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| I'll throw in The Crests, gratis. |
The Hit
“The Worst That Could Happen,” which I hadn’t heard till this week. Released in 1968 (seriously?), it’s a smart, (over-)polished rendition of heartbreak, and also rather dignified. Having listened to all kinds of “you know you want it” rock, it’s nice to hear a guy sing about being very happy for the woman he loves, despite the fact the feeling isn’t mutual and his heart just turned inside out.
It hit No. 3 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 (and it was an oddball for the era), and that was the high point for both song and band. That said, it was handed to them - The 5th Dimension recorded the same song in 1967 (a better version, for me) – so the whole Johnny Maestro didn’t run on its own legs. He never had, though, not even during his first act.
The Rest of the Story
Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge was something of a salvage job, a group of musicians and performers looking to keep a streak going. Johnny Mastrangelo, aka, Johnny Maestro, started in the late-1950s in a doo-wop group called The Crests, the first multi-racial doo wop group to hit the bigs; Maestro was a lone Italian American in a mix with one Puerto Rican (Harold “Chico” Torres) and three African Americans (notably Patricia Van Dross, Luther’s older sister, though, young as she was (15) she never toured with them). They churned out one big hit with “16 Candles” and kept rolling with “A Year Ago Tonight,” “Angels Listened In,” and “Trouble in Paradise.” After two years (1958-60) of maniacal touring and hitting the Dick Clark circuit, other doo wop acts lapped The Crests and, a couple years after that, doo wop’s popularity crapped out. Maestro, however, wasn’t ready to give up.
Anyone interested in tracing the path from The Crests to Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge can hit the link on The Crests below, but, honestly, it’s just a bunch of names you’ve never heard falling in and out of projects that lasted only a year or two (including, yes, “Johnny Maestro & The Crests”). He did finally land in a project that recreated the magic. The first step came with recruiting a group called The Del-Satins, a doo-wop group in New York that Maestro started signing with in 1967. The next step came when The Del-Satins entered a Battle of the Bands and a talent agent named Alan White tapped a horn section called The Rhythm Method to back them. Maestro’s manager, Betty Sperber, liked what she heard and talked the now-11 member act into becoming a going concern. They named the expanded act Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge as a spin on the old cliché about the Brooklyn Bridge – i.e., if you can book at 11-piece act, there’s this bridge I can sell you…
“The Worst That Could Happen,” which I hadn’t heard till this week. Released in 1968 (seriously?), it’s a smart, (over-)polished rendition of heartbreak, and also rather dignified. Having listened to all kinds of “you know you want it” rock, it’s nice to hear a guy sing about being very happy for the woman he loves, despite the fact the feeling isn’t mutual and his heart just turned inside out.
It hit No. 3 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 (and it was an oddball for the era), and that was the high point for both song and band. That said, it was handed to them - The 5th Dimension recorded the same song in 1967 (a better version, for me) – so the whole Johnny Maestro didn’t run on its own legs. He never had, though, not even during his first act.
The Rest of the Story
Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge was something of a salvage job, a group of musicians and performers looking to keep a streak going. Johnny Mastrangelo, aka, Johnny Maestro, started in the late-1950s in a doo-wop group called The Crests, the first multi-racial doo wop group to hit the bigs; Maestro was a lone Italian American in a mix with one Puerto Rican (Harold “Chico” Torres) and three African Americans (notably Patricia Van Dross, Luther’s older sister, though, young as she was (15) she never toured with them). They churned out one big hit with “16 Candles” and kept rolling with “A Year Ago Tonight,” “Angels Listened In,” and “Trouble in Paradise.” After two years (1958-60) of maniacal touring and hitting the Dick Clark circuit, other doo wop acts lapped The Crests and, a couple years after that, doo wop’s popularity crapped out. Maestro, however, wasn’t ready to give up.
Anyone interested in tracing the path from The Crests to Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge can hit the link on The Crests below, but, honestly, it’s just a bunch of names you’ve never heard falling in and out of projects that lasted only a year or two (including, yes, “Johnny Maestro & The Crests”). He did finally land in a project that recreated the magic. The first step came with recruiting a group called The Del-Satins, a doo-wop group in New York that Maestro started signing with in 1967. The next step came when The Del-Satins entered a Battle of the Bands and a talent agent named Alan White tapped a horn section called The Rhythm Method to back them. Maestro’s manager, Betty Sperber, liked what she heard and talked the now-11 member act into becoming a going concern. They named the expanded act Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge as a spin on the old cliché about the Brooklyn Bridge – i.e., if you can book at 11-piece act, there’s this bridge I can sell you…
That’s pretty much it in terms of Johnny Maestro and whoever he hooked up with at any point in his career. He got another two years in The Majors, now hitting The Ed Sullivan Show and The Della Reese Show instead of Dick Clark. If they ever wrote their own material, I never read about it. They did keep playing when the spotlight moved on, shrinking into a five-piece before expanding up to eight pieces in the mid-80s. If they had a second act to speak of (or a third in Maestro’s case), it was as working musicians (their last drummer, Lou Agiesta, toured with the original Jesus Christ Superstar).
Maestro passed in 2010 but, as it turns out, not even death can stop this act. They continued with new “Johnny Maestros,” I guess (first Roy Michaels, then Joe Esposito; and I imagine they stuck with the original name?), and could still be going for all I know. Because the whole thing feels like a throwback to an era before what I understand as “rock” – e.g., performers who don’t write their own material – and because they never stopped doing something like the same thing, I found it hard to get excited about this one. Listening to them reminded me of karaoke; its better, of course, and by a massive stretch, but there’s a trapped-in-ember quality to what Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge does: they exist to scratch one specific itch – e.g., people’s desire for doo wop. There’s just enough demand, apparently, for them to keep performing and for Jerry Nadler to arrange to have them honored by the House of Representatives in 2012.
About the Sampler
A lot of the recordings on Spotify, if not all of them, feature live performances by Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge, so, after their more famous numbers, I went a couple medleys – e.g., “Ruby Baby/Runaround Sue/The Wanderer” and “My Juanita/River Deep/My Juanita (Medley),” and even a “Band Introduction” (can't find this one). That felt like showing them at their best for whatever reason. “The Worst That Could Happen” made the cut, naturally, but them doing covers of classics – e.g., “Gimme Some Lovin,” “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and even The Brooklyn Bridge covering The Crest’s “16 Candles” – seemed like what you’d get if you went to see them live.
I rounded out the playlist with a few songs by The Crests, including the two linked to above, but also “Isn’t It Amazing” (as a lively one), “Step by Step” (jaunty!), and, a personal favorite of them all (despite the stalker-y overtones), “Silhouettes.”
Source(s)
Wikipedia – Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge
Wikipedia – The Crests
Billboard Top 100, 1968 (for context, can't believe this is the first time I linked to that)
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