Unlike the story of most 50-60's singing groups, the Escorts are not a rags to riches to rags story -with members doing menial jobs and being embittered and wistful about what might have been. Like all stories, though, let's start at the beginning.

The Escorts were formed from the nucleus of an informal singing group called the Legends from Poly Prep High School in Brooklyn. The three original members were Richard Berg, Richard Perry and Richard Rosenberg. Besides singing, the boys all played instruments and all their initial work was as a "Bar-Mitzvah" Band.

A chance meeting in the summer of 1961 led to the group's recording contract with Corol Records. While the music counselor in a summer camp, Richard Berg met a girl whose uncle was an executive at Coral. She promised that after the summer, she would do what she could about getting Richie and his friends recorded.

It was late October 1961 and Richie had forgotten all about the promise made the preceeding summer when he began to receive phone calls from Decca executives. Hastily, the group caucused and decided a three man group didn't have a full enough sound. A fourth member, Rodney Garrison, who worked in Richard Perry's father's musical instrument business, was added as the lead singer.

Searching for a model to emulate in their first recording session, the group quickly struck on the Marcels and their first two records recorded in the same recording session in late 1961 features the accentuated bass runs that was the Marcels trademark. Their first release was a fast version of "Gloria" backed with a remake of the Keystones' "Seven Wonders of the World". The boys felt "Gloria" done in the Marcels' style would indeed be a novelty. The flip side was suggested to the group by a friend of the group who was an R & B collector.

The record, though receiving exposure on the radio, was not a big seller. However it should be noted that after its initial exposure, the record sold well enough to have a second pressing on Coral. In the mid sixties, the record sold fairly well as a standard oldie.

The group's second release in early 1962 was "Gaudeamus," an uptempo reworking of the traditional graduation processional. The idea for this came when the boys in the group started to fool around with their graduation march. As noted earlier this song was in the Marcels' style. As far as I know, this is the only Rock 'n Roll record ever done in Latin!!! (see additional comments about this song after the end of this article).  Richard Berg feels that these two records didn't do well because the company treated them as novelty records and not as Rock and Roll. In arranging the songs, the company's one concession to Rock and Roll was a rock drumbeat!

At this stage in their careers, the boys felt that matching shawl collar sweaters were a must. Now with the proper dress,  Richard Perry started getting the group club dates in and around New York City. The group played places like Trudy Heller's, where the group met Monti Rock, and at the Peppermint Lounge. One of these club dates proved quite fateful for the group. While the group was playing an extended engagement at the Lollypop Lounge on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, Richard Perry made the acquaintance of a girl named Goldie Zelkowitz.

Goldy told the group that she could sing, and sing she did in a funky "New York Chicky'' style. Female leads with male backing were fairly big at that time, the Essex and the Exciters had achieved great success using that sound; so Goldy replaced Rodney as the lead singer.

The group went back to the studio with Goldy and recorded two standards from West Side Story - "Somewhere" and "One Hand One Heart". As far as I'm concerned, these records were quite effective because the groups' popish harmony perfectly counter balanced Goldy's soulful voice. ''Somewhere," released first, became number 1 in Detroit. The group did a Thanksgiving show there where they were the top act over the Four Seasons and Chuck Jackson.

"One Hand. One Heart" was released in the winter of 1963 and was a Murray the K record review board winner. On the strength of that, Murray contacted Goldy who was the only member in New York at the time (the three boys were away at college at the time). He wanted the Escorts to do his Easter Show. Goldy, trying to be cool, turned him down. When the rest of the group heard about it, there was an argument and Goldy left the group.

Goldy formed her own group, an all girl group, called Goldy and the Gingerbreads, so named because the drummer's name was Ginger. Meanwhile, the three Escorts took another lead singer named Bobby Lance and he was the lead on their last two records on Coral which were both unsuccessful.

By 1965, the group had disbanded. The boys had graduated from college and decided to pursue different careers and Richard Perry started to do writing and production work. Richard Berg remembers assisting him with one of his artists in the mid-sixties. Richie Berg rehearsed "April Showers" with Tiny Tim.

