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| You're motoring/what's your price for flight? |
Always liked this tune. Sounds like a slow-jam embrace feels...
The Hit
“’Earth Angel’ -- like so many '50s doo-wop ballads -- was structured on the chord changes of Rodgers & Hart's ‘Blue Moon,’ in a progression commonly known as ‘ice cream changes’ or ‘Blue Moon changes.’ Because so many '50s ballads use the same structure, oldies groups can string together seamless medleys of doo-wop classics.”
- Honolulu Star Bulletin featured, September 14, 2001
That takes care of the structure, now the story. As with The Crows’ “Gee,” the Penguins’ “Earth Angel” wasn’t the A-side of its 45. That was “Hey Senorita” (better song, for me) and their label pushed that one, only to have radio DJs flip the 45 and find the song that became the hit. It never reached No. 1 – their version only climbed to No. 9 on the pop charts (hold that thought) – but, by way of some creative math, Songfacts.com dubbed “Earth Angel” the “top R&B record of all time in terms of continuous popularity.” [Ed. – They arrived there by counting every version of the song (there are many), which yielded a total of 30 million copies sold.]
Personally, it takes me back to big dances that happened twenty years before I was born, scenes stolen from high school dances from movies and TV shows set in the 1950s. And the intimacy of the song – the slow, swaying rhythm, perfect for the side-shuffling clutch of teenage slow dancing, the lead vocals that float over it, as if lifted by the backing harmonies – has a way of making a pair of doting lovers feel like the only people in the world, even in a crowded room. A nice song, in other words, but one that kicked off one hell of a legal tussle.
Legal battles over the publishing and authorship rights to the song kicked off in April of 1955, about six months after it came out. As with a lot of civil suits, it didn’t have to happen and at least one of the wrong people won. Worse, it was just one piece in a larger falling out.
The Rest of the Story, Briefly
The Penguins started late in 1953, when two recent graduates from Los Angeles’ Fremont High School, Cleveland Duncan and Curtis Williams, bumped into one another at a California Club talent show. Williams was in a group called the Hollywood Flames at the time (who come up again in the soon-to-be renumbered chapter in this series on Bobby Day), but still struggling to figure out where he fit in (the rest of the band called him “too independent”). He had been working on “Earth Angel” with another member, Gaynel Hodge, under the tutelage of an up-and-coming songwriter named Jesse Belvin. According to everything I read for this chapter, that kind of collaboration happened all the time in this scene – i.e., people trading ideas, doing a little borrowing, etc. After the show, Williams pitched the song to Duncan, telling him his voice fit it. Duncan caught the pitch and went with it, all the way down to rewriting the melody.
The Hit
“’Earth Angel’ -- like so many '50s doo-wop ballads -- was structured on the chord changes of Rodgers & Hart's ‘Blue Moon,’ in a progression commonly known as ‘ice cream changes’ or ‘Blue Moon changes.’ Because so many '50s ballads use the same structure, oldies groups can string together seamless medleys of doo-wop classics.”
- Honolulu Star Bulletin featured, September 14, 2001
That takes care of the structure, now the story. As with The Crows’ “Gee,” the Penguins’ “Earth Angel” wasn’t the A-side of its 45. That was “Hey Senorita” (better song, for me) and their label pushed that one, only to have radio DJs flip the 45 and find the song that became the hit. It never reached No. 1 – their version only climbed to No. 9 on the pop charts (hold that thought) – but, by way of some creative math, Songfacts.com dubbed “Earth Angel” the “top R&B record of all time in terms of continuous popularity.” [Ed. – They arrived there by counting every version of the song (there are many), which yielded a total of 30 million copies sold.]
Personally, it takes me back to big dances that happened twenty years before I was born, scenes stolen from high school dances from movies and TV shows set in the 1950s. And the intimacy of the song – the slow, swaying rhythm, perfect for the side-shuffling clutch of teenage slow dancing, the lead vocals that float over it, as if lifted by the backing harmonies – has a way of making a pair of doting lovers feel like the only people in the world, even in a crowded room. A nice song, in other words, but one that kicked off one hell of a legal tussle.
Legal battles over the publishing and authorship rights to the song kicked off in April of 1955, about six months after it came out. As with a lot of civil suits, it didn’t have to happen and at least one of the wrong people won. Worse, it was just one piece in a larger falling out.
The Rest of the Story, Briefly
The Penguins started late in 1953, when two recent graduates from Los Angeles’ Fremont High School, Cleveland Duncan and Curtis Williams, bumped into one another at a California Club talent show. Williams was in a group called the Hollywood Flames at the time (who come up again in the soon-to-be renumbered chapter in this series on Bobby Day), but still struggling to figure out where he fit in (the rest of the band called him “too independent”). He had been working on “Earth Angel” with another member, Gaynel Hodge, under the tutelage of an up-and-coming songwriter named Jesse Belvin. According to everything I read for this chapter, that kind of collaboration happened all the time in this scene – i.e., people trading ideas, doing a little borrowing, etc. After the show, Williams pitched the song to Duncan, telling him his voice fit it. Duncan caught the pitch and went with it, all the way down to rewriting the melody.
