Singing Smoothly

The early R&B vocal group the Orioles are often credited with launching the musical style later known as doo-wop, especially with their 1949 hit “It’s Too Soon to Know” and their last charting number, “Crying in the Chapel” (1953). Their smooth romantic ballads became some of the first crossover hits of the postwar era, and were an alternative to more aggressive masculinities emerging out of the jump blues. This chapter illustrates this choreography of gender through live stage shows, recordings, interviews, and period reviews in the African American press. The short-lived periodical Tan Confessions adds particular nuance, featuring interviews with stars like Sonny Til alongside housewares advertisements targeted at African American women. This masculinity should be understood as a strategy linked with Cold War discourses of consensus and consumption, and the anxieties over masculinity expressed in Franklin Frasier’s Black Bourgeoisie in the historical moment of postwar desegregation.