The doo-wop song in the dark heart of "The Irishman" (2023)

Earlier this fall, an 83-year-old doo-wop legend named Fred Parris was watching television at home when he saw an interview with Robert De Niro. the announced actorthe Irish,his heartfelt reunion with Martin Scorsese: a moving gangster epic that will reach the pinnacle of his career and pay the pricecasinoThe $50 million budget looks spartan. Parris was intrigued. "It sounded interesting," he says. He hadn't heard much about the movie. He also had no idea that his most famous song, a hit when De Niro was still in high school, would be on his soundtrack.

In fact, "seems" is an understatement. Parris's mid-'50s hit "In the Still of the Night," which she wrote and sang along with him as the frontman for the doo-wop group The Five Satins, is used just as prominentlythe IrishIt could well be your theme song. It's the first thing you hear during the film's opening wide shot, as the camera pans to the retirement home and memories of an old mob hit man named Frank Sheeran (De Niro). He reappears two more times during the film's 209-minute runtime: during a 1975 wedding sequence and again at the end, when the narrative returns to an aging Frank contemplating the regrets of a life of brutal mob repression. It's more or less the main theme of the movie, even more so than Robbie Robertson's score.

The music infuses the film with a deep sense of melancholy, which may be unexpected for viewers expecting a seedy mob ride. During the opening scenes, he conveys more about memory and loss than any voice-over narration could convey. And it fits in with Scorsese's storied affinity for doo-wop classics and girl groups, as epitomized by his decision not to use original sheet music for pre-existing pop soundtracks.common streetsmiGood boys.

"Anything that can give the song a little bit of pop, that's great for me," Parris enthuses when I call him in early October. He tells me that the song's publisher only notified him a few days before she licensed the film. (MPL Communications owns the publishing rights to the song; the company confirmed this but declined to disclose details of the deal.) In the background, I hear Parris's wife, Emma Parris, nudge him: "Tell him we'll talk about Eager." for Opportunity Meet Robert De Niro”. Eventually, he just picks up the phone and says, "Unfortunately, someone messed up and didn't let us know in time to go to the premiere. It's a shame."

It's appropriately bizarre, this story of "In the Still of the Night" and how it put an end to Scorsese's protracted musings on the span of human life, the passage of time, and how pain, lies, and loss tend to accumulate. , for the soundtrack became as understated as the ticking of a clock. Once a song about new love half a century ago, today it's a death sentence, conveying memories both good and bad, and the confusion and ambiguity between them. So poignantly from another era, "In the Still of the Night" forces audiences to contemplate the place of music and its place in history - a magic trick Parris didn't even want to perform. When I ask him if he can get a check, he replies, "Iimprove!”

"I think it was a blessing," says Parris's former bandmate Jim Freeman. "I think the place where we recorded it was blessed, the church basement."

Sixty-three years ago, the Five Satins could not have imagined that their success would last well into the 21st century. Bernadette Catholic School in New Haven in early 1956, it was just the B-side to a faster track, "The Jones Girls." ." But the last night of the session they brought home an acetate CD of "In the Still of the Night." "That's what we played when we got back to the projects," says Parris. She had never heard of it.

The problem was that Parris was being drafted into the army and sent to Japan just as the song was becoming a hit. "He told me, 'If the record does anything, get some people together and save me a spot when I'm done working,'" Freeman, 82, recalls. "I had to find a new group to promote the record." When Parris returned in 1958, he reprized his role as leader of the Five Satins. Until then, "In the Still of the Night" had stuck, though a string of minor hits became the band's trademark. "It's what you had when there were little kids singing on street corners," Freeman says. "You didn't have these machines that could make a different sound. Music."

When the song was first released, during the numb heart of the Eisenhower era, it signified youth. Parris, who was only 18 when he wrote the song, wroteabout a teenage love interest🇧🇷 "[We were] five black kids who went to a Catholic church and recorded a rock 'n' roll song," he says. “What came out of that was wonderful!” In years to come, success would mark high school graduations and doe-eyed teen dating. (When I texted my dad asking if he remembered the song, he immediately replied, "Sure. We used to slow dance at school events.")

But the song was not an instant classic. Instead, it was a substantial hit in 1956, peaking at number 24, and again in 1960, when it peaked at number 81 after disc jockey Art Laboe recorded it on disc.old but goodCompilation. When the song was re-released the following year, it became the first and only recording to appear three times. Over time, "In the Still of the Night" crystallized the doo-wop phenomenon and established itself in the esteem of radio listeners and DJs as one of the genre's greatest banners.some sourcesthey even claim that the "doo wop, doo wah" chorus inspired the name "doo-wop," though Parris is skeptical: "'Shoo-be-doo' was more our word anyway," he muses.

