ABSTRACT
In the midfifties young black men often gathered on front steps and street corners in New York and other northern urban centers to "hit some notes". In clusters made up of four or five guys, they would practice harmonizing to rhythm and blues songs, hoping to be discovered by a talent scout for one of the many small independent labels that dotted their city. They sang a style of music that has subsequently been labeled doo-wop. Doo-wop's earliest proponents, pioneering groups typified by the Ravens and the Orioles, were stylistically close to earlier black popular music groups, such as the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots. Like many doo-wop artists, Frankie Lymon collected little of that accumulated cash. The doo-wop branch of rhythm and blues established vocal virtuosity and background harmonies as commercially viable elements in popular music. Doo-wop should be remembered as a highly accessible form of music, a style available to anyone willing to sing aloud with friends.
