Most people in the early 2000s are surprised to find out about the
Rivingtons -- that's primarily because people mostly discover their
existence when they hear one of the group's three hits, "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow,"
"Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow (The Bird)," and "The Bird's the
Word," which are much, much better known in their composite
re-recording by the
Trashmen (as "Surfin' Bird"). And when they hear the
Rivingtons' version, they're inevitably surprised by the fine singing
and superb R&B phrasing, miles away from the
Trashmen's punk stylings. Their version of the song was just as
nonsensical, but it had amazing class and panache, and it's more than
that -- it's part of a story of superb singing, bird dances and surfin'
birds, great dances and even better times, before the world of the 1960s
got all dark and serious and too dangerous for good clean fun.The
Rivingtons were a West Coast vocal group whose lineup featured Al
Frazier, Carl
White, John
"Sonny" Harris, and Turner
"Rocky" Wilson Jr. That lineup went through myriad
reshapings to get there, along with renamings -- they weren't even the
Rivingtons to start with. It all started with Al
Frazier, in high school in Los Angeles at the end of the 1940s, who
sang baritone and formed his own group, the
Mello-Moods, whose ranks included future Platters
member Paul
Robi. They had aspirations to record, but never got that lucky -- Frazier
went into the army and served in Korea, which didn't interrupt his
desire for a music career. When he got out he formed a new outfit, a
mixed male/female quartet called Emanons
(which was "No Names" backwards). They were good enough to
wrangle a TV appearance locally in 1952, but that was as far as they
ascended. Then, in 1953, Frazier
crossed paths with lead singer Thurston
Harris, bass singer Matthew
Nelson, baritone Leon
Hughes, and tenor Willie
Ray Rockwell, at an amateur night run by the legendary deejay Hunter
Hancock -- they had a group but no moves, and Frazier
had some moves to suggest, and suddenly they were a quintet, then went
back to being a quartet when Hughes
left the lineup. The four-man outfit, called the
Lamplighters, were signed to Federal Records, part of Syd
Nathan's King Records, and began making their name all over the West
Coast during the run -- up to the middle of the 1950s. They were doing
well, young men loving their work and getting lots of it, and then,
while on the East Coast, Thurston
Harris suddenly got homesick for Indianapolis and decided to leave
the act. The group was on hiatus and might have stayed that way if Willie
Ray Rockwell hadn't pointed Frazier
to a pair of singers, tenor John
"Sonny" Harris and lead Carl
White, with Nelson
returning to establish the lineup that would carry them for the next few
years. The only problem was that the record company felt it was
ill-advised to release a new Lamplighters
single with a new lead singer, so instead of picking up where the latter
group had left off, they were renamed the
Tenderfoots and forced to rebuild their reputation and audience.
They got four records out on Federal without any significant sales or
airplay, and their bookings were similarly slim. They tried to bring Thurston
Harris back into the lineup but that didn't last. And they spent
time appearing on other artists' records -- including a credit as "the
Jacks" behind Paul
Anka on "Blau-Wile-Deveest-Fontaine," and were signed to
the Jamie label as the
Sharps by producer Lester
Sill (of future Phil
Spector fame) in 1956. They bounced around some more, to Aladdin
Records, where they even ended up singing behind Thurston
Harris, on records including "Little Bitty Pretty One."
Their next stop was Tag Records and then to Combo Records, with
"Look What You've Done to Me," which was later picked up by
Dot Records for national distribution. Then it was back to Jamie, where
they cut more sides of their own and sang behind Duane
Eddy, among others (they were the
Rebels in that incarnation). Finally, at the very end of the 1950s, Matthew
Nelson left the fold and was replaced on bass by Turner
"Rocky" Wilson Jr., and that lineup sang behind artists
including bandleader/actor/trumpeter Ray
Anthony (of Mamie
Van Doren fame). There was also a stint as the
Four After Fives and another as the
Crenshaws, working with producer Kim
Fowley on "Hello School Teacher," and backing Roy
Milton, and cutting sides for Warner Bros.. Their break came one day
when they were fooling around in the studio and Rocky
Wilson suddenly came up with the "papa-oom-mow-mow" vocal
line, done basso, and everyone loved it. The resulting LP was
startlingly compelling record that Fowley
steered, along with the group, to a pair of producers, Jack
Levy and Adam
Ross. They came up with a $1200 advance for the song and against an
eventual contract with group, and the name the Rivingtons (derived from
the two having once lived on Rivington Street on New York's Lower East
Side). They offered the recording to Capitol, who turned it down as a
little too far-out (that from a label that recorded Yma
Sumac and released the single "Tsukiaki"). Instead, it
went to Capitol's younger rival, Liberty Records, who bought it but then
sat on it for six months trying to figure out how to sell a song called
"Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow."The group and their managers had no doubt
how to sell it -- play it, sing it, get it heard. Which is exactly what
they did, at a performing showcase for deejays in Los Angeles. The
deejays loved what they heard, and asked for a record to promote, and
the managers duly provided them with "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow." It
spread across the Los Angeles airwaves, and out from there to
California, and suddenly there was no decision to be made about
marketing the song -- it sold itself, and all Liberty had to do was ship
them, the song did the rest. One of the reasons for its appeal was that
yes, it was a nonsense song, but the members sang it with such spirit
and élan, that it wasn't a "guilty pleasure" or an
embarrassing novelty record -- it was silly, but it was also viscerally
exciting like the very best R&B dance records, and sung that way.
Like an amazing number of other "novelty" singles --
"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", "Short Shorts,"
and "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow's distant successor, "Na Na Hey Hey
(Kiss Him Goodbye)," it was cut initially as a joke, an
after-thought, at the end of a session, and worked its way into the
vernacular infectiously. An album followed, entitled Doin'
the Bird, in late 1962, that the group wasn't too happy about,
and a follow-up single, "Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow," but not before
"Kickapoo Joy Juice" interrupted their momentum. They followed
with up with "The Bird's the Word," which capitalized on the
first two records on that theme, and then "The Shaky Bird."
They rode the crest of a wave for a year, into the second half of 1963.
By that time, a Minneapolis-based surf band called the
Trashmen co-opted the boom started by the Rivingtons, combining
their first and third Liberty singles into a composite work entitled
"Surfin' Bird," pushing the beat into warp nine and rocketing
them to the Top Ten and linking the Rivingtons forever to the tail-end
of the surf music craze and also, to an extent, displacing the originals
-- by the time the
Ramones began playing it a decade or so later, it was already a
standard piece of punk band repertory. The Rivingtons kept making good
records but never found a replacement for the "bird" craze
around which to wrap their work. "Cherry" was a straight
R&B ballad, and "Weejee Walk," which closed out their
Liberty career, was an attempt at another dance piece. The group bounced
around some more, between Reprise Records and Adam
Ross's own label, and Columbia Records, before forming their own
label, Quan, in 1967. They were Carlos & the Rivingtons at one
point, and in 1973, amid the oldies craze, they did an updated version
of "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow." Carl
White, who passed away at the end of the decade, was succeeded by Andrew
Butler, and as of the early 1990s, a version of the Rivingtons was
still performing. In 1991, EMI Records, which had acquired the Liberty
library, issued Liberty
Years, a 23-song compilation of the group's Liberty sides. It's
glorious, a magnificent collection of stunning vocals, and as priceless
and essential a body of music as the best work of Bo
Diddley, Johnny
Otis, or any other foundation rockers you care to name.