Chart position: #2 R&B, #14 Pop
Category: Doo-wop
Writers: William Davis, Viola Watkins
Label and number: Rama 5, New York
Flipside: "I Love You So" (the Aside)
When and where recorded: Probably February 10, 1953, in New York City
When released: March 1953 / charted a year later, April 1954
Why Important: It was one of the first major crossover R&B records
on an in dependent label and the first '50s-style doo-wop record to sell a million.
Influenced by: Possibly "Gee, Ain't I Good to You" by the Nat Cole Trio
(#1 R&B, #15 Pop, 1944) and "Gee, Baby" by Johnny Otis, with Mel Walker
(#2 R&B, 1951)
Influenced: Dozens of doo-wop and R&B nonsense recordings, including
"Sh-Boom" by the Chords (#5 Pop, 1954), "Oop Shoop" by Shirley Gunter and the
Queens (#8 R&B, 1954), "Bim Bam" by the Drifters (#7 R&B, 1954), "Ko
Ko Mo" by Gene and Eunice (#6 R&B, 1955) and "Tweedle Dee" by LaVern Baker
(#14 Pop, 1954)
Important cover versions: Joe Loco and His Mambo Stylings, June Hutton,
the Skylarks
Important remakes: Jan and Dean (#81 Pop, 1960), the Hollywood Flames
(#26 R&B, 1961), Pixies Three (#87 Pop, 1964)
The story behind the record: In 1953 rhythm and blues was splashing out
of the northern ghettos and southern Jimtowns (sections where Jim Crow laws
forced blacks to live) and catching the ears of white teenagers. But so far
only one R&B record had made any impression on the pop charts, and that
was "Sixty Minute Man" [see #25], which because of its sexual lyrics had been
a freak hit that couldn't even be sung on the weekly "Your Hit Parade" radio
show. That would soon change when a tiny New York label released a crude, street-corner
record called "Gee" that sounded like it had actually been recorded
on a street comer. A full year would pass before "Gee" worked up enough steam
to get recognition on "Your Hit Parade," but by slipping past the major recording
companies' entrenched distribution system it became the first true '50s R&B
hit.
The Crows were Daniel "Sonny" Norton (lead vocals), Bill Davis (baritone and tenor), Harold Major (tenor),
Gerald Hamilton (bass) and Mark Jackson (tenor vocals and guitar). The group formed on Harlem's 142nd
Street, near Lenox Avenue, around 1951, and like every other black street-corner group they auditioned for
the Wednesday night talent show at the Apollo Theater on 125th Street. When they won first place, an agent
named Cliff Martinez got them their first real, if uncredited, gig: harmonizing behind singing trumpet
player Frank "Fat Man" Humphries on jubilee Records, the label of their heroes, the Orioles. Soon afterward, Martinez
introduced the quintet to another one of his clients, a singer-pianist named Viola Watkins, in hopes they
could help each other. She needed a vocal group and a guitarist for her act, and they needed a pianist and
arranger. When Martinez felt that his artists were ready to record, he contacted a local record man named
George Goldner.
Goldner had been running several Latin American dance halls in Manhattan. After he married one of his
Latina customers, he became a solid Latin music fan and, seeing a need for mambo and cha cha recordings,
formed the Tico label. One of his first artists was mambo vibraphonist Tito Puente. But as Goldner saw that
the hippest Latin kids were beginning to dance to rhythm and blues music, he formed an exclusively R&B
label called Rama, so as not to confuse the people who bought Tico releases. Goldner's first act as the
owner of Rama was to drive up to Viola Watkins's home in Harlem and audition her and the Crows.
Their first session, at Beltone Recording Studios in Manhattan, began with the Crows backing up Viola on
"No Help Wanted." The second song that day was an original ballad called "I Love You So" that the group's
baritone, Bill Davis, had written while he was sweeping the floor, pretending the broomstick was a
microphone. The third song was "Gee."
" 'Gee' took me about six or seven minutes to write," Davis recalled. "We were down at my sister's house on
139th Street and I said to the fellas, 'Let's see if we can come up with some ideas.' I wrote the words first
and then tried to come up with a background. I gave Sonny the lead and showed the background to the rest
of the guys." When they sang the song for Goldner, he suggested that they add a little hook to the song,
"Uh uh uh oh gee-ee." For some reason, Goldner chose "I Love You So" and "Gee" for their first release.
"Gee" was one of the first "head arrangements"-put together on the spot-to become a hit, distinguished by
its "feel" rather than its stirring lyrics or sentimental melody. After the group introduces the song with four
bars of "duh-duda-duh-duda-duh-duda duh-duh-duhs," Norton crows, "Oh-ho-ho-ho gee, my oh-oh
gee-hee, well oh-oh gee, why I love that girl." (Group: "Love that girl!") The chorus doesn't get any more
profound: "Hold me baby, squeeze me, never let me go, I'm not takin' chances, because I love her so."
One of the surprises in "Gee" is the sly, Charlie Christian-flavored guitar solo, with its quote from the
traditional Scottish tune, "The Campbells Are Coming." Aural evidence strongly suggests that the guitarist
was Lloyd "Tiny" Grimes, who was under contract to Atlantic Records at the time but known to gig around
town for extra loot. Grimes's trademark was tossing famous song phrases into his improvisations, and he
was particularly fond of Scottish airs. He had even fronted his own kilt-wearing band, the Rockin'
Highlanders, a couple of years earlier and recorded "Loch Lomond." The presence of Tiny Grimes-one of
jazz's premier guitarists, who recorded with such artists as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the
legendary Charlie Christian himself-seems almost incongruous on a Crows session, if indeed that's him.
