The Penguins

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The Penguins were an American doo-wop group of the 1950s and early '60s, best remembered for their only Top 40 hit, "Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)", which was one of the first rhythm and blues hits to cross over to the pop charts. The song peaked at #8 on the national charts, but had a three-week run at #1 on the R&B "race" chart.

The Penguins were one of a number of doo-wop groups of the period named after birds (such as The Orioles, The Flamingos, and The Crows), although they also took inspiration from the penguin trademark on Kool cigarettes.

Singers Cleveland Duncan, Curtis Williams, Dexter Tisby, and Bruce Tate, all students at Fremont High in Los Angeles, CA, formed the quartet in 1954. They broke up in 1959.

The Penguins' single "Hey Senorita" was released on Doo-Tone Records in 1955 as the intended A-side, but a radio DJ flipped the record over to the B-side, "Earth Angel", which became far more popular. Their midtempo performance was a cross between rhythm and blues and the new rock and roll played by white performers and enjoyed by teenagers.

Cleve Duncan sang lead on "Earth Angel." He reprised his performance a decade later on Frank Zappa's "Memories of El Monte," an elegiac 1964 song in which he suddenly breaks into "Earth Angel" as one of the various songs remembered. El Monte, in the city near Los Angeles, had also featured performers like The 5 Satins, Tony Allan, Marvin & Johnny, The Shields as well as the Penguins. Those groups were also emulated as part of the tribute to early days of rock and roll.

In a common practice of the time, radio stations frequently featured segregated playlists. Thus "Earth Angel" was simultaneously recorded by the white group The Crew-Cuts in 1955. The Crew-Cuts cover peaked at #3 on the national charts, five spots higher than the Penguins version. The single's success launched the Crew-Cuts' own successful career of recording "crossover"-friendly covers of R&B hits.

The songwriting genesis for "Earth Angel" was a matter of some dispute, eventually ending up in a split credit between Penguins baritone Curtis Williams, Jesse Belvin, and Gaynel Hodge, who was with Williams a member of the Hollywood Flames. The song had evolved through several Los Angeles area groups, and was based on the "Blue Moon" chord changes that were so popular with many doo-wop groups. The song was influenced by Jesse and Marvin's #2 R&B hit Dream Girl, which contained many of the same vocal inflections used to great effect in Earth Angel. The "Will you be mine?" hook, which was also the song's subtitle, was borrowed from the #9 R&B hit of the same name by the Swallows. The Hollywood Flames had also recorded I Know in 1953, a song which has been called "a chord-for-chord blueprint for Earth Angel," and which featured the same Curtis Williams piano intro that Williams himself reused on the Penguins hit. The coda of Earth Angel, with the repeatedly harmonized word "You-oo... you-oo... you-oo... you-oo," had previously been heard in the Dominoes' #5 R&B cover of These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You.

However, all these cannibalized pieces and influences cohered into a single recording that smoothly crystallized a singing style, and is arguably the genre's iconic song.

Coming off the success of "Earth Angel," the Penguins approached Buck Ram to manage them. Ram's primary interest was managing the Platters, who at that point had no hit singles but were a profitable touring group. With the Penguins in hand, Ram was able to swing a 2-for-1 deal with Mercury Records in which the company agreed to take on the Platters as a precondition for getting the Penguins (the group that Mercury really wanted). Ironically, the Penguins would never have a second hit single under the Mercury deal, while the Platters would be the label's most successful act.

The Penguins never had another national hit, but their 1957 cover of Pledge of Love reached #15 on the R&B chart.

For three decades, "Earth Angel" was almost always the #2 song on oldies station WCBS-FM's annual Top 500 countdown. (Another doo-wop favorite, the Five Satins' In the Still of the Nite was the perennial #1 pick.)