Of all the songs we sang in that quartet, “Gee” was the best. I lifted it off a recording by The Crows. It was the first race record to cross over to the “white” Pops list and the first doo-wop recording to sell a million copies.
Here’s how Wikipedia described it:
The song starts with a few bars of nonsense: duh-duda-duh-duda-duh-duda-duh-duh-duba followed by the lead vocal; Oh-ho-ho-ho gee, my oh-oh gee-hee, well oh-ho gee, why I love that girl, then the group [enters again with] Love that girl! The vocals are infectiously upbeat with wonderful harmonies and use of nonsense syllables, sounding like enthusiastic street-corner singing. The modified jump blues instrumental backup, with its infectious melody and Tiny Grimes guitar solo, is the perfect accompaniment.
I sang the lyrics in falsetto, with the other three duh-duda-duh–dudaing behind me. When we premiered it at a record hop, the chaperones, who were our teachers, went bonkers. But they couldn’t figure out how to tell us why without sounding like racists. It sounded “funny,” they said, “too primitive.” They meant, of course, that it sounded “colored,” which it was.
That may have bothered them but it didn’t bother us. We didn’t give a shit about our teachers’ discomfort with black-white relationships and the last thing in the world we wanted was to sound safe.
It’s jolting to look back at how racist the world I lived in then was and how oblivious I was to it. To my credit, I felt it was unfair that some people were discriminated against and others weren’t. I felt obligated not to discriminate myself and if anyone asked me how I felt about discrimination, to express myself against it. But I never really did anything about it. Mine wasn’t an activist generation and I suppose, in some way, I believed race issues were already resolving themselves. (They weren’t.)
I wasn’t very familiar with “race” music and what I heard I didn’t particularly like, any more than I liked early rock ‘n’ roll by white performers like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis. (I still don’t particularly like Elvis, though I recognize his value in the music.)
There were a few r ‘n’ b songs I liked, mostly because I heard them and danced to them at record hops. Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill.” Chuck Berry’s version of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Maybelline.” Every hop, we danced to Jimmy Forest’s “Night Train” and Earl Bostic’s “Flamingo.” I really only liked one out and out rock ‘n’ roll record, Bill Haley and the Comets: “Rock Around the Clock.” It came out in the spring of my senior year and was an instant hit among many friends.. It was great to dance to and not so far out that we felt uncomfortable listening to it.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING:
Jimmy Forest, “Night Train” (1951)
Earl Bostic, “Flamingo” (1951)
MUSIC & ME 