From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Article: May ,1982 Date: Monday, October 17, 2005 10:39 PM May, 1982 THE CREW-CUTS: STILL TOGETHER, BETTER THAN EVER By Doug Bright Throughout the Thirties and Forties black music was mostly assimilated into swing. There was always a place for the likes of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday , and the Ink Spots Whatever couldn't be assimilated--for example, gospel and hard blues--was recorded and issued by record companies on their subsidiary "race music" labels. In the late Forties and early Fifties, there was an increasing amount of black music that couldn't be assimilated as the stridently soulful sound of vocal groups like the Ravens and the Dominoes became dominant. More and more young people, bored with the relative blandness of mainstream pop in the early Fifties, began flocking to jukeboxes, dances, and stage shows where the new and daring Rhythm and Blues could be heard. The executives of the major record labels were beginning to get worried about the loss of the youth market, but the new black music was too raucous and sensual to warrant taking risks during the McCarthy era. All they could do was either to hope for some kind of acceptable synthesis with pop or simply grit their teeth, ignore the new sound, and literally hope to God it would go away. Meanwhile, there were a few white musicians who listened to Rhythm and Blues and saw in it a definite pop market potential if they could just shave off some of its rougher edges. In the vanguard of this camp were four young graduates of Toronto's Cathedral Choir School who banded together and began touring as the Canadaires. In 1953 they joined Mercury Records as the Crew-cuts and recorded a swinging, up-tempo original called "Crazy 'Bout You, Baby"" It rocked more wholesomely than anything prior to it and managed to sell about 700,000 copies. If this record left the door of acceptability ajar for the new music, the Crew-cuts' next record thrust it wide open. By adapting the Chords' rhythm-and-blues hit "Sh-boom" to their own style, they officially kicked off the rock movement and changed forever the course of musical history. Bill Haley was also experimenting with rhythm and blues at the time, but he didn't achieve comparable success until "Rock Around The Clock" came out a year later. For the next three years the Crew-cuts continued to make the charts with similar adaptations of rhythm-and-blues hits like "Earth Angel", "Story Untold", and "Susie Q". These records, with their polished arrangements and relatively elaborate pop accompaniments, certainly lacked the soulful spontaneity of their black counterparts, and for this the group has drawn much ridicule from rock historians. Purists can put the Crew-cuts down as they please, but it was this group that was mostly responsible for turning rock from a small subculture to a mass movement. The clean-cut image of the Crew-cuts made them perfect good-will ambassadors to the older generation, and as such they were the first representatives of the new musical direction to go on world tour. They made frequent TV appearances and headlined the Dorsey shows for an entire summer. In 1958 they were picked up by RCA Victor, and it was during this period that they recorded "Hey Stella". It was their most believable rocker of all time, but it didn't get nearly the airplay that it merited. In 1960 their contract with RCA ended, and the group's position began to decline. Their swan song was a pathetic pseudo-folk album for Cameo, complete with supermarket orchestration. Certainly it was no match for the simple, direct approach of the Kingston Trio and Brothers Four, and it got all the non-recognition it deserved. Then the English invasion struck, effectively wiping out the Crew-cuts along with almost all of their contemporaries. Although they stopped performing and recording, the four young men continued to write songs and kept in close touch, pursuing careers in various other fields. Meanwhile George Brown, who had managed them since 1957, carefully guarded their legal interests. Then came the revival. It started slowly in the late Sixties and exploded in the Seventies as more people wearied of long hair and distorted guitars and longed once again for the age of innocence. Promoters scurried around digging up bygone supergroups, pasting them together and shoving them out onto the stages of large theaters for massive cross-country rock 'n' roll revival tours. Virtually every one of these groups was missing some original members, and all too often those that remained couldn't sing anymore. With all four of his Crew-cuts still very much alive and well, George Brown in New Jersey saw a vacuum and rushed to fill it. In 1979 ten original songs were recorded and sold to Pic-a-Dilly, a subsidiary of First American Records in Seattle. The result is an astonishing album appropriately titled THE WONDERFUL, HAPPY, CRAZY INNOCENT WORLD OF THE CREW-CUTS. It's hard to say when the songs on this album were written since the Crew-cuts virtually never stopped writing. Though this material was recorded only three years ago, it could just as easily be twenty years old. The only familiar song is "Spanish Is A Lovin' Tongue", which folk enthusiasts will remember from a classic Ian and Sylvia recording. Common to all these selections, ballads and rockers alike, is simple harmony orchestrated only by piano, guitar, synthesizer, and basic rhythm section. Gone is the self-consciously commercial overproduction of past efforts, and the effect that replaces it is one of confident sincerity. The obvious intent was to place the vocals at the center of the listener's attention, and with good reason. The voices are just as youthful and clear as they were in the Fifties. The only addition is the pronounced use of a Four Seasons-style falsetto that combines with the accompaniment to place the sound very convincingly in the early Sixties. Adding more to the over-all believability of the new Crew-cuts album is the unparallelled genius reflected in the songs themselves. The sincerity and innocence of these songs makes the imitative attempts of modern musical comedy writers seem disgustingly phony. To compare this album to the music from "Grease" is to compare a goldpiece to a three-dollar bill. It's my conclusion that not even the most critical purist will be able to listen to this album without coming away with a profound respect for the achievement it represents. He will be forced to admit, however grudgingly, that the Crew-cuts have come back better than ever. ----------------------------------------