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Brian - Back in 1958 there was a smash hit on the charts called "You". The group that sang it was the Aquatones. I have with me on the phone right now Dave Goddard, original member of The Aquatones. Hi Dave!

Dave - Hi Brian!

Brian - Glad to have you on the show.

Dave - I'm delighted to be here.

Brian - The Aquatones had a big hit with "You". But before getting into the history, let's talk a little bit up front just about what you're doing now. Then will get into the history.

Dave - May I start about 3 years ago? Lynne Nixon, our original lead singer on "You" hadn't sung for several years and with the resurgence, if you want to call it that, of music of the 50's. We, the Aquatones, really couldn't participate because if you're not going to sound like the record, why bother? OK? But being here in the middle of Doo Wop Nowhere, if I may say that, what is known as Kentucky, I guess I really wasn't aware of just how much interest there was in the Aquatones or in Doo Wop music, etc. Back in 1998 I was selling a house, buying a house, and my realtor happened to see an LP of the Aquatones on Relic that I had lying around, and said "Gee, I wouldn't mind having one of those. and I said "well, do your job, Harry, and we'll see". This same realtor holds a dinner dance for his clients every Christmas. I went there briefly. Had another party to go to that night. He had a band. He had a girl singing with the band. I heard her. I said, hmm, that voice sounds a little bit like Lynne. I commented on the way out the door, "Harry if you ever take the shrink wrap off that LP you might find the gal on there sounds a bit like the gal you have singing tonight". And that is all I thought about. Nothing happened until the next May. I visited one of the other original Aquatones, Gene down in Atlanta. He introduced me to a fellow by the name of Bruce Woolf who had at that time a real radio Doo Wop show and sent out songs and information by e-mail. Well, I got on Bruce's e-mail list as I like to kid him, his 300 closest friends, and through various letters back & forth that I guess he passed around to his closest friends. I had people writing to me, telling me how much they remembered and liked some of the Aquatones stuff. I mean hey, we only had one hit and these people are writing me about the other 14 songs we sang. And I said, "Oh my gosh, they know who we are" and then and then people started beating on my head about when are you going to get the Aquatones back together and I'm saying to myself, "Oh yeah, right. How? OK?" But then I remembered this gal I had heard the previous Christmas, and I said, you know what, if she is singing there again next Christmas, I am gonna have a little sit down with her. So Christmas 1999 I did have a talk with her. Turns out this gal Colette Delaney had had a career on the stage, locally, in Broadway type musicals. She was an excellent singer, she did singing with bands on the side. She is a professional singer, OK? So I said to her when I called her over after her show was over , "I think I have a business proposition for you, except I'm not sure if there's any business there".

Brian - Just a detail.

Dave - Yeah, you got it! So I loaned her one of the Relic CD's I had. I say loaned because I'm down to my last two and I didn't want to give one away and she listened to it for a few weeks and I let her alone. I'm sort of in awe of this professional singer here and I finally called her up and I asked "What do you think"? And she said , "Well my mother always told me one thing I'm good at is imitating singers". I said "Hey, that'll work". So, I recorded some background parts, multiple parts with me, I have that kind of studio downstairs. Colette came over put in the lead voice, I got some tape, went to a UGHA, (United In Group Harmony Association) Show in New Jersey in April 2000 and played them for some people there. They got blown away. They said, "Dave, you gotta do this". And I said "Oh, twist my arm"! And one thing lead to another. I contacted the original members. There was some interest, not overwhelming. They're all in different sections of the country. But, we were able to get enough songs together to get into the studio and to record a brand new CD of 23 tracks of all new recordings.

Brian - As you mention this information, it doesn't sound like Lynne, at that time, was interested then in singing with you since you had kind of recruited the other gal. 

Dave - In 1988 Lynne claimed that she didn't sing anymore. She had gotten married in 1961. She and her husband ran a series of restaurants on Long Island. She said the restaurant business was her life, music was just something she used to do. And I don't fully understand it, but she had no interest in it whatsoever. Now jumping ahead of the story, I'm sorry to say when I contacted Lynne in 1999, I learned she had been through 2 different bouts with cancer already and fortunately I was able to stop by and see her going to a high school reunion on LI in 1999 and we had a marvelous time together that time, but as all too often happens it kept recurring and unfortunately Lynne passed away in January of this year . But I have to say that her illness was not the reason she didn't sing with us. She just for reasons of her own was not interested.

Brian - So you've got a CD that is going out and a web site. Why don't you give the web site address? 

Dave - Ok! www.Aquatones. freeservers. com 

Brian - And on that web site you've got some history. You've got some information about the CD and such?

Dave - And we're still building as a matter of fact. We have a button that says "Bio" and right now it doesn't go anywhere but we're working on it. Before I called you tonight I was working on mine.

Brian - What we're going to do is revisit that a little bit later on. Talk some more about the recent activities of the Aquatones. Let's get on to the history. Where did it all start and how did it start?

