Let's make one thing clear right off: Little Anthony & The Imperials, who will appear in a New York nightclub for the first time in 35 years when they hold court at Feinstein's at Loews Regency April 5-16, are not doo-wop.
"That's the misnomer of all misnomers!" declares Anthony Gourdine, though most people probably don't know he even has a surname (and he won't for the rest of this article). "There's no such thing as doo-wop!"
Anthony explains that the vocal music he and his group sang was really "street corner music--r&b."
"No one knew what 'doo-wop' meant!” he emphasizes. “You got all these white groups out of New York like The Elegants and The Dupris who weren’t emulating the black music sounds but developing their own things.”
He sings a chorus of the Regents' (and later Beach Boys') doo-wop classic “Barbara Ann,” then returns to the point.
“All of a sudden a disc jockey out of New York started calling it doo-wop, and it left the rest of us in that bag. But look at my work and it’s not that: We’re r&b singers! Calling us doo-wop is a disservice to us and other r&b groups like The Moonglows and The Flamingos.”
The misnomer carried over to a 2002 PBS special, Rock, Rhythm, And Doo-Wop.
"We didn't sign on for that," Anthony says, referring to the show's title, "and that’s why we've been very leery of participating in anything since: We had to dig our way out of that hole, and reinvent ourselves. Now we can't be defined--'pop/r&b' is as close as you can get. But we came out of that [doo-wop] era and everybody lumps us into that category."
He notes that the group's first hit "Tears On My Pillow," which it released as The Imperials and was a No. 4 hit in 1958, was "definitely pop."
"We were using the same people that Sinatra used," he says, noting that their two biggest hits following "Tears On My Pillow," "Goin' Out Of My Head" (No. 6 in 1964) and "Hurt So Bad" (No. 10 in 1965) were released through Sinatra's producer Don Costa's DCP International label. But he acknowledges that the group "had a career in a gray area, where we never got above or below a certain point. We couldn't be booked as a headliner because they thought we weren't strong enough, and we couldn't be booked as an opening act because they thought we were stronger than the headliner! But here's the kicker: Our peers knew exactly who we were!"
Now, of course, Little Anthony and The Imperials are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not to mention the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. They've also received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Pioneer Award. Remarkably, three of the four group members--Anthony, founder Clarence Collins, and Ernest Wright--are original.
"The reason we survived 50 years is that we reinvented ourselves," says Anthony. "We met the greatest artists: Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Sammy Davis, Jr. One thing Foxx told me was that to have longevity, you have to reinvent yourself. Most artists of our era are still singing the same records and songs and living off the past—which is gone. Bringing back memories is good, but we made the transition by preparing for the day when we weren't recording stars, and becoming performing stars--and that's what happened. We don’t live by our big hits: We sing them, but the basis of our show is entertainment. What holds an audience is personality, presentation--old-fashioned show business."
And songs, he might add, and in this regard, Anthony notes that besides Little Anthony and the Imperials' hits, they perform more contemporary songs by the likes of Prince and Sting, "so many different songs that we've made our own--so that when you hear us sing them you think we recorded them."
So why has it been so long since they've performed in a hometown nightclub?
"Nightclubs went the way of the dodo bird!" says Anthony, a New York native who now resides near Las Vegas. "The last time we played one in New York was in the '70s at the [now defunct] Copa. But MTV and computers came in, and the day of the nightclubs was gone in New York and many other cities. But we were the club kings then."
Now, at the intimate Feinstein's, the challenge will be "to adapt ourselves to a smaller audience," says Anthony. "There will be less presentation--and a lot more singing!"
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