From: Gino A. Date: Sun Jan 9, 2005 0:34am Subject: Scan Do - The Bay Bops Posted to the Doo Wop Café Yahoo Site by Gary Calkins (#8686) - 2 April 2003 Rarely had a group formed as spontaneously and in such a moment of tension as the Bay Bops of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Anticipating a group called the Starlighters, the dance crowd at St. Mark's church got a surprise when Danny Zipfel and Barney Zarzana came on stage to announce their group's demise only days earlier. As is typical of teen crowds, this one wouldn't take no for an answer. When Zipfel and Zarzana declined to become an on-the-spot singing duo, two members of the audience, George Taylor, Jr. and Bobby Serrao, asked if they could sing with the remaining Starlighters. A short rehearsal in the men's room and the four were on stage harmonizing to a wildly enthusiastic reception. Even the quartet was surprised at the hard-edged doo wop, sound they had so quickly created. So it was that on a night in September 1957 one more vocal group was born. It took them longer to find a name than a vocal blend; they tossed around countless ideas before Barney hit upon the Bay Bops. All the hip guys of the '50s would bop down the street (a term that meant strut), and the members were all from Sheepshead Bay. One of Bobby's hops down Emmons Avenue in the Bay was no doubt the inspiration for the new name. They practiced numerous rock and roll group songs like My Hearts Desire (the Wheels) and Smoke from Your Cigarette (the Mellows), but unlike most white groups of the time that were trying to sound black, their sound emerged as unadorned white rock and roll doo wop. Whether by chance or design, that quality proved to be the group's legacy. In 1957, Danny Zipfel talked the Bay Bops into doing an a cappella demo session in New York City. One subway ride and $60 later ($15 apiece), the Bay Bops emerged with three recorded songs from Bell Sound Studios and not a clue about what to do with them. They didn't have to go far to get a professional opinion, however. While they walked out of the studio with demos in hand, a man asked to hear them. Ushered into a nearby office, the boys waited with sweating palms and surging adrenaline as the first strains of "Joanie" came bursting from the record player. The listener turned out to be veteran manager (and later vice president of Warner Brothers Records) Frank Military. He liked Joanie enough to sign the group and promptly lined up a recording contract for them with Coral Records. In March of 1958 the group recorded Joannie and Follow The Rock with help from Sam "The Man" Taylor on sax and the Dick Hyman trio. An aspiring recording artist named Neil Sedaka did the vocal arrangements (Sedaka was still nine months away from his own first chart hit The Diary). Upon the single's release, airplay was split: Joanie emerged as the A side even though New York powerhouse disc jockey Alan Freed was pushing Follow the Rock. By May it was peaking at 58 on the Cashbox top 60 (it never charted on Billboard's top 100) selling about a quarter of a million singles. The group's sound on these first recordings, though not exactly sparkling or full, was still innovative for a white group in early 1958, placing them on the line between pop and rock/doo wop. The group's strong suit was Danny Zipfel's semipolished lead vocal. Danny (who preferred to be called Dino) had a sound reminiscent of Jimmy Gallagher, lead of THE PASSIONS, and Vito Picone, lead of THE ELEGANTS. Although Gallagher and Picone earned greater success, Dino's recordings predated theirs. In fact, the group managed to predate almost all the white rock/doo wop vocal groups. They were among the first to have a chart record and appear on national TV (Steve Allen, Dick Clark, and a Dean Martin Telethon). And only DANNY AND THE JUNIORS' At the Hop and THE MELLO-KINGS' Tonite Tonite were earlier recording successes, and the Mello-Kings sound was presumed to be black. Given the group's exposure on TV and live with the likes of THE DRIFTERS, THE DEL-VIKINGS, and THE FLAMINGOS, there can be little doubt about their influence on other white vocal groups in general and Brooklyn groups in particular. Many of these aggregations knew each other and often sang with members of the Bay Bops. Had they not succumbed to internal strife, they might have honed their skills into a sound as polished as other Brooklyn groups like the Passions, THE MYSTICS, or THE EARLS. Coral Records, knowing nothing of the group's problems, released the second single, My Darling, My Sweet (originally called Refreshing and later cut by the Holidays on Pam) b/w To The Party. Both sides were from the group's original master sessions in March. By June 1958, Coral had sent the boys back to Bell Sound to record eight more sides. When the group emerged from the session fighting over who wrote the songs, the end was in sight. The group split into two factions, and when word got back to the label, all efforts to support the record ceased. The first faction, Zarzana, Serrao, and Taylor, searched in vain for a new lead. The closest they came was when they found former Raven Lou Frazier working at Lundy's seafood restaurant in Brooklyn, but the group lasted only a month since Frazier's preference was for singing standards while the others wanted to do original songs. Zipfel, meanwhile, formed a group that included Bobby Feldman, who later went on to become a member of the Strangeloves ( I Want Candy, # 11, 1965) and a cowriter of the ANGELS hit My Boyfriend's Back as part of the successful writing / producing team of Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer. Zipfel's group was also short-lived and never recorded. Danny did, however, get a record deal with MGM as a solo artist in 1964. His longstanding rift with Barney Zarzana must have healed by this time as Barney sang backup on Danny's Hey, Hey Girl release. A Bay Bops group ultimately got another recording deal with Coral affiliate Decca Records. This time Barney Zarzana and his three brothers, Sal, Vinnie, and Michael, formed a new Bay Bops in late 1958, but uncertainty about the assignment of parts ruined the group's chance to record. 21 years later, the second Bay Bops, calling themselves the Zarzana Brothers, recorded a side for an a cappella compilation LP entitled They All Sang in Brooklyn on the Crystal Ball label. Also included on the LP were two unreleased demos by the original Bay Bops. George Taylor, Jr. went on to become a New York City detective while Bobby Serrao became a mechanic for the Sanitation Department. Barney still sings with vocal groups on occasion, while Danny's whereabouts are unknown.