FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS – “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”
I like the vim and sharpness of this song. I like the vocal tricks the record uses – the “dum-ba-ba-dum” doo-wop intro is an instant hit; Lymon’s long high “why” is heart-melting. I love the way Lymon rushes the verses. But I just don’t like the song as much as it seems to like itself: it’s charming and precocious and a shot of energy after a couple of torpid chart-toppers, but when he isn’t doing tricks Lymon’s voice sounds harsh and unformed. That’s apt, of course, for a record about sticky teenage lust. If I’d been a teenager in ’56 maybe it would have blown my world apart (more likely I’d have been a bit nervous of Frankie’s rawness) – but there’s no point in my pretending to be something I’m not. “Why Do Fools?” is a record I can appreciate but I can’t adore.
6
I’m surprised nobody’s commented on this until now – well, not post Haloscan anyway.
This is still before my time but it’s still one of the tracks that evokes that period before my pop awakening. It still has the power to wriggle around in the head, and it’s so full of energy that seems to be itching to break free of its shackles. Something in the way Frankie sings – not the high-pitched precocity, which I’ll admit is irritating, but the way he seems to take it way too fast as if he can’t wait to break out.
i doubt it’s possible but it would be nice to try and reconstruct pre-haloscan comments actually — or try and recall what we personally had to say
I, for one, would really appreciate it if you did, p^nk. Feel like I’ve gone to college in 1971 and all the older students are telling me what I missed out on a couple of years before…
Why Do Fools is incredibly FRESH. The appeal is all in the gymnastics and spontaneity, which is probably why covers of the song always sound so insubstantial.
Hats off to the British on this one. It stuck at no.7 in the US, Gogi Grant’s Wayward Wind and Pat Boone’s I Almost Lost My Mind being the American number ones.
Oooh the earliest no. 1 I have in my ipod! I’m a sucker for this because I love the doo wopping harmonising of the early 60s girl groups and this is very much the precursor to that thanks to Frankie’s girlish falsetto. I agree about it sounding fresh, it’s of its time but also somehow out of time.
I agree with the previous comments. It’s a great record, though like Tom I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for it somewhat (though him rating it lower than Doris is a revelation).
Probably sounds so much better played on the dancefloor – imagine the kids jiving to that sax break…
DESERT ISLAND DISC WATCH (Up to 11/04/11)
Flora Robson, actor (1958)
Cilla Black, singer (1988).
Frankie Lymon meets Frankie Laine – the generation gap writ large, not to mention an undertone: as someone comments, a little black kid telling a white man to get lost – in 1956!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I