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"The Chiffons"
(A Bronx Dream)

by Billy Vera

Once upon a time, in a place north of Manhattan called The Bronx, there was a grouping of identical twelve story, red brick buildings known as the Bronx River Projects.  The Projects were situated where the Cross Bronx Expressway passed over the Bronx River Parkway, near where the parkway petered out at Bruckner Boulevard by the waters of
the Long Island Sound.

During World War II, when New York, like many American industrial cities, suffered from a severe housing shortage, the marshy land between Bruckner Boulevard and the water held a number of quonset huts, which housed more than a few Bronx residents.

In 1950, when the Bronx River Lower Income Housing Projects were built to provide homes for that borough's blue collar working poor, there was no Cross Bronx Expressway to pass over the Bronx River Parkway.  There were only bumpy roads, made so by the swampy land beneath, which froze in the winter and melted in the spring.  This land was sparsely populated by those who disdained the crowded tenements further north and to the east, across the Bronx River in the Simpson Street neighborhoods which would come to be called the South Bronx.

The inhabitants of this marshy land were mainly Italians, Jews and some Negroes, who lived in a delicate state of harmony, as proscribed by the American wartime propaganda machine, which declared, on billboards and in magazines and anywhere else where the Wizards of Madison Avenue advertised their wares and put forth ideas for which
they were paid great sums, that all Americans were one and, unlike the German bastards and the dirty Japs, practiced something called "Tolerance."

Around this time, after the War, another housing project was built not far away.  It was named Parkchester, and would be populated mostly by first generation Jews who held low end white-collar jobs. Parkchester was regarded as a "Middle Income Housing Project."  Those of its population who worked "in the City," that is, in mid-town and lower Manhattan, walked to the Parkchester station to take the elevated train through less savory Bronx neighborhoods and through Harlem, then down into the ground until they would emerge, in their white shirts, striped ties, resoled Thom McAnn shoes and cheap, grey Robert Hall suits to work in offices or in stores.  Other Parkchester residents either walked, took a bus or two, or rode the train a couple of stops to similar jobs nearer to home.

Meanwhile, in that parallel universe, the Bronx River Projects, kids whose parents toiled at manual labor cavorted in playgrounds, making friends with other kids, some of whom looked different from themselves and worshiped the God of their ancestors under other rules and in different languages.  Services were held in Latin, in Hebrew or in the dialect of the transplanted Southern Negro.

As these children grew into adolescence, they found a new religion of their own called Rock'n'Roll, as preached over the radio by disc jockeys with names like Moondog, Jocko, Dr. Jive, Catman and The Bruce.  At the church halls of their parents, they paid their quarters so they could dance to 45 rpm records containing songs sung by the choirs of this new religion, choirs with names like the Cadillacs, the Harptones and the Crows.  They danced, cheek to cheek and torso to torso, holding on to each other for dear life in that euphoric state teenagers think of as "Love."

They made pilgrimages to faraway shrines like the Paramount Theaters in Brooklyn and on Times Square, or the Apollo on 125th Street in Harlem, to listen and be transported to another plane and be healed by this new religion and its miraculous voices, like those of little Frankie Lymon or Willie Winfield, who thrilled and consoled this generation the way their parents were thrilled and consoled by Mahalia Jackson or the more secular Frank Sinatra.

At house parties and birthday celebrations, as well as at school dances, this new religion brought the Word of the wartime propaganda machine to life, as white, black and even Spanish kids came together to worship at the altar of Rock'n'Roll.  In time, the Jews and the Italians would move away, mostly to the North, to places with names like Yonkers and Mount Vernon, where they were followed by those more adventurous Negroes, eventually moving even further "upstate," as the provincial denizens of the Bronx referred to anywhere more than ten minutes north of their borough's border.

Soon, there were more and more converts to Rock'n'Roll, as well as proselytizers anxious and willing to spread the new gospel. Choirs were forming throughout the land.  One of these called themselves the Desires and made a record called "Let It Please Be You."  As was the custom, the Desires, who were from 118th Street in Harlem, attracted the attention of some girls.  These girls, who hailed from the Bronx River Projects and were students at James Monroe High School, named themselves the Desires' Debs and functioned as the singers' ad hoc fan club.  They bought yellow satin Eisenhour jackets, emblazened with their club's name in maroon on the back and with each girl's individual name embroidered over her left breast.

