You’d stand on a corner, and a guy would come up and say hey, there’s a guy on the East Side who could blow you guys off this corner, he can sing so good. We’d say go get him! Bring him down here! We stopped fighting each other and started singing.
-Orioles singer Diz Russell
They went from singing on street corners to getting immortalized in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and this week on The Signal they share their stories and their songs. The legendary vocal group, The Orioles, took the music world by storm back in the 1950s, wowing listeners with a harmonizing style that would later come to be known as doo wop. Now, 60 years later, they’re still with us – and still singing. In this special edition of The Signal, producer Aaron Henkin and Maryland Traditions folklorist Cliff Murphy pay a visit to the surviving members of The Orioles – Diz Russell, Raymond Allen Jr, David Warren, and Clark Walker – and we learn about the magic behind lyrics like: "Hey-dah-nee-ding-dong-a-lang-a-lang-a-whoa-whoa-whoa-zip-sha-boom!"
Check out The Orioles at their basement hangout in this multimedia companion piece by Shane Carpenter...