Biography
The Dovells were a rock vocal group formed in Philadelphia, PA, in 1957, as The Brooktones (taking their name from Overbrook High School, which all its members attended). The original members were lead singer Len Barry, Jerry Summers, Mike Freda, Arnie Satin, Jim Mealey and Mark Gordesky. They started to get dates singing at various school functions and every so often at a local record store owned by John Madara, who was also a songwriter (he co-wrote "At the Hop" for Danny and the Juniors). The group recorded a song called "No, No, No", which got some local play, but they remained little known outside the Philadelphia area and soon broke up.
While Summers and Freda formed another group, The Gems, Barry and the others negotiated with other producers and labels, including noted Philly producer Robert P. Marcucci and his Chancellor Records, which was the label to such rock stars as Frankie Avalon and Fabian. They also added William Skunkwiler and Jerry Sirlin to replace the departed Summers and Freda. In late 1960 they auditioned for Philly's Cameo/Parkway Records, which liked what it heard and immediately signed them. Lead singer Barry asked Summers and Freda to rejoin the group, and they did. Cameo/Parkway co-owner Bernie Lowe told the group they needed a new name, and he suggested they rename themselves The Deauvilles (after a famous hotel in Miami Beach). The members liked the sound of the name but thought it would be too hard to spell, so they changed it to The Dovells.
Their first record was to be a cover of a 1957 ballad by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers called "Out in the Cold Again", but during production a Cameo promotions man came into the studio and told the producers about a new dance that kids at a dance hall in Bristol--a suburb of Philadelphia--were doing, called "The Stomp". He brought along a copy of a record cut by some students called "Every Day of the Week" and played it for them. The producers liked it, stopped the session, went home that night and the next day came back with a song called "The Bristol Stomp" ("Out in the Cold Again" became that record's "B" side). The song, released in late 1961, eventually got to #2 on the Billboard charts and later went to #1 on the CashBox and R&B charts. The group's follow-up songs, all dance tunes, made it to the charts, although not as successful as "Bristol Stomp".
In January 1963 they released their second true smash, the driving "You Can't Sit Down", hitting the top 5 on both pop and R&B charts. The follow-up to that song, "Betty in Bermudas", however, only made it to #50. Not long after afterwards the band heard a tape of a song by an unknown English band that had been leased to a small US label, Swan Records (co-owned by Philadelphia personality Dick Clark). They liked the song and recorded it, but Cameo Records kept putting off its release and nothing ever came of it. The unknown English group, as it turns out, was The Beatles and the song was "She Loves You". The Dovells' version of it remains unreleased.
The group toured with some of the biggest acts of the day, including Fabian, Jackie Wilson and Chubby Checker, and worked as backup singers for several of Cameo's recording stars (they're the vocal group on Checker's "Let's Twist Again"). Eventually, however, the pressures of touring and tensions within the group resulted in Barry leaving in December of 1963.
Barry signed with Decca Records and in 1965 released his biggest solo hit, "1-2-3", which hit #2 on the Billboard charts. His two follow-up songs made it to the Top 40, but were not as successful as his first one. The group continued as a trio and recorded with varying degrees of success (they appeared in a low-budget rock film, Don't Knock the Twist (1962)), and in 1974 recorded a cover of the 1964 Martha & The Vandellas hit, "Dancin' in the Street", but it failed to reach even the top 100. In 1978 Arnie Satin left the group. In 1981 Barry rejoined the group for two reunion performances
