Word: wop
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DIED. LOU RAWLS, 72, Grammy-winning singer who performed doo-wop with high school pal Sam Cooke before recording a long list of soulful tunes for broader audiences in genres from jazz to gospel; of lung and brain cancer; in Los Angeles. Making more than 50 albums over 40 years, the man who Frank Sinatra said had the "silkiest chops in the singing game" topped the charts with R&B tunes (Love Is a Hurtin' Thing), pre-rap monologues (Tobacco Road) and, during the height of the 1970s disco craze, the rich, sophisticated "Philadelphia sound" typified on his signature megahit...
...DIED. LOU RAWLS, 72, Grammy Award-winning American singer who performed doo-wop with high-school pal Sam Cooke before recording a long list of soulful tunes for broader audiences in genres from jazz to gospel; in Los Angeles. Making more than 50 albums over 40 years, the man whom Frank Sinatra said had the "silkiest chops in the singing game" topped the charts with R&B tunes (Love is a Hurtin' Thing), pre-rap monologues (Tobacco Road), and, during the height of the 1970s disco craze, the rich, sophisticated "Philadelphia sound," typified on his million-plus selling signature...
...Behind him were three voices in the pop-R&B tradition, an octave or so below Frankie's. Usually the other guys didn't have much more to do than intone a few vowel sounds or (on "Stay") pow sounds-the oohs and ahhs of 50s doo-wop. But there was a solidity to the Seasons' backing vocals. With Valli doing all the filigree work, the other three were the long, smooth, sturdy road his falsetto danced on. Listen, for example, to "Rag Doll" (one of 51 selections on the very rich Seasons Anthology CD from Rhino Records). It begins...
...your name to Sinatra." But he goes for Valli. Then Tommy's pesty friend Joe Pesci, yes, that one, hooks him up with Bob Gaudio (Daniel Reichard), a teenager who a few years before had a novelty hit called "Short Shorts." He wants music to be more than doo-wop, to have subtlety, resonance. "It's what T.S. Eliot calls the objective correlative," he says, to which a local girl observes, "You're not from around here...
...voice," Lou says with a sneer, "is the closest thing I'm ever gonna come to working with a broad." When the house gets assigned a rookie named Mike, the veterans complain that there are already too many Mikes in the department--Mike the Mick, Guinea Mike, Mike the Wop...