Nonfiction. Italian American Studies. Italians have been subject to some of the most blatant, brutal, and course forms of discrimination to affect any people. This volume investigates anti-Italian discrimination in the USA.

With abundant background and enticing images, this work covers more than just the gorgeous harmonies of the unforgettable doo wop groups. The landmark volume traces the development of the music, politics, art, architecture, and popular culture of the 1950s.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide information on the cities of origin, members, and music of some of the most popular rhythm and blues and doo wop groups.

In Doo-Wop Acappella: A Story of Street Corners, Echoes, and Three-Part Harmonies, scholar and musician Lawrence Pitilli details this too-little-explored area of 1950’s - early 60’s American culture. As Kenny Vance and the Planotones suggested in their classic song “Looking for an Echo,” every doo-wop acapella group’s mission—the search “for a sound, a place to be in harmony, a place we almost found”—was more than the story of street kids seeking recording glory. It is the tale of urban change, mass migrations, ethnic acculturation, a changing radio and recording industry, and the dynamics of cultural change in the “sounds”—sonic and linguistic—that every generation seeks to make and re-make for itself. In his study of this neglected period, Pitilli uncovers a rich musical tradition practiced largely by amateurs in an almost mythologized urban America. Although most of these practitioners were musically untrained, their lack of formal music education and financial support neither diluted their passion for singing or their quest for possible fame and fortune. In this engagingly written and celebratory work, Pitilli further demonstrates that doo-wop acappella was closely tied to broader issues, including the self-invented individual, gender roles, ethnicity, race, and class.

The three New Jersey beach resorts known collectively as The Wildwoods have recently been the subject of widespread notice for their unique concentration of mid-century commercial architecture. Known in The Wildwoods as Doo Wop, the style is mostly represented in the resorts' surviving motels, built between 1955 and 1970, and comes in a variety of forms: Modern, with jet-age glass walls; Vroom!, with thrusting pointed features; and Polynesian Pop, with thatched roofs and tiki torches. This fun, colorful book recounts the stories of the motels, describes their special features--from glorious neon signs to ubiquitous plastic palm trees--and covers the recent Neo-Doo Wop buildings that have risen in the wake of Doo Wop preservation.

A must for all lovers of vocal group harmony and foo-wop music. Contains a collector's checklist of the Top 1000 foo-wop songs of all time. Other lists include the best leads, the best basses, the best of the female groups, white groups, schoolboy sound, gang sound, pop sound, etc.

Vanilla Doo-Wop shares accounts of various white vocal groups originating along the Atlantic Coast during the late fifties and early sixties. Many of these artists became endearing music legends, recording many lasting tunes. Others achieved notoriety as a one-hit wonder with a single tune. In Vanilla Doo-Wop, read how a melody composed for one promising group was unceremoniously given to another and became a Top Five hit. See how a popular group turned down a song that would be recorded by their former lead singer and become one of the top rock and roll songs of all time. Learn of the vocalist whose hit record came out while he served military duty. He later joined one of America's most successful rock groups to sing lead on their biggest hit ever. Stroll down Memory Lane as we recall many of the era's great songs, by some of the finest doo-wop artists. These intriguing stories are all here, plus many more in Vanilla Doo-wop.