Yeah, I'm Talkin' to You: The Paragons Meet the Jesters

Long ago, when 42^nd Street around Times Square in New York City was much seedier and way more real than it is now, there were a lots of discount places selling cameras, binoculars, Army surplus (known as “war surplus” back then), and records. Taped to the windows of the latter, and looking as if they’d been  up there for years, were LP album covers. One of the most striking was The Paragons Meet the Jesters. Against a murky background of indeterminate color stood black leather-jacketed hoods, a la Grease, with a shadowy, menacing figure to their front and right. I mean, these guys radiated attitude (see left).

The music was something else, though. Doo wop was a popular force in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was hugely influential on everyone from Robert Plant to Frank Zappa, and the progenitor of the great soulful Motown and Stax vocal groups of the following decades. It was also a regional music. Place like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, to name a few of the meccas of doo wop, were hotbeds, as was New York, the home of the Paragons and the Jesters. For years both groups had strong regional hits with records like Florence and Let’s Start All Over Again (the Paragons) and I Laughed and The Wind (the Jesters. In 1959, The Paragons Meet the Jesters, an anthology of Jesters and paragons singles came out as an LP―one of the first rock and roll compilation albums and, according to Wikipedia, “the most commercially successful doo-wop compilation ever released.”

The album leans heavily toward ballads, although there are some fine up-tempo tunes, like I Laughed and Oh Baby by the Jesters. I’m partial to Julius McMichael’s great falsetto lead vocals for the Paragons, but I also love the greater variety the Jesters bring to the table. Both groups were terrific, and this recording is a landmark in the history of a unique American vocal style. Doo wop isn’t just an historical artifact or the background music for a Martin Scorsese movie. It’s great mixture of passion and humor, executed with panache by a bunch of kids who sang in the streets, got ripped off by their fly-by-night record companies in the great tradition, and left a legacy for all of us to enjoy.

P.S. Thanks to Eddie Griese and Donn Fileti of Relic Records, who for years worked to preserve the lost world of doo wop on LP and CD.

Here are two selections―and it was tough to pick just a couple. I hope you enjoy them and decide to explore this great music further.

In Defense of the Knockouts

The three Doo Wop Boxes are among my most treasured musical possessions, and Billy Vera does a fantastic job of annotating all 303 classic group harmony songs. It’s always bothered me, though, that he was so negative about the Knockouts. In his notes to their one big hit, Darling Lorraine, found in Box 2, Vera calls them a “Jersey Shore bar band” (true—no insult there), but goes on to say that in their few TV appearances, they “looked kind of seedy and old”—older than what he thought were their true ages, the early thirties. Darling Lorraine, which I had forgotten about until I heard it again on Box 2, was always a favorite of mine, and I felt badly that its creators had been sort of sleazy. Most painfully, Vera suspected that the record might have been a parody that listeners took seriously—so much for my teenage taste, I supposed at the time.

Recently, though, I heard a very different song by the Knockouts, which led me to do some further research. The admirable Funky16Corners blog posted their astoundingly over-the-top version of I’ve Got My Mojo Working (or Mo Jo, as they retitled it). It was later than, and totally different from, Darling Lorraine—but I like it a lot. It was released in 1964, five years after their one big hit, so they hadn’t just faded back to the Shore afterwards.

After some rummaging around, I found a decent history of the group here. It consisted of Bobby D’Andrea, vocals; Eddie Parente, guitar; Bob Collada, Piano; and Harry Venuta, drums, all from Bayonne or North Bergen, New Jersey. The accompanying photo indicated that, while not in the first bloom of youth, they weren’t necessarily as old as Vera thought. Indeed, a news clipping reproduced on the same site claimed that they were in their early twenties when Darling Lorraine hit it big. According to the clipping, it peaked out at #46 nationally. They were a Jersey Shore band (Seaside Heights!), but also performed at venues in such NJ metropoli as Lodi and Lyndhurst. They also stuck around on the recording scene for a few years and even recorded an album—Go Ape with the Knockouts (and on the album cover, they did look older and perhaps less than prepossessing).

I’ve been exploring the Knockouts’ oeuvre: Riot in Room 3C, a twangy instrumental that originally was the A side of the surprise hit Darling Lorraine; Rich Boy, Poor Boy, a very nice doowop ballad; Please Be Mine, a mid-tempo tune; and the aforementioned Mo Jo, which shows they could do a wide range of material and had some staying power. As for the idea that Darling Lorraine might have been a parody, artists sometimes hit the mark despite themselves, although I think their performance came from the heart.

And as for staying power, as of a few years ago, Bobby D’Andrea was still going strong on the oldies circuit—and sounding pretty good! Maybe he wasn’t that old after all.

Hey, if anyone finds a copy of Go Ape with the Knockouts while crate diving in some thrift store, I’m in the market.