Where are the Escorts today? Goldy became Genya Ravan [alternate link] who after a stint with Ten Wheel Drive is one of the top female vocalists in rock today. Richard Rosenberg is a doctor. Richard Berg is an attorney as well as a writer of children's musicals. His efforts have included a new musical effort of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. Richard Perry is one of the top producer-arrangers in Rock today. He has worked with such performers as Carly Simon, Neilson, Barbara Streisand and as of this writing was working on a session with Ringo Starr. Rumored to have appeared at the session for the album in progress are John Lennon and George Harrison, with Paul McCartney doing overdubbing. Not bad for four kids from Brooklyn. Any group that knew Monti Rock and Tiny Tim couldn't be all bad.

NOTES:
1.  The Escorts recorded solely for Coral Records. They are not Del & the Escorts on Rome or any other Escorts group. All recorded Escorts' efforts were released.

2.  Added comments about the song "Gaudamaus".  By Rene Davids:
It's good that I found that link just before I sent my message, because I had already stated writing down another theory. With Google, I couldn't find any references to "gaudamaus", but I found some when I tried "gauda maus". It soon turned out that some Germans had written Gauda where they meant Gouda, a Dutch city is know for the candles that they have been making there for centuries, and the Gouda cheese, one of our export products. (In English-speaking countries, Gouda is often pronounced as "gooda", but "gowda" comes closer to how it should be pronounced, and a German would write that as "Gauda", so it's an understandable spelling error.)

"Maus" is simply German for mouse, and apparently there are some stories about a "Gouda-maus"; a mouse that lived inside a big Gouda cheese, but couldn't resist eating parts if it every day, until she had no house left. (Then she put a large stamp on her belly and asked the mailman to send her to the nearest cheese shop, so this sad story turned out well. Don't lose any sleep over it. LOL!)

There also seems to be a German board game called "Gouda! Gouda!" in which the playes have to move little mice as pawns in order to get to a piece of Gouda cheese (see image).

Even though Gouda is is in the same provice as where I live, I didn't even know this, but apparently German children grow up with stories about a "Gouda-maus".

I already noticed that a name like Richard Berg could very well be Dutch or German, but I already thought "Gaudamaus" had a Yiddish ring to it, so my first theory was that the group consisted of second-generation Jewish immigrants who sang about the "Gouda-maus" that they might have heard about in the stories that their parents had picked up in Germany.

Well... maybe I didn't hit the nail right on the head, but it seems that I didn't miss the plank entirely either. The story that I found says that the boys were "fooling around" with that Latin song, "Gaudeamus", so there is still a possibility that the Latin title reminded them of that "Gouda-maus" story that they heard from their parents, and that they decided to make a funny song about that mouse in some kind of pseudo-Latin.

Of course this is purely speculation, but since two former group members later became a doctor and an attorney, and since they all went to the same school, it seems obvious to me that they were all intelligent, and that they probably came from families that could afford to send those boys to a good school. I don't know the "Poly Prep High School" in Brooklyn, but the name seems to suggest that that school prepared its pupils for just about anything, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if they learned Latin there as well.

Writing funny poems or songs in pseudo-Latin is one of those pranks that students of the classic languages (Latin and ancient Greek) have been doing for centuries, so I am not so sure if they used the lyrics of the original Latin song. It seems to me that the record would never sell if they recorded a song that only other students from their own high school would recognize, so there almost must be some kind of joke in it for other intellectuals who also studied Latin. I can't verify that, but something tells me that this "Latin" song may not be 100% kosher.

The only thing that I haven't been able to find are those Russuian pages that you mentioned, but when I searched for the combination "maus escort" I found several German web sites that offered escort services, and in that context the "Maus" was one of those ladies that you could rent there. I didn't check all those sites, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of those sites contained some ads for Russian brides too, because something tells me that those sites are not 100% kosher either...

Later, when I grow up, I'm gonna be a detective I am!

René