This series is written from published material and its byline claims method rather than credentials, so the sources are listed. They are given as books and categories of material rather than as page citations; where a claim in the text is contested, the text says so at the point of the claim.
A general caution applies to this volume more than to most, and the text has repeated it where it bites: the founding scenes of doo-wop were set down largely in interviews given thirty to fifty years after the fact, by participants recalling their own adolescence. Group memberships shifted constantly and are genuinely disputed; session dates and personnel at the storefront labels were poorly documented at the time and reconstructed later; and several of the genre’s standard stories (the Orioles’ broadcast audition, the writing of In the Still of the Night on guard duty, Buck Ram’s washroom, the Marcels’ borrowed introduction) rest substantially on a single participant’s own telling, repeated over decades, and are identified as such where they appear. Where the sung-syllable question arises, this book’s rule bears restating: song titles are quoted; no lyric and no sung vocable is transcribed anywhere in it.
Genre histories and reference. The Sound of the City, Charlie Gillett, still the foundational business-aware history of rock and roll’s rise, strong on the independent labels. Doowop: The Chicago Scene, Robert Pruter, the most rigorous scholarly study of a single scene, and a model of how to handle contested memory. The Complete Book of Doo-Wop, Anthony Gribin and Matthew Schiff, for the genre’s internal taxonomy. The group-by-group research of Marv Goldberg, published across decades in collector journals and online, is the closest thing the genre has to a census and underlies this book’s caution about line-ups. Jay Warner’s American Singing Groups for group chronologies.
The business. Hit Men, Fredric Dannen, for Morris Levy and the New York independents’ afterlife. Me, the Mob, and the Music, Tommy James with Martin Fitzpatrick, an artist’s-eye account of Roulette. Big Deal and standard music-business texts (Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business) for the publishing and recoupment mechanics, which are described in this book at period-appropriate rates. Ruth Brown’s memoir Miss Rhythm (with Andrew Yule) and contemporaneous press coverage of the Atlantic settlement and the founding of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation. Congressional records of the 1960 payola hearings (House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight) for the disc-jockey economy. Reporting on the Truth in Music Advertising campaign, including legislative testimony by surviving group members.
The litigation. The Why Do Fools Fall in Love authorship case (Merchant and Santiago’s 1992 jury verdict and its 1996 reversal on appeal) and the parallel Lymon estate litigation are matters of federal and New York court record, extensively covered in the press of the day. The Solomon Linda chapter follows Rian Malan’s investigation In the Jungle (Rolling Stone, 2000), the subsequent 2004 South African proceedings against Disney, and the reported terms of the 2006 settlement; Malan’s reconstruction of the money is the essential source and is credited in the chapter itself. The Platters and Drifters name litigation is drawn from the published court decisions, including the 2012 federal ruling in favour of Herb Reed’s enterprise.
Participants’ accounts. Interview literature spanning five decades, including the oral histories collected by the Vocal Group Hall of Fame and the group-harmony fan press (Bim Bam Boom, Record Exchanger and successors); Frankie Lymon’s widely cited 1967 magazine interview on his addiction; the many late-life interviews of Deborah Chessler, Fred Parris, Maurice Williams, Terry Johnson, Harvey Fuqua, Herb Reed, Ben E. King and others, identified in the text as personal tellings where they carry weight alone. Berry Gordy’s memoir To Be Loved for the Motown hand-off.
The engineering. Standard histories of recording technology for the echo chamber, Bill Putnam and Universal Recording, Gold Star, and the EMT plate, including the technical press’s retrospectives on Putnam and the widely documented account of Peg o’ My Heart (1947). Chart positions and dates throughout are from the Billboard listings of the period (race records, rhythm and blues, and pop charts, under their changing names) via the standard compendia (Whitburn); UK positions from the Official Charts Company’s records.
Where figures are disputed (session costs, pressing counts, the size of flat fees, the precise authorship splits of Earth Angel and Why Do Fools Fall in Love, the balance of Solomon Linda’s estate) the text gives the range or the standard account and says whose account it is. Those disagreements are not gaps in the record. They are the record, and in this genre they are frequently the point.
