THE PENGUINS
Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)
'Earth angel, earth angel...will you be mine...my darling dear, love you all the time...' So goes one of the greatest ballads of rock and roll's breakout mid-'50s phase. It certainly wasn't earmarked for legendary status when first breathing life as a B side by Los Angeles vocal group The Penguins. But it didn't take long to catch on. Cleveland Duncan and Curtis Williams had known each in grammar school, but went their separate ways; by 1953, Curtis was a member of The Hollywood Flames and ran into baritone/bass Cleveland while participating in an L.A.-area talent show. The group started to form: tenor Duncan's friend from Fremont High, Dexter Tisby (another tenor) joined up, as did baritone singer Bruce Tate, one of Williams' pals from Jefferson High.
A favorite cigarette at the time was Kool; the menthol brand's mascot was a penguin named Willie, a comic character who had a series of panels on the backs of the individual packages ("When your throat feels dry and tight...try Kools for a taste that's right!") and they decided to call themselves the Penguins. And why not? They were all pretty "kool" guys! In the spring of 1954 they got a green light from local record company owner Walter "Dootsie" Williams (no relation to Curtis). Working with a crude studio setup in a garage with a state-of-the-art Ampex tape recorder, they laid down just one song, "There Ain't No News Today," an uptempo number by little-known songwriter Walter Greenlaw. Released in August 1954 on DooTone Records, with a flip side by an uncredited singer (Willie Headon), the single went unnoticed.
The next record came just two months later: "Hey Señorita," written by Curtis (the song's lead vocalist) and Carl Green (better known as Johnny of Marvin and Johnny), its flirtatious midtempo arrangement seemed like a good shot at getting a hit, but it didn't happen. Curtis had penned the flip with fellow Flames member Gaynel Hodge; "Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)" began getting airplay and soon the ballad was a top request tune. They appeared at the "Hep Cat Ball" at the Shrine Auditorium with headliner/host Johnny Otis and L.A. acts The Medallions, The Platters, Richard Berry and the Dreamers and Marvin and Johnny, all of them hitless thus far except the latter (on the R&B charts at the time with their Modern label hit "Tick Tock"); Chuck Higgins and his band supplied backing. The Penguins performed both sides of their single.
Right before Thanksgiving, Bruce Tate hit and killed a female pedestrian while driving at night. Arrested for manslaughter, he had no choice but to quit the group. Bassman Randy Jones joined, leaving Curtis free to stick with his lead role, alternating with Cleveland. Despite the appearance of "Earth Angel" on national charts in late December (number two R&B behind "Hearts of Stone" by The Charms), Dootsie went ahead and released a new disc by the group, "Love Will Make Your Mind Go Wild" (Cleve lead) backed with "Ookey Ook" (Curtis lead), for which they created a waddling "Penguin dance" and began demonstrating it at live shows. "Earth Angel" went number one R&B in mid-January and reached the top ten of the pop chart the first week in February.
Several covers turned up, most notably pop versions by Gloria Mann, which reached number 24 but quickly fell off the chart, and The Crew-Cuts, who joined the Penguins in the top ten by the end of the month. Neither lasted past the early months of '55, while the original would achieve longevity in ways never imagined. Apparently, Dootsie wasn't so reliable about paying the foursome the royalty money they had coming. They got an offer from Buck Ram (who also represented the Platters) and a deal was made with Mercury Records (the Crew-Cuts' label) as long as the company, headquartered in Chicago (Ram's hometown), took the less-accomplished Platters as part of the deal. When Dootsie heard about this arrangement, he reminded his Antarctic bird group they had a three-year contract approved by the American Federation of Musicians and warned that if they went ahead, he would withhold all royalty payments. But they were certain major stardom was just around the corner and didn't feel intimated by his threat. On February 2, while "Earth Angel" was at its peak of popularity, they made an appearance on The Perry Como Show...a major network series!
In May, Dootsie filed a 750,000 dollar contract against Mercury and Ram. At about the same time, Jesse Belvin and Carl Green sued Dootsie, claiming the melody of "Earth Angel" bore a strong resemblance to their 1953 hit "Dream Girl" (uh, not quite, I'm afraid). In May, "Baby Let's Make Some Love" was issued by DooTone, going head-to-head with the debut Mercury disc, "Be Mine or Be a Fool." Both were ignored. That summer, "Walkin' Down Broadway" (penned by the ill-fated Bruce Tate), was just as poorly received. Certain songs ("Devil That I See," "My Troubles Are at an End" and others) had arrangements far too similar to "Earth Angel," a kiss of death for anyone trying to get another hit. When the Platters hit it big with "Only You (And You Alone)" in the fall of '55, Buck Ram suggested the Penguins perform in more of a pop style, but the group had no interest in the idea.
