The Diamonds, "Little Darlin" 1957 and 2004

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

http://www.flixxy.com/the-diamonds-litt ... 7-2004.htm

[Erv Niehaus]

Some great entertainers, they've still got it!

[Kevin Hatton]

Entertainers for sure. Beautiful.

[Mike Neer]

Little Darlin' was always one of my favorite records that I inherited from my parents. It always made me smile. I liked it better than the Beatles records they gave me. I was a Doo Wop fool.

[Dave Hopping]

I've heard "Little Darlin'" was intended as a spoof of the pop-rock of the time.A nuclear-powered studio performance and a dead-straight vocal reading seems to have turned it into an all-time classic.It's as if "Fargo" had won an Oscar for Best Drama.

[Erv Niehaus]

Ya sure, ya betcha!

[Mike Schwartzman]

What a great post...thanks Mike.

That brings me back to coming home from elementary school (either 1st grade or kindergarten) and watching the local Baltimore teenage dance show, "The Buddy Dean Show".

They were dancing to Little Darlin' and I was wishing that I would grow up faster and be a teenager too. By the time I was a teenager doo-wop wasn't around on the charts. Great stuff.

[Michael Johnstone]

That was the first rock & roll record to really leave an impression on me. I was 10 at the time and there was something about the calypso beat,ice cream changes,falsetto vocals and the opening gliss down the black keys (the tune is in F#)that gave me goose bumps every time I heard it on the radio. I finally met David Somerville at a Christmas party a few years ago and was able to share all that with him over a glass of wine. That was a nice full circle moment.

[Herb Steiner]

There was a period a few years back when I worked more than a few jobs with Johnny Lee, as in "Lookin' For Love" Johnny Lee.

Johnny, who's probably about 66 or 67 now, in his heart-of-hearts loves doo-wop. Many of his hit songs are the same chord progressions as classic rock tunes, and in the outro fade on one of his hits, you can hear in the background a falsetto voice singing the "la la la la" riff from Little Darling.

I got to the gig one night and he greeted me with a "hey, dude." I looked at him and just sang "la la la la."

He got this real serious look on his face and said "hey man... I got to sing with the Diamonds!!" You could tell it was a monumental experience for him, which I totally dug. Johnny's an acquired taste, but he's a pretty cool hang.

[Larry Lorows]

I saw the Diamonds about a month ago at Busch Gardens. They still put on a great show, backed by the Glen Miller orchestra. Larry

[Leslie Ehrlich]

That was the first rock & roll record to really leave an impression on me.

I don't call that tune or style of music rock 'n' roll. Pop, yes, but not rock 'n' roll.

When I think of 1950s music, songs like 'Rock Around The Clock', 'Johnny B. Goode', 'Hound Dog', and 'Rip It Up' were rock 'n' roll.

[Michael Johnstone]

I don't call that tune or style of music rock 'n' roll. Pop, yes, but not rock 'n' roll.

Yeah in retrospect maybe. But back then anything harder than The Four Freshmen,Doris Day,Liberace,Arthur Godfrey,Frankie Laine,et al who were on the charts at the time - was Rock & Roll. Actually the Diamonds were Doo-Wop which is Rock & Roll enough for me. Back then there wasn't near as much musical genre sub catigorization and in a way there wasn't any when it came to radio programming and it stayed that way right up until the end of the 60s.

[Bill Bassett]

...that the father of Tom Hanks, the actor, was the lead singer in The Diamonds...but they do resemble one another don't they.

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[Jerry Overstreet]

That PBS fund raiser special was just on here last week. That tune is a Classic. Great harmonies and arrangement. Dave also sang a tune with the Four Preps, one of the other groups he sang with.

Little Darlin' was a tune that all of the boy groups in my schools attempted to cover.

I don't know if there was such a style as "Doo Wop" designate back then. As Michael suggests, nearly everything of this style was pretty much considered rock 'n roll where I come from.

Radio stations played standards, and big band stuff pretty much all day long, when they played music, and only featured this type music on a short program slot, say from 2 to 4 pm, or 4 to 6 etc. for the "teenagers" after school.

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

in 1961 I attended a folk music concert at Carnegie Hall in New York where of all people, Joan Baez sang Little Darling. She kind of made fun of it.