Hall hails Little Anthony and the Imperials

Now that Little Anthony and the Imperials have a golden anniversary to go along with the gold records, the timing is right for an appearance in the South Shore Room and possible induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
For its first concert of 2009, Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the South Shore Room, is bringing a group that also got its start a half-century ago.

Little Anthony and the Imperials celebrated their anniversary last year, which might have led to their being one of the nine nominees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The hall will select five this month for induction into Cleveland on April 4.

“We know it’s kind of political, and it’s not just them,” Little Anthony Gourdine said in a recent interview with the Washington Observer Reporter. “The Baseball Hall of Fame is the same way. The Football Hall of Fame is the same way. We just happened to be people where they realized it had been 50 years, and they looked at our body of work and said, ‘My gosh, they should be in.’ ”

The other nominees are Metallica, Run-DMC, the Stooges, Chic, Jeff Beck, Bobby Womack, Wanda Jackson and War.

Along with and the Dells, Little Anthony and the Imperials are the only remaining group from the doo-wop era touring with their original members, although Gourdine gets annoyed when he hears his music labeled doo-wop.

Doo-wop is vocal-based rhythm-and-blues that gained popularity in black communities beginning in the late 1930s. It peaked in the late 1950s and early ’60s, when Italian-American groups emerged. Doo-wop faded in the mid-1960s after the arrival of the British Invasion and Motown.

“When I started, it was a lot of ice cream bands, a lot of doo-wop-type sound,” Gourdine told Action in 2007. “We were in the middle of that, and we graduated from that.”

“Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko Ko Bop” and “Just Two Types of People in the World” were the band’s only doo-wop hits, he said.

“I love my country, but we are very well known for labeling things,” Gourdine said before his last show at Tahoe. “Like Alan Freed started calling me Little Anthony, but he’d never met me. (It was) because of my voice. People come up to me and say ‘You don’t look little.’ That’s right. I’m not.”

Gourdine’s falsetto sound helped popularize the group that had the well-known, post-doo-wop standards “Tears on My Pillow,” “Hurts So Bad,” Goin’ Out of My Head” and “I’m On The Outside Looking In.”

“You don’t last that long singing the same doo-wop song,” Gourdine said. “We consider ourselves being one of the finest recording acts. We’re not recording artists. We became performing artists. Beyonce, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake are recording artists. That’s how we lasted so long.”

Clarence Collins and Ernest Wright are the other Imperials who remain from the group’s heyday. Also in the band is Harold Jenkins, the group’s choreographer, who came onstage in 1972 to replace Sammy Strain, who joined the O’Jays. (Strain later rejoined Little Anthony and the Imperials before retiring in 2004.)

In the early days, Little Anthony and the Imperials members honed their chops by playing the “chitlin’ circuit” in the segregated South and East.

“I had the great pleasure and the blessing to go out and perform on the old chitlin’ circuit, the old black circuit, where you played with people like Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, Flip Wilson, and famous groups like the Flamingos — that’s another great doo-wop group that wasn’t a doo-wop group. I took a little from here, I took a little from there. I took a little from Sammy Davis because we were friends.”

Gourdine, who grew up in the projects in Brooklyn, knew he had arrived after meeting jazz great Miles Davis, who said he loved “Goin’ Out of My Head.”
“What a dude,” Gourdine said. “I met him at Basin Street East. I thought he was going to be one of those cats who wasn’t too up on pop music and singing groups, but he knew all about it. He knew who I was right away.”

Little Anthony and the Imperials, became regulars in the South Shore Room, which used to feature artists for week-long engagements. Gourdine has fond Tahoe memories of eating soul food prepared by Davis, singing for Liza Minnelli and hanging out with Bill Cosby.

He now lives in the Las Vegas suburb of Summerland and tours with his group in style.

“Today we go out on tour and those buses are homes on wheels,” he said. “They have kitchens and DVDs and DirecTV satellite, queen-sized bed, showers. You name it. It’s wonderful.”

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