Brooklynites in the '50s loved the Moonglows

The day before Ringo Starr's 70th birthday, Harvey Fuqua died at 80. For anybody who danced, mmm, real close to dreamy ballads by the Moonglows during the Pleistocene Age now known as the '50s, Fuqua's departure for the great Alan Freed show in the sky was apt to be the more memorable of the two events.

Founded by Fuqua, the Moonglows had a big hit with "Sincerely," released in late 1954 -- the tune was quickly co-opted by the McGuire Sisters -- and then a string of recordings that meant as much to certain kids in the pre-Beatles generation as anything on "Magical Mystery Tour."

Songs like "Most of All" and "Ten Commandments of Love" spoke to me -- and my Brooklyn pals -- of an adulthood just beyond reach and a world more complex than promised in "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

The Moonglows had style and class -- soulful crooning by Fuqua and Bobby Lester, who alternated as lead singers; heavenly background harmonies, melancholy falsetto measures, whee-oo-whee-oo, floating past like plaintive calls from the next apartment.

Sure, sexiness was part of it -- some things never change -- but the Moonglows, like other accomplished R&B performers of that time, were about more than sweaty brows and stolen kisses.

To us, at least, the music was the wedge that cracked open the world. For one thing, the acts we most adored were black. Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954 affirming the obvious: There was no such thing as separate but equal.

But, ethnic kids in white neighborhoods, we needed a nudge toward that egalitarian imperative and rhythm 'n' blues -- part spiritual, part honky-tonk, exquisitely American -- did the trick. How could you love the music and not the music-makers?

Covering the walls of my tiny bedroom on 69th Street were photos of Fats Domino, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Bo Diddley, the Cleftones, Spaniels, Cadillacs, Five Keys, Flamingos, Valentines, Heartbeats, Shells, Dubs, Paragons, Jacks, Jesters, Channels, Orioles, Harptones - and the Moonglows.

Winnie and Fred, my parents, were decent working-class folks, but the gallery in the cramped lair of their only child surely must have seemed curated by an extraterrestrial. Nobody told me to redecorate with glossies of Pat Boone and Julius La Rosa, but in what I viewed as an act of nonviolent protest, my father referred to Little Richard strictly as Little Louie, and inquired daily, "You call that music?"

I did, still do.

Though I never heard Pastor Jentsch mention it from the pulpit of St. John's on Prospect Avenue, Martin Luther once said, "Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul."

Four centuries later, musical prophets were less interested in soothing the soul than embracing shake, rattle and roll. Our Reformation wasn't based on 95 Theses but the gospel of a zoot-suited fellow with hair to the ceiling who banged on the piano and rejoiced: "Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!"

It may be exaggerating to say that the music we loved -- soon run out of town by the British invasion -- was the most profound influence on our lives but, really, nothing else seems a serious contender. Sweet, earnest, unapologetically simple ("I love you so, won't let you go," sang the Inspirations on "Dry Your Eyes"), R&B snapped the trance of the snoozy postwar world we shared with our parents. Something was brewing, all right, though we had no idea what. Next up: the '60s!

Not that we engaged much in amateur sociology back in those days when the gang would gather at Rich Moller's house in Red Hook and dance to tunes that seemed written for us - for the kids of truck drivers and plumbers and short-order cooks and mechanics and roofers and doormen and janitors, and for $35-a-week typists in the secretarial pool.

Those nights would end most times with someone playing "Earth Angel" by the Penguins, a sentimental signoff that meant it was time to head home. But earlier in the evening, when all things seemed possible, there would have been the Moonglows - Fuqua, Lester, whee-oo-whee-oo. There would have been a bunch of Brooklyn kids holding each other tight and breathing the aphrodisiac scent of Prell shampoo and Arpège perfume and contemplating the depth of our Brooklyn universe and all that surely was beyond.

Thanks to Harvey for those special songs, long remembered. And happy birthday to Ringo, too.

E-mail Fred Bruning at bruning@optonline.net.