Classic Pop Icons

Doo wop music lost one of its most beloved voices and ambassadors when Johnny Maestro, lead singer of the Crests and the Brooklyn Bridge, passed away at age 70 on March 24 due to complications from cancer.

Maestro was born John Mastrangelo on May 7, 1939 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He grew up a fan of Alan Freed’s radio show and through it developed love of group harmony. In 1956, he met the members of the already formed, but yet to be named Crests, at a function in Manhattan’s Henry Street Settlement House. At that time the group consisted of J.T Carter (bass), Talmadge (Tommy) Gough (first tenor), Harold Torres (second tenor), and Patricia Van Dross (Luther’s older sister who sang tenor). The group liked Maestro’s dramatic tenor, which conveyed an equal mix of black and white influences, and asked him to join. Soon after, Carter dubbed the group “The Crests” after the toothpaste.

The Crests – Patricia Van Dross, Johnny Maestro, Harold Torres, Talmadge (Tommy) Gough and J.T. Carter

The Crests were an integrated outfit with the Italian American Maestro (who had already been in a previous integrated group) joining an assemblage that already included two African-Americans and two members of Puerto Rican heritage. Van Dross’ membership also made the group integrated sexually like the then super popular Platters. That blacks, whites and Puerto Ricans could work together for a greater goal was an important statement in pre-Civil Rights Act America. Segregationists of the period predicted the intermingling of the races would prove calamitous for the country, but groups like the Crests, the Marcels, and the Del-Vikings showed they could make beautiful music together.

The newly expanded line-up often practiced in the New York Subway stations and on trains. It was on a train that they were discovered by the wife of Al Browne, a prominent arranger who backed acts like the Heartbeats. Browne set up a recording session for the group on the small independent label Joyce Records. They recorded two Maestro (then still Mastrangelo) originals “Sweetest One” and “My Juanita.” “Sweetest One” hit #86 on the national Hot 100, not great but not bad for a group of unknowns on a teensy label.

The Crests – The Sweetest One

Oddly, although “Sweetest One” was the chart hit, “My Juanita” went on to become something of a standard amongst doo wop groups. A second release crapped out, but the group was well known enough to keep playing live gigs.

The Crests – My Juanita

In 1958, Van Dross left the group, but good fortune intervened when the group met George Paxton, a Brill Publisher who was forming Coed Records. He signed the group to the new label and the group’s second release on Coed was “16 Candles.” Co-written by Luther Dixon, who later went onto produce and write hits for the Shirelles and Chuck Jackson, and Allyson R. Khent, “16 Candles” is the Crests’ claim to immortality. The Crests fully realized the potential in the song’s sharply articulated rite of passage lyric and its mesmerizing low key melody. The group’s open throated mix of harmonies punctuated by Carter’s incisive bass moans created a kind of floating wall of sound that gives the record an ethereal, dreamlike quality. Maestro’s ever-so-slightly grainy lead tenor is brilliant, filled with a deep yearning quality that goes beyond the dreams of adolescence into a deeper spiritual territory. “You’re only six-teeeeee-eeen” he sings as if stretching the word can make this important, but ephemeral, moment last forever. When he and the group come together on the song’s finale, it is one of those pop moments that always tingles my spine.

The Crests – 16 Candles

“16 Candles” made #2 on Billboard and sold a million copies in early 1959 and has sold many, many, many more than that on literally hundreds of anthologies since. It is one of the most iconic songs of the entire era capturing that first burst of adolescent self-recognition.

The Crests followed it up with a group of smaller Top 40 records – “The Angels Listened In,” “Six Nights a Week,” and “Step By Step” in and “Trouble in Paradise,” – in 1959 and 1960.

The Crests – The Angels Listened In

The group also had several smaller hits during this era. In 1959, they were amongst the 20 most popular acts in the music business according to chart historian Joel Whitburn. (The hits in this period remained popular with East Coast oldies stations deep into the past decade.)

Unfortunately, the hit streak was broken in late 1960. Then Coed records made what turned out to be a fatal decision. They decided to separate Maestro from the Crests. Maestro, who was opposed to the decision, told Bill Dahl in 2006 that the label believed the group’s sales were falling because its integrated membership made it difficult to book them on television. (Even in the early 1960s some southern affiliates would not broadcast television program featuring any black performers let alone racially integrated acts.) The label may also have wanted to double its assets as they decided to promote Maestro as well as the Crests with a new lead singer.

Neither act benefited from the move. The Crests were deprived of one of the most distinct voices in early 1960s popular music. Maestro (who at about this point adopted the Maestro show biz moniker) was left without the group’s calming influence and harmonies. He told Dahl, he always felt more comfortable singing within the group harmony format.

The Crests suddenly found themselves unable to make the Hot 100. It took Maestro a little while longer to bottom out as both “Model Girl” and “What a Surprise” were Top 40 hits in 1961.

