Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers

If all you knew of Frankie Lymon was the wonderful performances on the 20-cut Rhino Very Best of set you'd come away with a mental picture of a teenage boy whose every sung note celebrated life. Even his more introspective, pained numbers -- "Share," "Out in the Cold Again" -- communicate a bright optimism. Indeed, when Lymon entered the public arena in 1956 at age 13, rock & roll had never seen anything quite like him. His face was a cherub's, but his eyes radiated an intelligence far beyond his years; his voice was a plaintive, malleable tenor that retained its clarity even when Lymon soared into the upper register; onstage he displayed the suave and charm of a wizened pro. He also developed some dazzling dance moves that had a measurable impact on the styles later developed for Motown artists; and he had a touch of the poet about him, too, possibly having written both sides of his group's first single. One of those songs is among the most famous and most performed in American popular music, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love." Its release in 1956 began an 18-month run of international stardom for Lymon and his friends from Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, who had changed their name from the Premiers to the Teenagers before their first record's release.

"Why Do Fools Fall in Love," aided by Lymon's galvanizing stage presence, peaked at #6 on the pop chart and catapulted the group into the upper echelons of the entertainment elite. They appeared on national TV shows, in two Alan Freed movies, and performed for royalty in England; more important, Lymon and the Teenagers brought the doo-wop-harmony sound to mainstream America, adding to it a rock & roll beat and irrepressible energy. In addition to "Fools," the group's next three singles -- "I Want You to Be My Girl," "I Promise to Remember," and "The ABC's of Love" -- hit the Top 50 on the R&B chart. Although the group continued to cut exemplary singles, it never duplicated the chart success of the first four hits. By late '57, Gee executives had decided to take Lymon solo, and that spelled the beginning of the end for the singer and his backing group. The Teenagers without Lymon went hitless (and made Billy Lobrano, Lymon's replacement, one of the great trivia answers in rock & roll history). "Portable on My Shoulder" and "Thumb Thumb," available on the Rhino and Collectables entries, show that Lymon was in a good-rockin' groove in 1958, even though his voice had begun to change. His last charted single, a remake of Thurston Harris' 1957 hit "Little Bitty Pretty One," came in 1960, though Lymon's vocal had been cut two years earlier and released on his Rock 'n' Roll album (now out of print). By 1959, his voice had lost its elasticity; some performances on the Collectables box set For Collectors Only (which was originally released as a five-LP vinyl collection on the Murray Hill label in 1986) sound like anyone but Frankie Lymon. By the early '60s Lymon was battling heroin addiction, and his personal life was spiraling out of control, culminating in a mid-'60s arrest for stealing drums from a recording studio to finance his habit. A stint in the U.S. Army helped him get his life together again, and his old label, Roulette, responded by scheduling a recording session for him in February 1968. The day prior to the session, Lymon overdosed and died in his grandmother's apartment in New York. He was 25 years old.

The excellent liner notes and prime cuts on Rhino's best-of tell a good chunk of Lymon's story on and off the stage. Collectables' For Collectors Only comprises 64 tracks that are at once exciting, revealing, and depressing: exciting because they reveal the solid artistry the youngsters brought to some terrific B sides and nonsingle album tracks, depressing as an aural documentation of Lymon's artistic disintegration. In ad-dition to the Lymon/Teenagers work, a number of tracks are included that feature Lymon solo and the Teenagers post-Lymon. Unfortunately for fans, the new Collectables box omits the complete and invaluable sessionography and recording history that was part of the Murray Hill vinyl edition, an omission for which even Marv Goldberg's solid biographical liner notes cannot compensate. Nevertheless, For Collectors Only is essential for anyone interested both in the course of this group's groundbreaking career and in the evolution of doo-wop into a commercially viable music.

For a good single-disc anthology of Lymon's solo work, there's nothing better than Collectables' Frankie Lymon at the London Palladium. The title makes it sound like a live album, but it's actually a studio effort released in 1958 to cash in on Lymon's April 1957 appearance at the fabled London venue. Backed by a terrific big band and orchestra assembled by session leader Rudy Traylor, Lymon does a bang-up job with a dozen songs, showing off some dazzling vocal craftsmanship. A brassy, swinging take on Harold Arlen's 1934 gem "Let's Fall in Love" kicks off the album, followed by Lymon easing into a heartfelt, string-laden ballad, "So Goes My Love," that features his keening tenor in full, heartbreaking flight. The pop standard "Fools Rush In" gets a slow, deliberate treatment, with gorgeous, ascending string lines surfacing as Lymon works his way from a muted reading to a soaring, plaintive cry in the chorus -- a performance masterful in its use of nuance and timbre to reveal a soul divided. The young man revealed on disc seems to have all the answers, whereas the young man in the real world seemed to have none. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide