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B y the end of 1950s the vocal groups who had started recording and performing a half decade earlier were finding it increasingly difficult to put songs on the charts. The Cadillacs, having broken up and regrouped, attempted to mimic the style of one of the most popular groups of the time, the Coasters, who were known for comic novelty songs about teen life such as “Yakkity Yak” and “Charlie Brown.”1 The Cadillacs’ foray into the novelty song genre was short-lived and only marginally successful , but it eventually led to an important career move for their lead singer Earl “Speedo” Carroll. The other Cadillacs were left to fend for themselves in the changing popular music climate of the 1960s. Even before the heyday of doo-wop was over, however, nostalgia for this music was already burgeoning. Collectors, disc jockeys, record store owners, and avid fans were beginning to seek out the by then often-obscure 45rpm records of only a few years before, creating an aura of emotional memory for a music era that had yet actually to end. At the same time, a new generation of young male singers, now in predominantly white urban neighborhoods, were singing the street songs and rhythm and blues records they had been hearing, added their own unique timbre and cultural influences to the continuing interracial legacy of vocal harmony history. A DIFFERENT STREET CORNER The street song “Gloria” in the version recorded by the Cadillacs had returned to the streets almost immediately after its release in July 1954. Even though the Cadillacs’ record was never actually a big seller, it quickly became the standard by which any vocal group’s talent was measured.2 Maybe it was the opening solo intoning of the word “Gloria” which gave an ambitious young lead singer a chance to shine before the rest of group started singing; or maybe it was the fashionable falsetto break that was intrinsic to the melody throughout the song; or maybe there was something about the word “Gloria” itself with its connection to the Catholic mass that gave it a resonance beyond worldly romance and in a more CHAPTER 3 SHORTCUT TO NOSTALGIA 64 chapter three mystical or spiritual realm.3 Whatever the reason, “Gloria” was popular not only in the black neighborhoods of New York but also, by the end of the 1950s, in the white, primarily Italian American, urban areas.4 In the South Beach section of Staten Island (home of the Elegants), in the Brownsville and Canarsie sections of Brooklyn (the Salutations’ turf), on Belmont Avenue in the Bronx (after which Dion DiMucci’s group, the Belmonts, was named), and in Ozone Park in Queens (home of the Capris), young Italian American men where staking out their public harmony territory just as their black vocal role models had done before them.5 Many were second-generation Americans, children of northern Italian and Sicilian immigrants who had settled in working-class urban America and vied for jobs and resources with other newly arrived immigrant groups from Ireland and Eastern Europe as well as blacks recently transplanted from the South. Although they drew strength from their group identity in this competitive environment, the Italian American teenagers of the 1950s did venture away from their own culture at least musically . While they were listening to the Italian-language radio programs and idolizing and feeling pride in the Italian American crooners of the previous generation, such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Frankie Laine, they were also listening to rhythm and blues. Radio for this generation more than any previous was the great usurper of the physical boundaries that separated white and black; it was the medium through which both sides crossed over in an intimate way, yet at a socially safe distance.6 Like black singers, the Italian Americans received part of their musical education in school and in church, and sometimes it was there that the racial divide was crossed. Vito Picone, lead singer of the Elegants, was thirteen years old when he had such an experience, which ultimately led to the beginning of his music career. “I was always a clown in class. I said something I shouldn’t have said. The teacher happened to be a West Indian who had just moved into our grammar school [which] was 99 percent Italian. And this woman when she turned to us and said, ’Hello class, my name is Mrs. McCullough,’ I turned to a friend of mine...

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