Dave - OK , real easy on that one Brian. September 26, 1956 was when we first got together. What had happened is our Junior class play in high school, that's Valley Stream Central High School on Long Island, New York was putting on a play called "John Loves Mary". And a classmate of mine had written some words down that he thought might be turned into a song. Now, I had written some rock & roll songs at that point. He showed them to me and the words were, let's say they needed help, OK? But, I caught a couple of lines in there that I thought I could do something with so I went home and I did write what was affectionately known as the "John Loves Mary Rock". Now the idea was to record it. I mean it was written for group harmony. I had a bass part, a lead and all that kind of good stuff, rock & roll of the mid fifties. What I wanted to do was record it and play it over the school public address system as a promotion for the play. Well, I had this buddy of mine that I was in marching band with who played the sax, Larry Vannata, not only sang but had a tape recorder so I said, hey, "Lar , would you mind coming over"? Let's put this down on tape and maybe we can use it as publicity. Well when he showed up at the door, he had another marchinng band member with him, Gene McCarthy, who I vaguely knew. So Gene & Larry came in and we proceeded to record the "John Loves Mary Rock". The kids at school loved it! We wound up getting a drummer friend of ours to play with us so we could do live publicity skits. I played piano, Larry played alto sax, Gene played tenor sax, and our friend Bob played drums. So we recorded our only two songs we had. We didn't try to learn other people's material. We were trying to do original material right from the beginning. So we recorded a couple of our songs that we had done. And another classmate of ours had a father who was a record distributor. So, we took the tapes over to this gentleman, played them for him and asked him, "what do you think?" And he said, "you know, you guys could use a high voice in the group". So, a couple of months after that, Larry met Lynne Nixon at a dance, found out that she sang, asked me & Gene if it would be OK if he brought Lynn over to sing with us. He did, we said , "fine, sure". Larry brought her over and we used Lynne as a background singer, OK? Until a month or two later, Larry wrote the song, "You" for Lynne to sing. And that's how that came to be.

Brian - Did you actually have a talent contest that you had entered then, something called "Stairway to Stardom"?

Dave - Awww! You heard about that. You read the Relics CD book!

Brian - Oh! I read lots of stuff! (Laughing)

Dave - November 2, 1957, yes! As a matter of fact, Brian, we had appeared spring of '57 with Alan Fredericks, who was a disc jockey on a local Long Island radio station. 

He had a show called Night Train and he would do record hops occasionally at nearby high schools and other places. But in the Fall of '57 we decided what needed to do was enter a couple of talent contests. So we entered a couple of them and then comes November. We entered this talent contest called "Stairway to Stardom" at Malverne High School, which is in the next town over from us. And there were about19 acts of all types on the show, but hardly any rock and roll.It was mostly musical, now that I think about it. But at any rate, there was another group on the show that did rock and roll type harmony. It was a 5 person group, and oh, they sounded good! We also sounded good and we said to ourselves, "Gee, I wonder if they are going to win or will we win"? Neither one of us won anything.

Brian - Wow!

Dave - After the show, we still played instruments then , so we were back stage in the high school cafeteria packing up our instruments, trying to say "OK, what talent shows are coming up, what do we do next"? OK? Somebody somehow got my attention, and said, hey, there's a fellow over at the door, motioning to you. So I looked up and I saw this heavy set gentleman at the door to the cafeteria in a big top coat kind of grinning at me and waving at me to come over. So I walked over and I said , "Yes?". And he said to me "How'd ya like to make a record"?

Brian - Where have I heard that before?

Dave - Honestly , those are his exact words. And that was Lou Fargo who at the time had not gotten in to the music business but wanted to. He was a successful realtor, his daughter went to Malverne High School, had talked Lou into coming down to watch the talent show. And so what Fargo told us was he had been taking a cigar break in the lobby during our act, came back in to catch the last four bars of our number, decided he liked what he heard, and came back and said those famous words. And that's how that happened. And then he became our manager almost immediately, did not have a record company. He said "Look, I'm going to take you into New York City and let you cut some demo records and I'm going to try to peddle them and if no one wants them, I'll start my own record company. I'll spell my name backwards or something"? Well, he didn't spell his name backwards, he spelled it forward as in Fargo Records. And that's how come we got to record on Fargo Records.

Brian - So, do you have any of the recordings that you did in say 1956? You mentioned a tape recorder and such.

Dave - Oh ho, ho! Oh do I ever. I have every doggone one of them.

Brian - I smell a CD coming!

Dave - Oh, come on! They are bad! Bad, bad, bad (laughter from Dave & Brian). No, actually Don K. Reed just asked me this question when I was on his show back in earlier in November. Did we realize that we had anything special when we recorded "You"? And Brian, "You" was the B side. But when we were using Larry's little RCA Victor reel to reel tape recorder with a, you know, one inch diameter microphone, we knew that Lynne sounded good singing but it never picked up her up well at all. OK? On the home tape recording. The first time we had really heard just how good she was when they stuck her in that echo chamber at Audio Sonic Studios in New York when she recorded "You". And we said "Oh, my gosh, where did that come from"? (Brian laughs). So, I would have to say that our home recordings are amateurish at best.

Brian - So you've gone into the studio and you're recording "You". You just mentioned earlier the fact that "You" was going to be the B side. Not only how did it happen but which DJ's do you think were flipping over "You" and listening to the other side and playing it?