Johnny Maestro – Model Girl

“What a Surprise” showed that Maestro’s problem was more than his separation from the group. Its lyric was the worst kind of teen fodder – the sitcom premise of the best friend and girl friend getting together to plan a surprise party for the protagonist. Even in 1961, it was a tired idea. It was the kind of record that tied Maestro to a style of music that was already being consigned to the dustbin. (Bobby Vee’s songs by comparison were extremely well-crafted.) Even with the Crests, Maestro had a hard time gaining access to first rate material, but identikit teen idol stuff like this killed any hope of a solo career.

For most of the 1960s Maestro hopped from label to label searching for success. Though he made a few strong records along the way, like leading the Tymes through “I’ll Be True” for Cameo, his search was fruitless. In 1968, he hooked up with the remnants of the Del Satins, a singing group with no national name recognition, but one that had been featured on many hit records. They’re the group that backed Dion, after he split with the Belmonts, on hits like “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer.”

In early 1968 the group played a talent contest in Farmingdale Long Island where they were pitted against a jazz ensemble known as the Rhythm Method. The very next day, the two groups merged to form The Brooklyn Bridge. Maestro told Dahl that the name came about because of the size of the now massive 11-member ensemble. “I think it was someone at our manager’s office that made a comment, ‘It’s going to be easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than sell a group of this size,'” Maestro said.

The Brooklyn Bridge

A gig at New York’s Westbury Music Fair in April 1968 attracted the attention of Buddah Records and Johnny Maestro was granted a rare second chance at the big time. Once again, he would hit a homerun on his second time out.

Buddah Records at the time was known for bubble gum music. According to Maestro that was the type of material that Buddah offered the group. When the first bubblegum oriented 45 flopped, the Bridge convinced label boss Neil Bogart to let them pick the next single. They chose a Jimmy Webb song they had found on a Fifth Dimension record, “Worst That Could Happen.” The record, produced by Wes Farrell, was released in late 1968.

Opening with a funereal organ and a stately strummed acoustic guitar and ending with a flurry of horns, voices and Maestro’s anguished cries, “Worst That Could Happen,” is a crescendo that draws upon every ounce of power that the Brooklyn Bridge could muster. It’s a shattering record. When the group cries out to Maestro on the song’s finale “Never, never, never gonna get married,” and the singer wails back “I’m never, never gonna marry someone,” it’s as if we’re hearing the voices in the singer’s head and his own out loud acknowledgement of them. In those few moments we feel the impact of a lifetime of bad choices all at once. When Maestro cries out the end, the listener can almost feel and, even envision, his body going out from under him.

The Brooklyn Bridge – “Worst That Could Happen”

I would argue that the Bridge’s “Worst That Could Happen” is the absolute best record of a Jimmy Webb song. And Maestro’s tour de force is central to its success. His gentle phrasing on the verses lets us know that this is really a noble act by the narrator, perhaps the first in his life. His histrionics on the chorus shows how awful the price can be for doing the right thing. This is no teenager who will be better in a week; this really is the worst thing that could happen to this man. Webb’s complex lyric, and cinematic music, are a challenge to any singer who would tackle this song and Maestro exceeds that challenge. He deepens the piece. Given the enormity of Maestro’s talent, one could be forgiven for seeing him as an underachiever. But for these three minutes, he was one of the greatest singers on the planet.

Almost exactly ten years after “16 Candles,” February 1969, the Brooklyn Bridge’s performance of “Worst That Could Happen” made #3 and sold a million records in the United States alone. Sadly, the Bridge was not able to follow up that success. The group played Yankee Stadium and a string of mid-chart hits, including the surging and beautifully produced “Welcome Me Love” and a brilliantly sung, albeit over produced rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” followed over the next year or so, but nothing matched the success, artistically or commercially of “Worst That Could Happen.”

Despite the relative brevity of Maestro’s return to the national spotlight, his final years were good ones. He spent most of his remaining decades touring with an abbreviated Brooklyn Bridge line-up, keeping the sound of doo wop alive with his classic songs, insights and stories into the first rock golden era.

Here’s the band performing two songs originally recorded by the Crests, “Step By Step” and the classic “16 Candles.”

Maestro would even return to the recording studio once in a while, with often strong results like 1985’s Bridge album Acappella. When I saw him in 2008, his voice remained as fine as it was on those Brooklyn Bridge recordings. The enduring power of his work was echoed by David Chase’s decision to feature several Maestro oldies as commentary on his television show The Sopranos.

“With Johnny, it wasn’t any overwhelming force of personality or stage presence that remained in our mind,” said singer and songwriter Billy Vera, assessing Maestro’s appeal for Classic Pop Icons. “It was just the stark purity of his voice, that bell like quality that was a thing of beauty.”

Although, he wasn’t a figure comparable to a Michael Jackson or an Elvis Presley, or even a lesser figure like Ricky Nelson, he managed to do some things that made this world a little more enjoyable to be around. By those who knew his work, he’ll be missed.

Sources:
Bill Dahl: The Best of Johnny Maestro: 1958-1985 liner notes
Jay Warner: The Billboard Book of American Singing Groups: A History 1940-1990
Joel Whitburn’s: Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits and Pop Annual 1959-1994