Meanwhile, a fragile young man of creative ability named Ronnie Mack, who also lived in the Bronx River Projects, began writing songs, one of which, "Puppy Love," was recorded by a group called Little Jimmy & the Tops, in the manner and style of that high priest of prepubescent lead vocalists, Frankie Lymon of Washington Heights.  One of the Tops was a young girl from another housing project on the western edge of Harlem named Sylvia Peterson.

In 1962, the Desires' Debs senior year of high school, two of them, Barbara Lee and Pat Bennett, began working as operators for the New York Telephone Company.  Together with a third Deb, Judy Craig, and Sylvia Peterson, they began rehearsing under the tutelage of Ronnie Mack, sometimes including Mack's sister, Dottie.  Ronnie's mother was legendary in the Bronx River Projects as a baker of cakes and cookies filled with far more butter than traditional cookbooks, or cardiovascular specialists, recommend.  In fact, people all over that part of the Bronx marveled at how Mrs. Mack's cakes and pie crusts could possibly hold together with that much butter in her secret recipes.

The day arrived when Ronnie Mack came up with the song which would cement his name in the history books.  He named his song after a colloquialism of the period, "so fine," used to describe an attractive person of the opposite sex.  Other songs had used this phrase before.  One New Jersey group, the Fiestas, had even made a hit entitled "So Fine."  In the outlands of Detroit, a group of singers calling themselves the Falcons became briefly famous for their tune, "You're So Fine," and a third group, the Cleftones of Jamaica, Queens, recorded a less successful song, named "She's So Fine."

But Ronnie Mack's tune had something more, a melodic lilt rarely heard in Rock'n'Roll.  Ronnie's creation, "He's So Fine," combined all the best of Rock'n'Roll with an irresistible sing-along melody anybody could hum, a melody which, once heard, could be expelled from neither mind nor heart.  He taught his song to the Desires' Debs plus Sylvia and managed to convince a downtown record company to release it.

The Desires' Debs became the Chiffons, and "He's So Fine" became an immediate hit, the kind which nothing, neither lack of payola nor of professionalism, can stop.  The Rock'n'Roll faithful heard it and they deemed it worthy, and the plastic wafers upon which Ronnie Mack's wondrous creation was pressed sold in the millions, far beyond the borders of the Bronx, until high school children across the land were chanting, with religious ferocity and devotion, "Doo-lang,
doo-lang, doo-lang."

It is, by now, cliche to say that no good deed goes unpunished. Ronnie Mack's punishment for his good deed was to be struck down by lymphatic cancer, his death coming even as his song climbed the best seller listings in those bibles of Rock'n'Roll, Billboard and Cashbox.  To add further insult to his demise, his song--Ronnie's sole legacy--would later be plagiarized by a British god of a subsequent generation of believers, a theft for which his mother and sister, still residing in the projects, would receive not one pence in compensation.

The now-Chiffons would continue, well into middle age, to perform Ronnie Mack's hymn to obsessive teenage infatuation, at holy ceremonies known as  "oldies shows," and even on televised events featuring similar aging messengers of the True Faith.  Themselves growing frail and obese, the Chiffons would harmonize his one minute and fifty-three second masterpiece for these disciples, healing them of their worldly woes and transforming them, once more, into the children without sin that they were in the year of Our Lord, 1962.

For their efforts, the Chiffons, first minus Barbara Lee, felled by a bad heart, then Sylvia Peterson, rendered feeble and replaced by the daughter of Judy Craig, were destined to live out their days in their old Bronx neighborhood, occasionally venturing out to sing their song for the faithful.  Riches were not to be theirs.  Instead, they toiled at meaningless "day gigs," occasionally doo-langing for bucks at whatever price the market would bear for as many years as their alcohol and calorie-laden bodies might hold out.

They would be the subject of pity in the ignorant prose of bleeding heart authors seeking to blame.  But blame who?  And for what?  Pity them because they failed to reap the rewards of the Arethas, Dianas, Elvises and Bings?  The Chiffons sang a song and they sang it truthfully and well.  The Arethas, Dianas, Elvises and Bings sang many dozens such.  But one song sung well does not a rich person make.  To believe otherwise is the mark of a fool.

The girls from the Bronx River Projects earned their place of reverence in the pantheon of Rock'n'Roll, a feat for which they, their mothers and their children can be proud.  In a place of prominence in each of their homes, there is a gold record on the wall, a reminder of their accomplishment and of the fleeting moment when a Bronx dream became reality.

by Billy Vera