Dave - I'll tell you what happened on that, Brian. Lou Fargo was pushing "She's The One For Me", the uptempo side in New York and he was pushing "You" in Philadelphia and he figured if he can get it to break in either city, we just go with whichever one breaks first and "You" broke in Philly.

Brian - So he went with the quickest record to break which did in Philly and then just had to tell all the DJ's to flip it over.

Dave - New York and everybody else switch over to playing the ballad side.

Brian - That was an occurrence that happened occasionally when you have two strong sides on a record and some of the DJ's just couldn't figure out which to push. I think one of the differences though, on yourrecording is that both sides sounded so much different.

Dave - (Laughing). You noticed. Yep! Yep!

Brian - So "You" gets recorded. What happened there? I mean, 
take us through the distribution of the record and the rise on the charts.

Dave - After we recorded it and the record was released, I know that we heard it and I have a tape recording of it, the first time Alan Fredericks played it on the air which was the end of January in 1958. I don't really recall whether I heard either side, it probably would be "She's The One For Me", out of New York in early March. I remember Lou Fargo telling me this in person "Davey, your record broke"! I asked "Where Mr. Fargo"? He said, "Philly". I said "OK, it's the ballad side". After that I was listening to Peter Tripp's Top 40 on WMGM-AM in New York, and from memory (no I do not have a cheat sheet in front of me!) I can tell you each and every week what position it was in. I do have a funny story about that. Our song hit the top 40 on Peter Tripp at number 38. At the time it hit the charts, two of my buddies in high school said, jokingly, "Dave, if your record hits #5, this guy & I will do such & such in broad daylight in the middle of the busiest intersection, OK"? Is  that clean enough?

Brian - Oh, that'll work.

Dave - OK! (Laughter). I note incidentally that one of the gentlemen is a University professor, as we speak. (Laughter). I must protect reputations.

Brian - Absolutely!

Dave - So that's when it hits the charts at #38. Next week it's #24. Next week it's #16. Next week it's #11. The boys are getting nervous, OK? The following week it was still #11. I can tell you two of my classmates who breathed a sigh of relief. The following week it went to #7. I got to school the next day and I ran into one of my friends. "Hey did you listen to Peter Tripp last night"? Guy said, "No, I didn't, what happened"? "It's #7". Guy said "Oh , my gosh"! The following week it was #7. Then it went to #11. Then 19 and then 25. And then off the chart. Missed by 2 lousy places!

Brian - Oh, that was close!

Dave - The greatest show that Valley Stream had ever seen.

Brian - I bet you were busy picking an intersection. (laughter)

Dave - Oh no! They had it picked.

Brian - Oh, they had it picked.

Dave - Sunrise Highway & Rockaway Avenue at high noon.

Brian - So here you are with a hit record. This was a big hit. Not only did it hit the Billboard charts - got up to #21 for 12 weeks - it also hit the Cash Box charts. Got up a little higher , I think on Cash Box. Didn't stay as long but still got up a little higher.

Dave - I will tell you to have it do anything on R & B to me is a tremendous compliment. Because we were 2nd generation Doo Wop. You know the pioneers had been there. We learned from them. We were just trying to do something our own way. That wasn't a cover, it was, what do they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But to gradually make in onto the R & B chart, hey, fantastic!

Brian - Yeah! I think that's an excellent achievement. What else was going during the time "You" was making it rise through the charts? I know you had air play on American Bandstand and at least one performance.

Dave - We were on there twice, Brian. In March and again in June of 1958 and in between we were on The Dick Clark Saturday night show out of the Little Theater in New York.

Brian - How was that? How was working on Bandstand?

Dave - It was fun! Of course, it was fun! (laughter). It was amazing! But the problem, I've got to be very very honest with you, is that I didn't watch TV very much. Some of the other guys watched Bandstand more than I did, like Larry & Gene. So they knew the kids that were stars themselves because they were regular dancers on Bandstand. I really didn't but it was just a marvelous experience. I just wish they had video tape or kinescope of our Bandstand appearances. About a year or so ago, a guy gave me the address to write to Dick Clark Productions to find out and I got the letter back that dashed my hopes forever. They didn't have those episodes.

Brian - Yeah! You know it's interesting, the more people that I talk to the more I find out that a lot of those are lost forever.

Dave - Well, I had heard that Alan Freed's TV shows used to reuse the tape. Video tape was so expensive, they couldn't afford to pop in a new cassette every time.

Brian - (Laughs). They just went right over the top every time.

Dave - That's right.

Brian - What other local or national type of shows did you have appearances on at the time?

Dave - I remember Buddy Deane in Baltimore. I know that we appeared, these were all Bandstand type of shows, and I believe we were in Boston and I think we were also in Cleveland, but maybe my senility is getting to me. I don't remember if we were in both cities or just one of the above. Before the record became a hit, I had appeared on the show run by a fellow by the name of Herb Sheldon in New York, but again, he did interview me but that it was just kind of more the fact that we made a record. Nothing was happening with it. I was on there with a bunch of kids from my high school and I don't remember why. Some English honor society or something exciting like that. I don't remember. Other than that, not that much. Two Bandstands and a Saturday night was the real feather in the cap. But as far as out of town cities, we talked to a number of DJ's in Philly. I know that, we had at least one, no it must have been two.

