Doo-wop all-stars bring back the '50s.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

Their music careers began in New York in the late 1950s and were reborn in Florida in the late 1990s, when they got together as the Legends of Doo Wop.

Although they're obviously no longer teenagers, Jimmy Gallagher, Tony Passalaqua, Frank Mancuso and Steve Horn undoubtedly will transport a lot of people back to their teen years when they perform at the Cuthbert Amphitheater on Saturday, concluding the Oregon Festival of American Music's celebration of "The Fabulous Fifties."

The list of bouncy and dreamy songs from which they'll choose their program includes such hits as "Stand by Me," "Blue Moon," "Get a Job," "Daddy's Home," "Runaround Sue," "Gloria," "Come Go With Me," "Duke of Earl," "This I Swear" and "Searchin'.'

Even if you've never heard of the New York groups with whom these guys sang, you may remember some of the songs they recorded.

Gallagher, a Brooklyn-born Irish-American, sang with the Passions, who had three hits: "Just to Be With You" (backed with "Oh Melancholy Me'), "I Only Want You" and "This Is My Love." The first two each sold more than 500,000 copies.

Passalaqua was one of the Fascinators, whose recordings for Capitol Records included "Chapel Bells" (backed with "I Wonder Who'), "Who Do You Think You Are?" (backed with "Come to Paradise') and Passalaqua's "Oh Rosemarie" (backed with "Fried Chicken and Mac-aronie').

Mancuso sang with the Imaginations, whose Music Makers recordings included "Goodnight Bay," which made it to No. 20 in New York City.

Horn started singing in junior high school, and in 1961 he joined the Sharks, whose subsequent hits included "Stormy Weather" and "Gloria." Later, he sang with David Lerchey's Del Vikings.

Horn, Gallagher and Passalaqua were all living in Florida in 1998 when Horn brought up the idea of forming a doo-wop group. They reeled in Mancuso, and the Legends of Doo Wop came into being.

Gallagher was 17 when the Passions scored their hits. In a profile on the Web site, www.destinationdoowop.com, he said had no idea at the time how "big" the group was.

"Not a clue, not a clue. We were just a bunch of kids. We did our street corner stuff, and we sang what we thought was important to us. And I think that's why the music has been kept alive, 'cause when you hear it today, it sounds like young people singing it."

And from Lieber and Stoller

The first part of Saturday night's festival finale will feature a combo led by festival jazz adviser Dick Hyman in a program including such songs as "Poison Ivy," "Charlie Brown," "Hound Dog" and "Is That All There Is?" Terry Burrell and Ian Whitcomb will handle those vocals.

What those songs have in common is that they were written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. In a program-book article, festival musicologist Kurt Doles notes that Lieber and Stoller "were responsible for some of the most well crafted doo-wop songs of the day, including `Yakety Yak,' `There Goes My Baby' and `Searchin'."

Doles writes that Lieber and Stoller were part of the famous Brill Building songwriters stable, and that "their work with the Drifters and the Coasters is widely regarded as the pinnacle of doo-wop's artistic achieve- ment."

He also notes that the Coasters were among the first "assembled" musical groups, "brought together for the specific purpose of performing Lieber and Stoller's lighter songs, in effect a music `delivery system' instead of a casual neighborhood group."

By the beginning of the 1960s, Doles writes, various factors had pushed the "small, label-driven doo-wop style and its teenage exuberance to the side in favor of more `grown-up' vocal groups."

Doo-wop was originally an African-American style, inspired by gospel quartets of the 1930s and '40s, Dole writes, but it later caught on among Italian, Irish and Puerto Rican inner city residents. Some of the early '50s doo-wop groups, such as the Crests and the Del Vikings, were integrated.

"Doo-wop helped bring black and white America together during a divisive time," he writes, "and helped to pave the way for the rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll artists that captured the country's imagination in the late 1950s.

`And, without doo-wop, we may never have been able to experience the music of the Temptations, the Jackson Five, or even the Backstreet Boys!"

Paul Denison can be reached at 338-2323 or pdenison@ guardnet.com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

The Legends of Doo Wop

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Cuthbert Amphitheater, off Leo Harris Parkway in Alton Baker Park 

How much: $24 through the Hult Center, 682-5000, or the Oregon Festival of American Music, 687-6526