On Doo-Wop, The Scourge Of Robots and Beyonce, and The Anacrusis

Doo-wop is a fascinating little inlet of American Music that was sort of absorbed and overcome by the popularity of guitar driven music. When Doo-wop was at its populist peak the most popular instrument wasn’t the guitar, it was the saxophone. If you go back to old recordings you’ll find that guitar solos are quite rare – the saxophone is usually the one stealing the limelight. But it didn’t take long for guitar to become the center of North American music and it’s only recently that it’s finally being displaced by robots and Beyonce.

The anacrusis is a forty dollar word for, “the pickup” which is a sixteen cent word for a note that precedes and leads into the first downbeat of a phrase (It’s the and of, “….and go!”). They’re everywhere. In big band music, the drummer plays a very important anacrusis in setting up big shots with a sharp crack (a rimshot) on their snare drum; the iconic “Da-da-da-DUMMMMM!” from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony has THREE NOTES in its anacrusis; and the gasp of the audience before their roar when an event flies off the rails is also an anacrusis of sorts.

In Doo-wop, you’ll somtimes hear a voluminous, “Yeah” from the bass singer that sounds like a herd of cattle passing a bicycle. This is Doo-wop’s own special anacrusis, and the inspiration for this blog post. In the example below – a famous and filthy song – you can hear a prolific example at 0:45

At 2:12 in this famous recording by the Monotones we have a unique take on the phenomenon that sounds more like a llama hurtling itself through an open window:

I’d love to have an explanation for where this phenomenon comes from but it seems to be one of those unexplained little quirks of the genre. The art form clearly has a cappella origins; perhaps with the addition of instruments, the bass singer’s duties were becoming more and more overtaken by their instrumental counterparts and the, “YEAH” was a vocal uprising in the unseen battle of the basses. In rehearsals leading up to the BIG SHOW, the singer would be quietly stewing, planning his attack, only to unleash a hellish fury in performance that left the audience and performers indifferent in the face of a looming saxophone solo.