Brian - Oh there was a lot - Joe Niagra and Jerry Blavat.

Dave - Yeah, I know the names.

Brian - What about tours? You must have been on a few tours or some great packaged shows.

Dave - Umm! You know what the problem was? We were 17. We couldn't do night clubs. I remember we did a show in Rockville CT, home of Gene Pitney. We did a show down in Baltimore. There was one in New Jersey that we did. And then, July 4th weekend of 1958, we did a couple of shows, one in Tom's River, NJ, one in Saylorsburg PA. We did a Dean Martin telethon, we did a Martin Block TV show. 

Brian - Tell me about Lou Fargo. We knew from your earlier conversation that he was pretty instrumental in getting the record going but what was he like and describe a little bit of your interaction with him throughout the few years that you had.

Dave - I have difficulty knowing how to refer to him. To us he was Mr. Fargo because we were 17. Then Larry figured he's big enough to ask "Hey Lou, how are you doing"? And Lou would go "Uh, hi Larry. This is Mr. Fargo". "OK you want to play it that way". No, no! Here I am at my age and I feel like I should be referring to him as Lou but to me he was always Mr. Fargo. He really was not a bad guy. I won't use the term on your show that I would normally use, but um, there's something about if he there were electricity, he'd be a powerhouse. Is that um!

Brian - Umm! That does bring a vision to mind.

Dave - I never quite knew how much the stuff Fargo would tell us was fact and how much was, let's say, invented. (laughter) OK? But you can't argue with the fact that we were with his record company, he was our record company owner, he was our manager, he was our song publisher and we had a hit. And we even got paid!

Brian - Not something a lot of 1950's artists can say.

Dave - I know that, I know that. And I'm not saying to you that we got paid what we should have gotten paid. I don't know. Matter of fact, people will say to me "how many records did you sell?" I don't know that either. But we didn't get nothing so I will give Fargo credit for that, publicly. (laughter)

Brian - What about some of the other groups that recorded for Fargo Records? Groups like The Dreamtones, The Sundowners?

Dave - Wait a minute Brian. Are you in possession of the Relic CD? Golden Doo Wops of Fargo Records?

Brian - I have that CD.

Dave - Oh, you do?

Brian - Indeed I do. (laughter)

Dave - I found that in Golden Disc in Greenwich Village back in 1996. Most of them, Brian, I have no clue about. I believe that our record was the first one that Fargo released. He did have something going with a singer/songwriter by the name of Dorian Burton. I don't believe I have ever seen a Dorian Burton recording on the Fargo label but I could be mistaken. We did know two of Fargo's other recording artists because we shared sessions with them. Matter of fact, on the ballad side of each of two records, we were the back-up group. Vinnie Monte, who happens to be a nephew of Lou Monte who had "Dark Town Strutters Ball" and "Lazy Mary". Vinnie was a neat guy. He had been some TV show. He was older than we were by a few years, I mean we were 16, 17 & 18. Vinnie was 21 or 22 and he had been on some kind of a TV show as a young teenager, I think. Some sort of a Star Search thing or regulars of our talented or America's Youth is - yata dat-a, dat-a, dat-a. He and Connie Francis was another one on that show. But at any rate, on Vinnie Monte's ballad side of his first record for Fargo, the song was called "I Wrote A Poem". We sang background for him. That was our first recording session. Our second recording session we cut two songs which happened to have been "Say You'll Be Mine" and "So Fine", our second record. And Fargo had another of his new recording artists in there. Bob Esposito, stage name Bob E. Lee, and we were his back-up on Bob's ballad side, called "Anna Mae". But other than that and Dorian Burton who we met, I don't believe we ever knew any of the other groups or artists that Fargo had. "You" was a hit in the spring of Larry's and my senior year. Gene had already graduated, was going to college on Long Island. The following fall, Larry went college in NYC, I went to college upstate New York and in November Gene was committed to going full time in the Navy. He had been Navy reserve. So, we weren't around all the years Fargo recorded all these other artists.

Brian - So Dave, tell me about your second release. You was just a smash, just a huge hit even though maybe it didn't get past #21, it stayed on those charts for a long time, got a lot of air play. How did you decide on your second recording?

Dave - That's kind of an interesting question, Brian, because I think I mentioned before Larry had written "You" for the first song that Lynne had sang lead on and when we cut our first record, it was the only song that Lynne sang lead on. Others of us, just about all of us, we tended to do more uptempo songs. We were a Rock & Roll group or so we considered ourselves more than necessarily a ballad group but no matter what our arrangements tended to be if one person w as the lead,

there were plenty of parts for everybody else, but as far as a female lead, "You" was the only one we had. So comes time to record second recording, we said oops. I mean Fargo says it's got to be the Aquatone sound. It's got to be like "You". So, what we did we took a ballad I had written called "Say You'll Be Mine" that had been a duet for Larry & Gene and turned it into a Lynne lead. For the uptempo side and this is kind of funny in itself, I mentioned earlier that Fargo was pushing "She's the One For Me" which I had written, in New York and "You", which Larry had written in Philly. Well, Fargo said to us before the record was released. He said "Look, just a suggestion boys but maybe you should think about splitting writers' credits because if one side takes off, one guy won't get mad at the other. So we did and many songs, once Gene started writing, you know, his name went on our songs, our name went on his songs, it was all one big happy family kind of a thing. But of all the songs we did"So Fine", Larry & I actually sat down at a piano together and wrote it. And we wrote it specifically for our second recording session for Lynne to sing lead.

