. One gets the sense that any 'manufactured' aspect of the genre is exactly that, and that a legitimate and urgent pain is swelling underneath the smooth R&B guise. The striking contrast of commanding instrumentals and whispered fears is what makes doo-wop so intriguing.
There's something to be said for this Joker character, who is personified in modern day icons such as Robin Williams. Those who carry the immense burden of constantly being looked to to maintain the happiness of others without ever having that outlet themselves are bound to be outweighed by it eventually. These individuals who constantly supply and exude happiness can actually be the most devoid of it because of the consequent emotional drain and the fear that their unhappiness would not be tolerated by others. It is a repressed depression, reminiscent of doo-wop's own conundrum, which was addressed by artists even earlier than Billy Myles' Joker.
In fact, The Platters' The Great Pretender - who is essentially the same character as The Joker - predates him by a full two years, coming to fruition in 1955. He claims: "Just laughin' and gay like the clown / I seem to be what I'm not, you see / I'm wearing my heart like a crown / Pretending that you're still around (still around)". The first line immediately evokes the image of The Joker, but the last line is the most telling as The Great Pretender reveals his peers' implicit support in their echo of 'still around'. He is directly acknowledging his illusions while his friends, rather than trying to dissuade him actually reinforce them, making his delusion that much harder to distinguish from reality.
Like The Joker, The Great Pretender also relies on the 'make-believe' as a defense mechanism: "Too real is this feeling of make-believe / Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal". He completely circumvents the pain of his reality in numbness; rather than allowing himself to feel loss he allows himself to feel nothing at all. Therefore, his pain becomes inescapable and his delusions become inextricable from reality - much like how challenging it is to differentiate the triumphant from the tortured in doo-wop. These two characters elucidate how the artists themselves felt about the genre's own tendency to feign happiness.
The dichotomy is also perfectly encapsulated by a song like The Jarmels' A Little Bit of Soap, in which a seemingly innocent enough track is really crawling with despair: "A little bit of soap will never, never, never ever begin / To take away the hurt that I feel, as I go through the lonely years". The song contrasts the impermanence of a woman's perfume and lipstick with the unrelenting scar she can leave in one's memory - lasting not months but years in this case.
There are countless other examples that convey this same internal struggle of restrained depression among doo-wop artists. We see it manifest in both delivery and theme, with vocalists often caricaturizing their losses as vicious hallucinations and nightmares. The Jive Bombers' neurotic Bad Boy belts out the chorus as if he's losing his mind; The Innocents' lead is so impassioned he stumbles over his own lyrics in Sleeping Beauty; and The Nutmegs' lead outdoes him still, sounding as if on the verge of tears in Story Untold. The Skyliners' Since I Don't Have You expresses a total dependence on one's partner: "I don't have plans and schemes, I don't have hopes and dreams / I don't have anything, since I don't have you". The Citadels' When I Woke Up This Morning in its purely a cappella form is a haunting cry of loneliness and self-doubt: "When I woke up this morning, you were not there / When I woke up this morning, you were not by my side".
Such pervasiveness of a misleading joyous atmosphere can be found in other sounds like choral and dream pop, but nowhere quite as succinctly as in doo-wop. Its depth can easily be perceived and appreciated from the singers' emotional conflicts which parrot those of the the genre itself. Many of these artists adopted a single approach when coping with both the grief of personal loss and the demands of the recording industry - pretending to be happy. The almost excessive joy of doo-wop can be understood as an attempt by its artists to compensate for that which they had been deprived of in their own lives, justifying and emboldening the genre's unbelievable level of passion.
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