Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers
One day in 1955 Richard 'Ritchie' Barrett heard The Premiers, a
young vocal group from the Bronx, singing on the stairs of a
tenement on Manhattan's 165th Street near his New York home.
He liked what he heard, became their manager, re-named the
group Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers and took them to George
Goldner's Gee Records to record Why Do Fools Fall In
Love?
Detroit-born Frankie Lymon was just 13 when the group scored
a hit with the track in 1956, while the other four members
were either 15 or 16.
Finding themselves overnight sensations the group left school
and started performing full-time. Subsequent hits included I
Want You To Be My Girl, I Promise To Remember,
The ABC's Of Love and Teenage Love.
In 1957 the group toured Britain and appeared in the Alan
Freed movie Rock, Rock, Rock performing I'm
Not A Juvenile Delinquent. By the summer of that year,
Lymon had gone solo, recording his classic showbiz rocker Goody
Goody.
By the age of 18 though, Frankie Lymon had seen success go as
quickly as it came and - with his voice naturally altered by age
and hindered by a debilitating heroin addiction - he moved into
nightclub singing.
Lymon spent most of the 1960s making unsuccessful comeback
attempts, and eventually died of a drug overdose on 28
February 1968.
Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers were inducted into the Rock
& Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993.
Philadelphia-born Ritchie Barrett moved on to become one of
the most important figures in R&B history, helping shape The
Cleftones, discovering The Chantels and Little Anthony & The
Imperials, and producing the early output of The Isley Brothers
and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. He eventually managed
and produced The Three Degrees.
Barrett died on 3 August 2006, a victim of prostate cancer.
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