Brian - So you cut "Say You'll Be Mine" and "So Fine" what happens next? What transpired from there?

Dave - It didn't hit the charts. Not to my knowledge. I don't know which one got the more play. I've run into a surprising number of people who say they remember "Say You'll Be Mine" so I guess that must have gotten some air play but it never hit the charts. So now, end of August 1958, I'm getting ready to go away to college, Fargo says "Let's do one more session before you go". So we cut another 5 songs, I think and I think we done a couple of demos over the summer, that wound up getting released because nearly as far as I can recall,it was 5 songs we did which since this wasn't the days when you did albums, it was all singles why was it an odd number and I've got to say it was because he had another one or two in the can. Yes, as a matter of fact, he did, and that's another story in itself. We cut songs in late August of 1958 then I went away to college and about the first week I was up there I got a box of 25 - 45 records "The Drive-In" and "Our First Kiss", which was our third release, and not so long after that, Fargo calls me up, up in Troy, NY and says "Davey, the record broke in Florida". Well, it must have unbroken as fast as it broke. (laughter) because as far as I know, nothing ever happened with it. And after that, Fargo released records, oh every three or four months, and I was always excited when they were released but nothing really happened.

Brian - Well, there was some excellent excellent records. Too bad they didn't do any more.

Dave - We weren't around to promote them. You know, Gene was active Navy, I was 4 hours away in upstate New York. Lynne wasn't married then. I think Fargo had Lynne on a couple of TV shows when Larry & I were in college. Lip synching the songs (laughter), which is what we all did.

Brian - Right! That's what I think was pretty much the practice at that time.

Dave - Oh, certainly! Other than that it was a strange market back then too, you know. It was constantly moving. Everything had to be new, different , yatta datta da! Maybe it wasn't new and different enough. I don't know.

Brian - Well you covered the song "Crazy For You" which is a little bit later on but you just had an outstanding version of that.

Dave - That was to my way of thinking the best recording we did back in those days. Lynne also, was getting older. She was 19. She was a half year younger than I and I think it shows in her voice. She was beginning to put more feeling, more expression into her voice and I had loved that song "Crazy For You". I still have it by the way. Bought it brand new on a 78 by The Heartbeats and I'm trying to remember how that session happened because I was home for summer vacation. That would have been between my sophomore and Junior years in college, I guess.

Brian -Were talking like 1961 here?

Dave - Yes! It came out in 1961. It was recorded the beginning of September of 1960. We recorded our last 4 songs. The first record that came out was "There's A Long Long Trail" backed with "Every time" and then the last one which came out around June of 1961 was"Crazy For You" backed with "Solid Gold Cadillac".

Brian -Which is another really nice song.

Dave - Did I tell you why the song got that name? It drives me up a tree every time I think about it. As I mentioned, Fargo was also our publisher, so he handled it. If we hadn't copywrited our songs before that, he said I'll take care of it for you". OK! Fine, whatever. He was going to be the publisher anyway. So, I had given him the sheet music. Back then you couldn't do it the easy way and just record it on a cassette, which is what I do these days. You have to write out sheet music which is a big pain in the neck. But, I'd done it and given it to Lou and you know, about a week later, he came back and said "They won't let you use that title". Brian, don't ask me who they were. I said what do you mean? They won't let you use the title with the word "Cadillac" in it. Remember what I said about electricity and powerhouse?

Brian - (laughs) Here it comes again.

Dave - And I said "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I wrote this song for a gal who was a year behind me because her junior class play was the Broadway production, "Solid Gold Cadillac". So I'm thinking to myself, not to Fargo. I didn't argue with Fargo. I'm thinking to myself wait a minute, you know and I do believe, there was a song called "Hot Rod Lincoln".

Brian - Oh yeah!

Dave - So you tell me my friend what is wrong with "Solid Gold Cadillac"? So Fargo says to me "Couldn"t you just call it a Solid Gold Car? And I said "No Mr. Fargo, I don't think we should call it that". Digging through the lyrics of the song, I'm kind of saying, what the else could we call it! And somewhere out of cyberspace I pulled the word wanted. I said "All right, if you can't call it by it's real title, call it "Wanted". Well then we could put a "Solid Gold Cadillac" in parentheses (imitating Lou Fargo). I said "fine, whatever you want to do". As far as I'm concerned the title of the song is "Solid Gold Cadillac".

Brian - Well that's the way you wrote it.

Dave - That's right.

Brian - And with the other two releases "Say You'll Be Mine" backed with "My Treasure", another good pairing there.

Dave - And I didn't even know about that. I mean those were re-release.

Brian - "My Treasure" being your fourth release.

Dave - That is correct. "Say You'll Be Mine" was the second and I guess that flip came out after "Crazy For You". Didn't it?

