Talent Seen Scattered In Rock & Roll Revival

by Bill Rice, The Troy Record, June 27, 1972

There was some lalent in the 1950s Rock & Roll Review at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Sunday evening, but one had to sort it out. The show did not go from worse to best as a similar show at the Albany Palace Theater did last winter, but rather had the best scattered somewhere in the middle with the show’s finale so bad it was almost embarrassing to watch.

The star of the revival was a surprisingly slender and good-looking Chubby Checker. Although he did his expected twist songs that made so much money for him, he seemed to be trying to shake the zany dance image with some new material like “Cry Baby,” a slow blues ballad and another good song called “I’m a Gypsy.” At any rate, Chubby came across as a much more talented entertainer than expected. He get his motor running enough on the twist songs to keep his audience happy and on “Shake, Baby, Shake,” that his band couldn’t even keep up with him. Chubby closed the first half of the program.

Best of Show

The first group on the second half, the Five Satins, turned out to be the best group on the show. Their biggest song was “In the Still of the Night,” with a successful a cappella version of “I’ll Be Seeing You” thrown in as an encore. The Satins, an all-male group, were polished and smooth and seemed to have pride in what they were doing.

A less successful group was the Capris, an all-male trio that used synchronized movements, sang parts the band should be playing and featured a lot of out-of-tune falsetto singing from one of the members. Unlike the Satins, the Capris acted as though the whole thing had been a put-on all along.

The show opened with Joey Dee, who looked more like a male college cheerleader than a performer. His segment was, at least, spirited. Following Dee was a black female group called the Crystals. We can’t comment on their part of the program because the sound system was so incredibly bad you couldn’t hear the voices.

We have seen Bo Diddley, who came next to last, twice now, he was in the Albany show, and wouldn’t walk across the street to see him again. The man can get a tremendous rhythmic feel going on his square electric guitar but it ends there. His brand of humor might be at home in a carnival strip show but does not belong in a show youngsters are attending.

Sad Closing

The closing of the show was more than a little sad to see. Tony Williams, the star of the Platters, is obviously having some personal problems and it seemed lucky he was able to stay on stage as long as he did, let alone sing. Usually people rush to the stage at the end of a SPAC rock performance. Sunday evening they went the other way.

There are probably parts of the Rock & Roll era that would be left unrevived. On the way home the ballad, “Blue Moon,” which one of the groups did kept going through my mind. It was the “Bong a dong dong, dang a dang dang,” sung in the background that got to me.