Street Corner Symphonies 1951 3 / Various

• Track Listing

2012 release, the third installment in this incredible series that focuses on the glory days of Doo Wop. Like Rap, Doo Wop music was an urban American art-form. It was sung on street-corners, in stairwells of tenement apartments, in high school toilets... and it was preserved for posterity in recording studios. Most of the performers were African American, and many of the songs were romantic - in sharp contrast to the bleak reality of urban African American life at the time. Suffice to say that these were the records that provided the soundtrack to the Rock 'n' Roll revolution... and the records that changed American and global popular music forever. This series has been compiled and annotated by R&B music's foremost scholar, Chicago's Bill Dahl, and every song comes with detailed notes and illustrations. There have been plenty of Doo-Wop compilations, even a few Doo-Wop boxed sets, but this series is the last word on the genre. 32 tracks. Bear Family.

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