Riding the success of their hit, they secured engagements at a number of high-profile venues: the Moulin Rouge in Las Vegas, the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles and two Harlem hot spots: Small's Paradise and the Apollo Theater. The group had one single, "Peace of Mind," on Mercury's subsidiary label Wing in the spring of '56. There was a revival in interest in "Earth Angel" that summer when a snippet of it was used in Buchanan and Goodman's extremely popular novelty "break-in" disc "The Flying Saucer" ("...that was the Pelicans' outer space recording...Earth!"). While some artists, managers and labels feared inclusion on the record, even for a few seconds, could be a detriment, it actually revived interest in a number of songs that were thought to have run their course. Dootsie was pressing and selling more copies of the single than he had in the previous six months to a year. To get in on the unexpected surge, Mercury had the group record a new, but nearly identical, version.
Tisby and Jones left the group that summer and were replaced by Teddy Harper (formerly with The Aladdins). The act was briefly a trio before the two had a change of heart and returned. In June 1956 the Penguins had their final Mercury session, though they didn't realize it at the time. "Will You Be Mine" (sort of a sideways version of "EA") was released in January 1957. Buck Ram succeeded in getting a release of the Penguins' contract from Mercury. He made an arrangement with Atlantic that resulted in just one single; "Pledge of Love," composed by Ramona Redd (the wife of Mitchell Torok, who recorded one of several hit versions of the song in '57), was one of the Penguins' better efforts, and to everyone's surprise it reached the national charts (but only for one week on the R&B airplay survey), making its best showings in Pittsburgh and Chicago. Still, the guys didn't get much, if any, royalty money.
The lawsuits were settled around that time. The court decided Belvin would be given a share of the songwriting, after which he accepted a buyout from Dootsie, who then claimed label credit as one of the songwriters. He re-released the single on his new Dooto label with Belvin's name (and Hodge's, too) added to the writers' credit. Desperate, the act backtracked; six Penguins sides appeared on the Dooto label in late '57 and early '58 before Curtis left to reunite with the Hollywood Flames, suddenly hot with their hit "Buzz Buzz Buzz" on Ebb Records. Previous member Teddy Harper came back to the quartet; at this point the lineup was Cleveland, Dexter, Randy and Teddy. An album appeared (The Cool, Cool Penguins) with 12 songs recorded during this period that were also released on three different EPs. Duncan did a one-off single for the label in the summer of 1959: "To Keep Our Love" as Cleve Duncan and the Radiants (sisters Vesta and Evelyn King supplying the backing vocals).
The group had quit DooTone for good by 1959, the year L.A. deejay and Original Sound label owner Art Laboe's top-selling LP Oldies But Goodies included the original version of "Earth Angel" among its 12 tracks, helping keep interest high in the five-year-old hit (two other DooTone recordings, by Don Julian and the Meadowlarks and The Medallions, were included on the album). "EA" impacted certain markets - again - throughout the summer and fall, returning to the Billboard charts in late '59 and early '60 as part of the "second coming" of doo wop music, when many hits from just a few years earlier made significant comebacks. Dootsie kept pressing singles and ultimately made a fortune from sales of the hit song (his other cash cow was comedian Redd Foxx, with a series of "adults only" party albums on DooTone and Dooto spanning the mid-'50s through early '70s). The quartet's final recording was "Believe Me" on the obscure Sun State label, a fine romantic ballad penned by Dexter Tisby. But it wasn't the last to carry the group's name.
Later Penguins singles on Laboe's Original Sound label were actually by Cleve Duncan. Of these, "Memories of El Monte" (a medley of sorts including lines from other 1950s era hits), released in 1963, made reference to the El Monte Legion Stadium, where many concerts were held starring various Los Angeles vocal groups and bands. Doo wop aficionado Frank Zappa was involved in the single's writing and production and it was a popular record on stations in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. In 1969, Duncan formed The Fabulous Penguins with various backing singers and toured throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Dootsie Williams, meanwhile, passed away in 1991 at the age of 80, his coffin likely lined with wads of the greenbacks he received, from 1954 onward, from lucrative sales of The Penguins' classic rock and roll ballad "Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)."
