White Pop Doo Wop

Many record company owners, aside from liking a smooth doo-wop sound, also had the fiscal savvy and/or foresight to judge which songs and styles would appeal to the widest audience. This effort by them to sell more records led to a mixture of prep sound with traditional doo wop. The strategy was to soften the doo wop sound to make it appealing to a widerrange of age groups, and jazzing  up the tried and true adult-oriented so they would appeal to the teenagers.

Pop-doo-wop songs were smoothed over so to be acceptable to both adults and teenagers. Songs in this category tended to end between pop and doo wop. Falsetto was only used as a trail off, if at all., the bass part blended with the harmony rather than standing alone to punctuate the choruses, and the nonsense syllables were minimized and soften. The general sound was more melodic, less formulaic and softer than traditional doo wop

Another variety of pop doo wop occurred as the groups revived old standards by adding doo wop overtones. Examples are Pennies From Heaven and I'll Be Seeing You by the Skyliners, Have You Heard by the Duprees and I'm in the Mood For Love by the Chimes. However not all remakes were done in the pop doo wop style Over the Rainbow by the Delchords, Them There Eyes by Lewis Lyman and the Teenchords and That's My Style by the Channels were done in the straight classical style. Music in this category share no particular theme, but on a percentage basis the groups were more white than average.What they shared was a more smooth and manufactured sound.

Prominent Examples

* Not the Motown group. These Temptations were a vocal group from New York that recorded for Goldisc Records.