By the time Goldner got around to releasing "Gee" he placed his bets on the ballad side, "I Love You So," which after a slow start began to get some action around the country. But then
something funny started to happen. In a September item in Billboard, an indie distributor reported that
among his "big sellers are 'I Love You So' . . . with requests for the flip
'Gee' coming in stronger and
stronger." By year's end, "Gee" was going wild in Detroit and Los Angeles. In December Billboard
announced, "One of the most unusual reactions ever accorded a tune is that which is happening to the
Crows and their Rama disk of 'Gee.' The record's initial buying surge starting a few months ago was in
Philadelphia, followed by Baltimore and the New York-Newark, New Jersey area. Action at that time was on
the flip side. The disk stayed localized until Los Angeles charts showed it breaking out, but it was the
'Gee' side which sparked the new action."
The guy who had apparently gotten the record going in L.A. was Dick "Huggy Boy" Hugg, a young white
deejay on station KRKD. In 1953-54, Huggy Boy had become the city's hottest jock, eclipsing longtime R&B
favorite Hunter Hancock. He broadcast his late-night "Harlem Hit Parade" out of the front window of
Dolphin's of Hollywood, a popular all-night record store in the middle of black Los Angeles, at the corner
of Vernon and Central avenues. Traffic backed up on Vernon early in the morning as hip cats, black, white
and Chicano, cruised by Dolphin's window.
"My radio show got so popular," said Hugg, "I could break a record-a good record-if I played it enough. I
found 'Gee' by the Crows after it had been scrapped here [in L.A.]. Hunter Hancock had already played it
for four weeks and nothing had happened, so he threw it in the wastebasket-which the jocks called the
bomb box.
"My first wife, Nila, who was my girlfriend then, and I had an argument in the window at Dolphin's . . . and
she left at 12:30 in the morning and headed back home to North Hollywood. I wanted her to come back so
I put on her favorite record, 'Gee,' and kept playing it. It took her about twenty minutes to get home and it
was still playing when she got to the house. She called me and said, 'You're gonna get fired if you keep
playing that record.' I told her, 'I'm not gonna stop playing it till you come back.' So she said okay and came
back.
"The next Tuesday, George Goldner called me from New York and told me he had a smash hit in Los
Angeles . . . That's when I found out how popular my show was."
By January the record had sold over 100,000 copies-half of them in Southern California. (Before the year
was out, "Gee" would reach the million mark.) "Gee" continued to heat up in spots around the country. A
Cleveland jock noted in February that "I have to play it at least six or seven times at dances which I attend."
Finally, by April, the record had built up enough momentum to chart. "Gee" whizzed up to number two
(R&B) and crossed over into the Hit Parade Top 20.
Just as "Gee" was taking off, Goldner, an inveterate gambler, found himself in a such a money crunch that
he was forced to sell the song's publishing outright to Meridian Music for what the trade papers called "a
lot of money." He was probably just clearing up a debt. The owner of Meridian was Morris Levy, a local gangster and nightclub
owner with his fingers in all facets of rhythm and blues music: booking, publishing, managing and
recording. Levy was the fellow most responsible for bringing Alan Freed to New York City in 1954 and who
conspired with Freed to trademark the phrase "rock 'n' roll. Later, George Goldner would form other record
companies and develop other talents, such as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and the Chantels, and he
would end up cashing them all in to Morris Levy to cover his gambling debts. One result of Levy's
ownership of "Gee" was that Viola Watkins's name disappeared from under the song and Morris Levy's
name took its place.
In April Billboard reported on the R&B phenomenon, which "Gee" had limelighted, in a major article called
"Teen-Agers Going For 'Music With a Beat' As Industry Reaps a Financial Harvest." According to the piece,
"One of the fastest growing segments of the record business is the rhythm and blues field, a fact which the
entire music trade is becoming increasingly aware of these days." Noting that R&B sales in 1953 topped $15
million, the writer continued, "More than 700 jocks across the country devote their air time exclusively to
rhythm and blues platters . . . To satisfy the growing demand for this material, over 75 diskeries regularly
release rhythm and blues recordings . . . Teen-agers are instigating the current trend towards r.&b. and are
largely responsible for keeping its sales mounting . . . On the West Coast, such classy retail outlets as
Crawford's, Martindale's and the Gramophone Shop in Beverly Hills now stock rhythm and blues."
Clearly the market had changed, and there was no way the major record companies could stop the trend.
Yet none of this success subsequently helped the Crows themselves. Before "Gee" took off, Goldner had
released a follow-up Crows record, "Call the Doctor," but nothing had happened. Later, as "Gee" began to
stall on the charts, he rushed out a third single, "Baby," and proclaimed it in ads as "The Great Follow-up to
`Gee'!" The public threw "Baby" out with the bathwater. In a last-ditch effort, Goldner tried to start a
campaign to get disk jockeys around the country to flip over the first record, "Gee," again in hopes of
igniting "I Love You So," but that didn't work either, and by summer of 1954 the Crows had been forgotten
and their '55 Chrysler with "The Crows" painted on the side had been repossessed. But their initial success
had let the genie out of the bottle, and now the indie record companies and distributors knew that they had
the power to bring in one of those gushers called a hit record.
"When I got into high school, groups like the Penguins and Crows were out, and I started running down to the Apollo Theater, hanging out at the back door trying to cop riffs off these guys."-Dion DiMucci