Various - Street Corner Symphonies Vol.02, 1950 The Complete Story Of Doo Wop

1-CD-Album DigiPac (4-plated) with 84-page booklet, 30 tracks. Playing time approx. 83 mns.

Street Corner Symphonies
The Complete Story Of Doo Wop
Volume 2 - 1950

1950 was something of a transitional year for African-American vocal groups, though it probably wasn't all that apparent at the time.

The venerated old-timers such as The Mills Brothers, Delta Rhythm Boys, and Jubalaires were still popular entities, their immaculately honed harmonies and rich, inviting leads harking back to an earlier stage of the art's development, when widespread pop acceptance was the first and foremost goal of any group. The first two aggregations to emerge as genuine rhythm and blues stars during the postwar era, The Ravens and The Orioles, continued to soar, though neither had hits over the course of 1950 on the same exalted level that they'd enjoyed during the late '40s. The ascension of peerless Ravens bass singer Jimmy Ricks had spawned a slew of groups boasting a deep-voiced front man of their own. Thanks to his mammoth success, Jimmy had a lot more competition now.

Orioles lead tenor Sonny Til - the genre's first matinee idol, thanks to his group's smash 1948 ballad It's Too Soon To Know and a string of similarly intimate followups that were nearly as successful - was about to find out how fickle fame could be. In 1949, his Orioles reeled off a half-dozen hits, but they'd post none at all one short year later. Til's crown was about to be snatched away by a daring young tenor whose gospel-fired vocal histrionics were like nothing the secular world had ever encountered in a vocal group setting.

Clyde McPhatter was the sensational lead tenor of The Dominoes, a new group assembled by vocal coach/songwriter Billy Ward with hopes of creating a sound not all that far removed from that of The Ink Spots. Clyde's flights of vocal fancy would render Ward's dream moot, to the great benefit of countless vocal groups to come who did their best to follow in Clyde's footsteps. McPhatter would prove the most influential lead tenor of his era; his first single with The Dominoes, Do Something For Me, is one of the many highlights of this jam-packed collection.