The WWII generation and Doo Wop

[FedoraFan112390]

From people's experiences here with their older parents/grandparents--

How would a person who turned 40 in 1960 tend to have viewed Doo Wop, and the girl groups of the late 50s-early 60s (like The Crystals, The Ronettes, etc)? What was the WWII generation's attitude toward that kind of music?

 

[Salty O'Rourke]

My dad was born in 1923 and he didn't care for rock/doo wop/R&B at all. He was more of a swing, Sinatra and C&W fan. On the other hand, my mom was born in 1926 and I recall her doing the Twist with us kids and liking the Beatles and the Searchers. She liked Sinatra and Crosby but hated Tony Bennett and thought country music was corny. She would not have cared at all for the girl-group teen angst stuff.

Doo wop and especially girl groups aimed their music directly at a teenaged audience. I remember it fondly for the memories it evokes of my childhood but music aimed at today's teens sets my teeth on edge. I suspect my folks looked at a lot of late 50s/early 60s radio fodder in the same light.

 

[John in Covina]

My dad thought that doo-wop was a silly way to sung songs. He was not a rock fan. He was ok with pop of the 1950's like Perry Como was OK. My dad was born 1922 and served in Europe in WWII.

 

[Doctor Strange]

My parents were both WWII vets, and they had zero affinity for doo wop, or rock'n'roll. Their feeling was, "It was all garbage after Elvis." Their musical tastes ran to Broadway shows, light classical, older jazzy and syrupy pop, and just a little (pre-Dylan) folk music.

As others have said, doo wop and rock were music by and for younger people than the WWII generation. From what I saw, they had no interest in it, and thought it was silly... if not The End Of Civilization.

 

[FedoraFan112390]

Hmm.
You see in all those Scorsese movies the older Italian guys listening to that stuff in the 60s and 70s, like this song in the infamous Billy Batts scene from Goodfellas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg65nhgvubo

And in a lot of '50s, 60s, or 70s set Mafia films, Doo Wop and Soul are the only things which tend to be playing. So I thought you know, maybe the older Italian guys (I'm Italian) were into it....

I do wonder what my grandpa liked musically. The guy seemed to keep up with trends: In the '70s he wore long sideburns, flared slacks, wide collared shirts, V Neck T-Shirts, Shorts...All things that the "kids" were wearing but he was 50 in 1970.

 

[Salty O'Rourke]

I'd caution against drawing broad conclusions from Hollywood films that depict bygone eras - movies are entertainment vehicles, not documentaries.

Movies often depict references that the filmmaker thinks the audience expects. They also tend to view the past through rose-colored glasses and tend to add current-day politically correct sensitivities to period stories that aren't in keeping with reality.

More instructive would be to observe the unintentional cultural clues in films that are set in their current day. For example, are there musical references in On The Waterfront, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, or The Man With the Golden Arm? If there are, I doubt that doo wop or soul are prominent among them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother, who graduated from high school in 1957, couldn't stand, and still can't stand rock-n-roll. She thought Elvis was a degenerate, and her favorite entertainment personality as a teenager was Liberace. So you can imagine her parents, born in 1904 and 1911, weren't doo-wopping around the house at any time.

That said, the generation born in the 1910s-early 1920s were no strangers, if not to doo-wop than to its direct ancestors. "Rhythm quartets" -- close-harmony African-American singing groups -- were both very common and very popular on radio and records from the early 1930s forward. The Mills Brothers, in their four-boys-and-a-guitar phase, had their own radio show as early as 1931, and frequently appeared with Bing Crosby and other major white stars of the day. The Four Vagabonds, a quartet similar in style to the Millses, were regulars on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club for many years, and had a number of very successful records. The Basin Street Boys, yet another quartet in this style, frequently recorded soundtracks for animated cartoons, and appeared on radio variety programs. The Delta Rhythm Boys were very popular on radio in the mid-to-late forties. The Ink Spots were perhaps the most popular "rhythm quartet" of all, and were dominant recording artists during the war years.

There were many other such groups, enjoyed by both white and black audiences of all ages in the pre-1950 era -- all of which led in a direct line to "doo wop."

 

[vitanola]

I have vivid memories of the Ditmars neighborhood, in Astoria, Queens. It was a rather rural outpost of the Bohemian community of Yorkville until the El came in in 1918, at which point the area developed into a very urban, almost entirely Italian neigborhood. In the 1960's and 1970's the adults in the neighborhood were generally listening to pre-rock music, Tony Bennett ( born accross the street from My Aunt Bertha's house), Julius LaRosa, Lou Monte, Eddie Kochak, Mantovani, Sinatra, Martin, Brasil '66, and non-rock pop, such songs as "Downtown", "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" and other similar stuff.

The older folks (born in the 'eigties, 'ninties and 'oughts) still liked Val-Taro music. Johnny (Scud'lein) Brugnioli and his compatriots often played at local weddings and occasionally at local cafes, though they were generally to be found across the river in Manhattan.

Scorsese may have been including music that he personally liked, and which he assumed would better set the time-frame for the middle-Amercian audience. I doubt that "Pepino, the Italian Mouse", a Lou Monte number which was EXTREMELY popular for a couple of years in the mid-sixties, and which was almost impossible to get away from in these Italian ethnic neighborhoods, would have been considered to be suitably evocative.

 

[Espee]

My mom (b.1925) pays scant attention to the tuxedoed doo-wop groups presented by... is it, T.J. Lupinsky? ... on public TV before, after, or usually instead of, the promised weekly Lawrence Welk Show.

 

[Stanley Doble]

From a book about blues musicians (sorry don't remember the title) the author interviewed a number of old blues singers and musicians.

One was especially proud of his repertoire of light opera and polka selections. It seemed he grew up in a town with large Italian and Polish populations and often performed at weddings, dances and parties.

Most of the blues artists in the book did not regard themselves as such, but as popular entertainers with a variety of styles at their command. To play one blues song after another all night was too boring.