The Five Satins (Formed in 1954)

This is a rarity. An entry in the R&B Primer Artists section that wasn’t on the original Shades of Blue site and so isn’t ported over from there. However, it has nonetheless been given a seemingly arbitrary date of production that sits alongside all the other artist entries. How can that be I hear you ask? Well, it’s simply that artists in the R&B Primer are listed alphabetically and the only way I could achieve that when porting over from Shades Of Blue was to structure the posts in date order (those pesky days of arranging orders manually are long gone) and I’m kind of a stickler for that kind of thing – a quality most often ascribed to the nerds in this tough old world, but I can take it!

As regards the late addition (fifteen years too late it appears) of the Five Satins in a Primer, well that can only be regarded as a serious omission and a significant aberration on my part – there can be no excuses! Although I do reference doo-wop in the Primer, to not include one example of the genre in the artist list is an oversight finally rectified here with what I believe is probably the best of all the doo-wop groups. The quality and variety of the artist roster is/was so appealingly wide however, that I accept that for many there will be others who could and should hold the mantle.

The Five Satins are now primarily held in such high regard for the recording of ‘(I’ll Remember) In The Still of the Nite”, which found itself as high as #24 on the US Pop Charts and was written by the group’s lead singer Fred Parris. Parris wrote the song while on guard duty in the Army, and the group recorded it in the basement of a church in Parris’ hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. The roughness shows: The drums and piano are muffled, the alto sax cracks during the solo, and the backing vocals wander off-key. But the primitive sound — and the fact that only four of the Five Satins were even present for the session — can’t keep “In the Still of the Night,” from being a sublime, definitive piece of doo-wop. But despite its importance in the relatively short history of doo-wop, that’s not the only reason to enjoy the group – there was more to them than one defining hit record.

The group, formed in New Haven, Connecticut in 1954, consisted of leader Fred Parris (March 26, 1936 – January 13, 2022), Lewis Peeples, Stanley Dortche, Ed Martin, Jim Freeman, Nat Mosley. With little success, the group reorganized, with Dortche and Peeples leaving, and new member Al Denby entering. The group then recorded the aforementioned ‘In the Still of the Night’, a big hit in the United States despite initially finding its way on to the B-side to the single “The Jones Girl”. The single was initially issued on the tiny local Standord but it was when it was released the following year on the New York label Ember that it ended up charting at number three on the R&B chart and number 25 on the pop chart. Subsequent releases included ‘Pretty Baby’ and the well regarded ‘To The Aisle’.

Other releases included ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’, ‘Your Memory’, ‘The Time’, ‘These Foolish Things/A Beggar With A Dream’ ‘Till The End’, ‘The Masquerade Is Over’, ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Ain’t Gonna Dance’ (also known as ‘Ain’t Gonna Cry’). Even in an era when it was far from uncommon to see artists record on different labels (and it really wasn’t), it is still noteworthy that all of the releases noted here appeared on six different labels.

As has been noted elsewhere on this Primer (most notably with The Drifters), other groups splintered off from the original group but continued to perform under the group name, but as late as the 1980s Fred Parris and the Five Satins were still performing and releasing material such as ‘Memories Of Days Gone By’, which was the group’s first new entry on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1960. I’m not sure which of the myriad of group compilations to recommend but I’ve plumped for the 56 track 2CD collection “The Complete Releases 1954-62“, which pretty much does what it says on the tin, catching the group at its peak and also featuring the earlier recordings of The Scarlets, their first incarnation! It’s also released by the Acrobat label, which is usually a good indicator of quality.