The song's profile rose dramatically in 1987 when it was released ondirty dance🇧🇷 So far movies likeback to the futuremiPeggy Sue got marriedsparked an emerging nostalgia for the 1950s and early 1960s. For the five satins thatdirty danceThe boost was significant: the film's soundtrack sold an incredible number of copies, and "In the Still of the Night" was introduced to a whole new generation. Five years later, '90s R&B favorites Boyz II Men covered it and made it a hit again.

A bunch ofthe Irishconfronts the turbulent environment of this era - the '50s, '60s, early '70s - and shows the behind-the-scenes dealings of organized crime and the labor movement as they become dangerously intertwined. Like any Scorsese epic, it requires an eclectic mix of songs to set the mood: Fats Domino's early rock and roll, "The Fat Man," and Baião's classic, "El Negro Zumbón," to name just two. But "In the Still of the Night" gets the most screen time.

"I think it's a very powerful piece of music," says Randall Poster, the film's music supervisor. "In terms of vocal style, she has a great ethereal quality." The poster says Scorsese chose the song, perhaps because it speaks to his own past. “Marty is very intuitive about the music he chooses. He has an affinity for one song or another. I think he landed and became kind of a bookend for the movie. ... I think all directors, all of us, have songs from the past that were either meant to evoke a certain memory or seem to be the harbinger of adulthood," Scorsese continued.more than 10 years trying to makethe Irish🇧🇷 Maybe he spent too much time waiting for the right opportunity to use "In the Still of the Night".

Today music is anything but young. It's an antique, a message brought back from a bygone era, an "antique" in the jargon of radio programmers and jukebox makers. When used in a movie, it functions as a phonetic shorthand for "That happened a long time ago." In connection withthe Irish, it's practically a death rattle echoing through the nursing home. The film is by far the most elegiac and penitent of Scorsese's mob films, dwelling in its grim final act on the dark legacy of mob violence and the emptiness it instills in the survivors. And with that in mind, doo-wop probably never sounded sadder than inthe Irish🇧🇷 That it works is testament to Scorsese's ear for the iconic needle drops. "When Marty lands on something, he feels good," says Poster. "He's not bound by anyone's rules on how to use music."

Nocommon streets(which showcased his early love for doo-wop) Scorsese discovered the dark potential of The Ronettes' "Be My Baby."Good boyshe used the cocaine-fueled paranoid insanity of Harry Nilsson's Jump Into the Fire for his incredible helicopter sequence.casinothe surly violence that always lurked in the animals' "House of the Rising Sun" has been tracked down and detonated. For people who love these movies, each of these shots is inextricably linked to the corresponding movie. And in 10 years when people hear the titlethe Irish, "In the Still of the Night" will probably start playing in their heads.

Interestingly, the Five Satins have a moment. it's not alonethe Irish🇧🇷 On September 24, a musician named Patrick Geraghty, who records under the name Gal Gracen,tweeted a clipof a gritty, scratchy saxophone solo that sounds like it's been transplanted from a Captain Beefheart album and plunged into a sobering rock 'n' roll melody. “This is absolutely the worst solo I have ever heard from an instrument,” Geraghty wrote, and as a testament to the utter weirdness of it all, his tweet went viral, garnering more than 171,000 likes.

The solo is from a Five Satins recording: in thetake alternativesfrom The Jones Girl, single released with In the Still of the Night. Even stranger, Geraghty's tweet was not inspired by the Scorsese movie. he didn't even seethe Irish🇧🇷 "I love doo-wop and used to listen to a set of Five Satins at work," Geraghty explains via email. "I heard the solo in the background and it hit me towards the end and I put the needle back in and realized how horrible it was. I shared it because it was funny but now I kind of feel bad because I really love the solo. It's so singular".It is true– he just has a certain avant-noise charm, though one can imagine that “Avant-Noise” is not what a teenage doo-wop group wanted in 1956.

When I mention all this to Freeman, who wrote The Jones Girl, he cracks up. Her grandson showed him the tweet. "Whoever wrote that was telling the truth," he laughs. "It was horrible. I agreed when we finished recording [the song]: it was the worst." The saxophone solo, he explains, was played by his cousin,the late Vinny Mazzetta🇧🇷 When the song was cut, "I knew right away that I had written the worst record in the world."

"But I can't blame Vinny," he says sadly. "The attempt."

This unexpected viral moment along withthe Irish, marking the most surreal episode yet in Five Satins' long cultural endurance. Parris is unlikely to capitalize on the resurgence with a tour, though the group did well in its later years. “I quit about a year ago,” he says, “due to all kinds of problems, mainly health issues.” Despite this, the singer is often recognized and approached by fans. "When he does the shows, people come up and say, 'Oh, Fred, let me tell you how I met my husband or my wife,'" says Emma Parris. “One lady said that all four of her children were conceived in 'In the Still of the Night.' We hear that story quite often.”

Perhaps the Parrises will continue to hear this story as Scorsese introduces the song to a new generation. then again,the Irishnot a great aphrodisiac.

Zach Schonfeld is a New York-based freelance journalist and author. He previously was a senior writer atnews week.