Brian - Right! That would have been right after "Crazy For You".

Dave - In what? 1962 maybe?

Brian - Yeah! Yeah! That should have been 1962. Well then the discographys, you go up through those and list "My Darling"backed with "For You, For You" and I'm going to make the assumption that was the last one then.

Dave - No! No, that was #5.

Brian - Oh, that would have been #5. Ok!

Dave - What happened on that, those actually, the released 45. Remember I said we had done 2 demos the Summer of 1958?

Brian - Right!

Dave - Those were the 2 demos. We did "For You, For You" in that late August 1958 session. But, instead of releasing that one, Fargo released the demo version, which I happen to like better myself. And oh, by the way, the hit record of "You" was the demo.

Brian - Tell me that story. I'm think listeners would be interested in hearing that one.

Dave - Now if the secretary of the local AFM is listening to this, I am going to be in deep trouble, but (laughter), what happened was Fargo had taken us in to Audio Sonic to Record just some demo records. I played piano. I always played piano when we rehearsed. So I went into play piano and Fargo hired a drummer from somewhere. I always say from off the street, but I don't know. OK? I mean, some guy we never met, never saw again. So we cut "Light Up The Sky", "She's The One For Me" in June. So that was supposed to be a demo 
Then we get to the real session at Bell Sound Studios in New York in about the middle of January. Early to mid January. I used to know the date but you know the failing memory and all that. It was around the 10th of January or something like that. And he had a full band 
for that. And incidentally there was some pretty decent names in that band. Buddy Lucas was on sax and Buddy had a pretty good name. But the piano player is the one that blows me away, Dave Clowny.

Brian - Oh!

Dave - Known later in life as Dave Baby Cortez.

Brian - Wow! You got some good session folks.

Dave - Woo Woo! Oh boy we did. Good group. But anyway the instrumental arrangement that they had done for "You" they did something that till this day drives me up a wall, because I am at heart a base singer, always have been. When anybody writes a sax part that does the same blanky, blank thing as the base singer is suppose to be doing, it drives me up a wall. OK? On the versions that we did at the Bell Tone studios, it's shown on the Relic CD as quote the alternate version. I forget what track. You can't hear the background singers at all. All you hear is Lynne & the instruments. I can imagine someone playing this and saying "What do you mean group?" Where's the group? I'm getting to the good part of the story. At one point during the session Fargo walked up to me and says "I want to have one take with just the piano & the drums." So they do it. And Fargo walks up to me and says "Dave , you know why I did that, don't you?" I said "No, Mr. Fargo, why?" He said Lynne sounded much better in the demo but we can't let that out because neither you nor the drummer were union musicians, so we gotta make people think it was recorded tonighy. True story! But the thing that really blows me away though, Brian, if you think about the technology of 1957 or early 1958 all recorded at once, maybe 2 tracks, maybe 4 if you're real lucky, reel to reel, 15-1/2 inches per second on a big machine. When we cut the demo of "You" it had 2 verses , a bridge, a verse, another bridge and a final verse. There were 2 bridges in the song. When the record was released, they had cut out a verse and a bridge and I don't know how in blue blazes they were able to do it. As you can imagine I listened to that recording once or twice. I can not, for the life of me, figure out how they were able to splice it so that there is no discernible break in that. But, by George, I can swear to you that the devil had another verse of the bridge.

Brian - (laughter) So you've released all these singles. How did the Aquatones album come about?

Dave - The story Fargo gave me is that his son Mike talked him into it. I remember being out at Fargo's house. It would have been in 1964, and did he have the album or did he tell me he was coming out with it? I'm not quite sure whether he gave it to me then. And I know nothing about the man's business. Supposedly, if you believe him, he was wealthy but then, how come he drove a 6 cylinder Chrysler when I saw him?(laughter). Eh! What can I tell you? I don't know if the music business was a good tax write off or what, but I guess his son, Mike, talked him into releasing it.

Brian - What about the group you were in called The Chord'r Notes?

Dave -Chord'r Notes! Oh, yeah! Now that was fun. Oh, that was fun. I was in grad school at that time. Let's see, under the rash assumption that there aren't too many of your listeners from the Upstate New York area, something I always said, if I could spend 8 years in Troy, NY I could live anywhere. But hey a guitar player that I had known vaguely wanted to start a group and he found a drummer and asked me if I wanted to play keyboard and join them and we started playing locally in the Albany, Troy, Schenectady area in Upstate New York. We all sang. We had 3 part harmony on most of our songs. We did a variety of stuff initially. We did show tunes as well as Rock & Roll plus the drummer also played trumpet and it was rather neat to watch him play drums and trumpet at the same time. Needless to say, it tended to be on slow numbers. And I also played trombone as I had mentioned. And the guitar player also played banjo and a bunch of other things. But we did both Show and Rock & Roll. As we went on we gravitated more to Rock & Roll though because that is where the action was and we played in a number of bars in the Albany area, fraternity parties and then we played at a resort area up and around Lake George about 60 miles north of Albany 2 summers in a row. So we really had a good 3 year run of it. And early on, I guess the other guys who were younger than I was, expressed an interest in making a record, and what I said before that Lou Fargo really wasn't a bad guy, this is another example. So,I said "Look, why don't I ask Mr. Fargo if he'd be willing to cut a record for us. And darned if he didn't. I think this would be April of 1964. We went down to New York City and cut the one and only record that The Chord'r Notes ever made, which was a kind of Doo Woppy ballad on one side and kind of a Beach Boys song on the other side. Cause you know, in 1964, you had to go with the flow. We were pretty much a top 40 group. We played what was popular then. Although we did oldies then. There was some moldy oldies that we kept going from the 1950's/early 1960's. I know we did "Wonderful Girl" by Dion and "Gee Whiz" by The Innocents. Stuff like that.

