Doo Wop: The Marcels and Little Caesar & The Romans

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback and the Doo Wop Series.  I'm Bill Price, and in this episode we will flash back to the late 1950's and look at two Doo Wop vocal groups from that era, The Marcels and Little Caesar & The Romans.

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Transcript

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback and the Doo Wop Series. In this episode we will flash back to the late 1950's and look at two Doo Wop vocal groups from that era, The Marcels and Little Caesar & The Romans.

The Marcels were a Doo Wop vocal group that formed in 1959 in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. The group originally consisted of Cornelius Harp, Fred Johnson, Gene Bricker, Ron Mundy and Richard Knauss. Fred’s younger sister Priscilla came up with the group’s name The Marcels, after a hairstyle that was popular at that time, the Marcel Wave.

In 1961 The Marcels recorded and released a cover version of the ballad “Blue Moon” on the Colpix label. The song was written by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart in 1934. The single climbed to number one in the US, UK, and New Zealand, selling over one million copies and earning a gold disc. The Marcels released several singles from 1961 to 1982, however “Heartaches” was the only other top ten hit, peaking at number seven.

Since the group was multi racial, the group encountered racial issues while touring in the southern US in August 1961. As a result Knauss, Bricker and Daniel Mercado were then replaced by Allen Johnson, Walt Maddox and Ron Mundy. Then in 1962 Harp and Allen left the group and were replaced by Richard Harris and William Herndon. In 1973, there was a brief reunion of the original group members and they made several recordings in 1975. However none of the releases managed to enter the charts.

Gene Bricker, one of the original members, died on December 10th, 1983. Allen
Johnson, one of the initial replacement members died on September 28th, 1995.
In the early 1990s,The Marcels lineup consisted of Johnson, Maddox, Harris, Jules
Hopson and Richard Merritt. Then sometime during 1995, the group split up. Fred
Johnson then formed his own group with new members. In 1999, Johnson, Harp, Mundy and Knauss reunited for the PBS television special “Doo Wop 50”

Here are The Marcels with their number one hit from 1961, “Blue Moon”.

Little Caesar and The Romans were a Doo Wop group from Los Angeles, California.
Initially when the group started recording in 1959, they were called The Cubans. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, the name was changed. The group consisted of Carl Burnett, Johnny Simmons, Early Harris, David Johnson and Leroy Saunders. The group had three hits in 1961 with “Hully Gully Again” which peaked at number 54. “Memories Of Those Oldies But Goodies” only managed reach the number 101 position. Their biggest hit “Those Oldies but Goodies”, climbed to number nine. An album titled “Memories of Those Oldies But Goodies, Volume 1” was released on Del-Fi Records in 1961.

They often wore togas on stage and on their performance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand television program. By 1962 a dispute between Carl Burnett and David Johnson as to who would be referred to as Little Caesar led to the groups breakup.

Like many other groups their career was brief. Then in the mid 1970's, Johnson formed a group using the same name and performed in Art Laboe’s Club on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California.

Here is Little Caesar and The Romans number nine hit from 1961, “Those Oldies but
Goodies:

This has been another episode on the Doo Wop series, featuring two vocal groups from the 50's and 60's, The Marcels and Little Caesar & the Romans on Rock and Roll Flashback. Until next, I’m your host Bill Price!