Brian - The record you recorded though was "How Still The Night"?

Dave - "How Still The Night" backed with "Living The Life". "How Still The Night" was the ballad, "Living The Life" was the Beach Boys type song.

Brian - Do you recall getting any airplay at all for your second 45.

Dave - Locally, they ran a contest. You know Rate The Record or who calls in gets the most votes. And naturally, my whole fraternity called in.(laughter). We got some votes on that and the jock says, hey maybe you got something here . I don t recall any airplay after that, however. (laughter). We didn't have any marketing. You know, none!

Brian - If you could sum up your experience with the hit record "You" and just the whole scene and how you were involved. How would you do that?

Dave - It was marvelous. No doubt about it. It is something I wouldn't trade anything in the world for. But it's really present day accepted. It really didn't change my life.

Brian - Well, Dave, we've talked all about the history of the Aquatones. Let's go back to what you're doing now. You've got a new CD and a web site. Tell us some more about that.

Dave - Well, as I said, we did get the original group plus a couple of friends into the studio to record the CD. The original idea was to put down a few tracks, give us something to sell at concerts but then I started, I don't know maybe inspired by having a real group to sing with again a gorgeous lead singer. I started writing songs and oh, no don't make the selection yet. Wait a minute, I've got another song for you to listen to before you decide what's going on the CD. Oh wait, I ve got 2 more. And it kept going and going. So the CD became a much more major project than I thought it would. Now meantime, the amount of work that it takes to get a group together was greater than what I recall that it was in 1958 and you've got to remember that back in the 50's we've been together for a year and a half, rehearsing two or three songs before we made the record. So in retrospect, it seems easy because we had done it so long on so few songs. But when you're trying to put together a decent concert repertoire and you have people spread out all over the country, it gets nuts. Colette and I are both in Louisville and Dick Plotkin, Debra Records owner that put out the CD, said "Dave, you've got to get a local group. You just can't rehearse enough, getting together once every 4 months". So I was fortunately able to find some fellows I knew here to fill out the harmonies and actually, the group sounds precisely the same as the group on the CD and it was done purposely that way. Other than one lead that Larry does, one lead that Gene does, the duet that Gene does with Collette, things like that. Most of the songs, oh call me egotistical if you will, (laughter) but the voices you tend to hear are mine & Colette's and then you hear harmonies filling out the backgrounds. Now let me be very clear. Harmonies are important, but as long as they're there and they're right, it's pretty hard to distinguish who's singing. So, I'm pleased to say the group I've gotten together here sounds as good or better than any group I've ever sung with. So, we are now getting ready about the time the CD hits the stores, which is where it's going to be going, the web site is sort of get your order in early kind of thing. But, Dick Plotkin is definitely planning on getting it out to the stores. As soon as that really starts hitting, we've got to be ready to do concerts and Dick is trying to line up something sometime in the spring, Brian. What we're trying to do, now here again, we're a little bit at a disadvantage because this section of the country is not exactly the heart of Doo Wop. Most of the action seems to be on the East Coast and Pittsburgh. How about out your way?

Brian - Sacramento and vicinity is not a real hot bed of activity for doo wop. There are very few radio programs that have doo wop and not too many performers have come up this direction. So, we may be in that sense a little bit like Louisville.

Dave - The good thing about Louisville is you can drive there from here. We're at least East of The Mississippi. New York is a bit of a haul. I can drive there in 12 hours but Pittsburgh is a big Doo Wop town. That s 7 hours away. Chicago is 5 hours. Nashville, for that matter, is 3 hours, so it's not all that bad. But the idea that Dick and a friend of his who is a disc jockey in the Scranton, PA area, goes by the name of Bobby V., not to be confused with the singer, came up with the idea of trying to find some oldies acts, I'll say Doo Wop Rock & Roll, whatever you want to call it, somewhere near us geographically, that we can put together a three or four group package to put on shows, oh, in Louisville, 100 to 200 miles from Louisville, that kind of a thing. Hit the East Coast every so often but good heavens, not every month, OK?

Brian - Hmm! Hmm!

Dave - And that's pretty much the game plan. And now, let me tell you about a gentleman who's home I visited about a week ago and was on the phone today with me. There was another group, Brian, the name might be familiar to you, that originally hailed from Louisville, and what I didn't realize until about two weeks ago was that the group was reformed in Louisville about 30 years ago and although the original lead singer has passed away, the group is still active and still in Louisville. Can we say, Moonglows?

Brian - Ah! The Moonglows! Yes, we can say that.

Dave - Bobby Lester's Moonglows featuring Gary Rodgers. But, as you may know, the two original lead singers of the Moonglows were Bobby Lester and Harvey Fuqua.

Brian - Right!

Dave - And Harvey moved away. I guess The Moonglows essentially disbanded somewhere in the early 60's.

Brian - Yeah! They did a few things later in the 60's and early 70's but I'm not positive of the lineup. More or less that is correct.

Dave - In 1969 to be exact, Bobby Lester had wanted nothing to do with it. He had, according to Gary, retired. But, I guess somebody beat on his head enough. Sounds like what they did to me. (laughter). Bobby finally caved in and said "All right, all right, all right ". So he reformed the Moonglows based here and got this kid cousin of his by the name of Gary Rodgers to join the group. So apparently they started performing around that period of time, which coincides, Brian, about what you said about the time that the interest in the music of the 50's was starting to come back so that 1969 date makes a lot of sense from that stand point.

Brian - Right!

Dave - Anyway, Bobby passed away in 1980 and Gary has kept the group going and I wasn't even aware they were here until a gal that I know, through some internet doo wop clubs caught them at a UGHA function right after Thanksgiving in New Jersey and wrote me and said "Dave, you've got to talk to this guy ".

Brian - Wow!

Dave - So, I don t know where all this is going and you know, you can get into a discussion about how an original is original but I can tell you, Bobby Lester is the name I know and I'm not a student. I told Gary I have a 78 on Checker, not Chess, not because I'm a collector, but because I bought it new.

Brian - Oh yeah!

Dave - The Moonlighters - not The Moonglows. Alan Freed used to call them the group within a group. It was Bobby Lester and Harvey Fuqua were The Moonlighters and I've got a 78 of "So All Alone" backed with "Sho Shoo Doo Be Doo" .

Brian - Great song! Great two sider.

Dave - So when I hear Bobby Lester and I hear this is somebody who sang with him, is related to him and isdoing his darndest to keep up the Moonglows image, appearance, name, sound. I mean I've heard that their choreography is fantastic. And I'll tell you what Brian, I left a promo copy of our new CD with Gary. He asked if I wanted this back . I said no, you can have it. I only want one thing for it . He said "what's that"? I said next time you guys are having a rehearsal, let me come over .

Brian - Mmmmm!

Dave - I want to see you guys. I want to hear you because I 'll tell you what that was a group and a half. And if they are true, as I'm sure they are, to the history and the image of that group, that's going to be a sight to see.

Brian - So let s give out your web site address one more time for the listeners.

Dave - www.Aquatones.freeservers.com

Brian - And that's where they can not only learn about the history of the group but also they can order the new CD.

Dave - Correct, and there are some clips. Not full songs but 4 clips at a time up. I think he's still got the first bunch up but as the weeks and months go by all 23 clips from all 23 will be up there eventually to give people some idea. If you have Real Player or it's equivalent and you can hear a portion of the song but hey guys, we're trying to get you to buy the thing. (laughter). That's the purpose of that. And then we will be adding once the concerts get rolling, we have a button that goes nowhere right now but it says "Appearances" so we can tell people where we're going to be and when. I've seen this on web sites of other groups and hey, I'm a copycat. I don't know anything about web sites. (laughter). I figure if it works for some other groups, I'll try it myself.

Brian - Well and the new CD is absolutely excellent. Not only that but, Dave, you ve written quite a few of the songs on that CD. It's got 23 different songs on it. Some songs that have been resung that you originally sang in the late 50's and early 60's. It's got some classic songs on there and it's got a lot of new things.

Dave - You know one thing that I was concerned about, if I may share this with you, and I learned a lot on that 2 week whirlwind marketing tour that I did in the first half of November 2001, from talking to people in the business. I had thought that we were doing something fairly different by getting an old group reformed and putting out a CD. Then I hear about this group and that group and I'm not going to mention names had come out with a CD and I said OK, maybe we're no different than anybody else. What I was hearing from several sources was that groups that had hits in the late 50's/early 60's, if they come back with new recordings, they tend to be in the following categories either everybody else's hits including their own or if they do any new material, I ve heard a story about one group, a story about another. One was it is just a contemporary, another was disco. think I music of the 50's, I like to say I never grew up after that music. (laughter). It's like my musical maturity ended somewhere around 1959. So, if I write a song it s still going to sound like same stuff I wrote back in the 50's and from what I have heard from other people, that is what is unusual about our CD is all 23 tracks, whether they were old songs or new songs, all sound like the music we loved in the 50's, which is still the music I love today.

Brian - Dave, do you have any inal comments that you'd like to tell the listeners?

Dave - Just for an older guy, I am having more fun than you can believe.

Brian (laughter). Well, it s a great CD. It's nice to see you guys back out performing again, having the CD out and making plans and who knows, we may just see you on one of the PBS doo wop specials sometime.

Dave - Oh, would I love to and yes, contact has been made (laughter). If it happens, oh, man! And I'll tell you what, this time, by George, I'm going to get a video of it. (laughter)

Brian - Well, Dave thank you very much for taking time out to do the interview and to inform the listening audience all about the history of the Aquatones and what you're doing today.