Don’t Call It Doo-Wop!
The legendary vinylrecord shop owner, a leading authority on a beloved music genre, sings to his own tune
Ifirst heard about Val Shively
—a legendary figure among serious record collectors—from a friend of mine in Philadelphia named Aaron Levinson. He’s a Grammy-winning music producer, composer, DJ and rare vinyl collector who has been buying records from Shively for 40 years.
“He has a store called R&B Records in this sketchy neighborhood out past West Philly,” Levinson told me. “The building is listing like the Tower of Pisa because he’s got five million records in there. It’s likely the biggest record store in the world and collectors fly in from the U.K., Germany, Japan and wherever else, in order to buy from Val. But if they say something wrong, or he doesn’t like their attitude, he explodes in an unbelievable rage and throws them out of the store.”
Levinson continued, “He’s a born-again Christian who curses like a mobster. He’s a white guy who went nuts for Black music when he was young and never recovered. He’s the authoritative collector of doo-wop records on the planet and one of the greatest record collectors of all time, even though his genre is narrow.”
I asked Levinson about the possibility of interviewing Shively and writing about him. “I’ll see what I can do,” Levinson said. “He’ll probably test you first, or make you run some kind of gauntlet, but at this stage of his life, he might appreciate the validation.”
Two days later, Levinson gave me Shively’s cellphone number and a word of advice.
Don’t use the term “doo-wop,” he said. “Val and his dwindling band of fanatics call them ‘group harmony records,’ or ‘group records,’ ” he explained.
I called the number. Shively made some small talk and then launched into a monologue, talking fast with an abrasive Philly accent (actually a Delaware County, Pennsylvania, accent, I found out later). He was describing a recent period of psychological malaise. “I’m a Christian, okay, and I was praying,
“Street corner opera. That’s what Val fell in love with and he never really moved on. He just tunneled deeper and deeper into it.”
“It blew my mind, hearing Etta James, Baby Washington. . . . And once I got into the Black harmony groups, that was it.”
but nothing was happening,” he said. “I couldn’t see the point of any of it—the music, my life, my record collection, the store—and I had no energy.” He’s 77 years old. “I thought maybe that’s the problem.”
But in the last few days, he said, the empty feeling had lifted, his energy had returned, and he was feeling like himself again. I asked him what he thought accounted for the change. “To be honest, I have no clue,” he said. Then he asked, “What do you know about my type of music, the group stuff?”
“Very little,” I said. “I know more about soul and funk.” I told him I was looking for a vinyl copy of “No Man is an Island” by the Van Dykes, a fairly obscure Texas soul group from the 1960s. “Oh, that’s good you know them!” he said. “They sound like four guys, but there’s only three of them. Normally three guys sound like whale s--- sinking to the bottom of the ocean.”
Then he summarized the Army career of the Van Dykes’ falsetto lead vocalist, Rondalis Tandy, and how the group was formed, who their influences were, the different record labels they were on, their best songs, and how and when they broke up. That segued into a series of stories about accidental improvisations in recording studios that led to big hits, the influence of mobsters in the music business, and singers who were in prison for murder while their hit songs climbed the charts. This amazingly well-informed soliloquy went on for 25 minutes. Then he said, “Okay, get over here and I’ll do whatever you want. What’s your address? I’m sending you a package.”
The package contained his religious testimony photocopied on a sheet of yellow paper, and five home-burned CDs featuring 149 rare African American doo-wop songs, mostly recorded between 1956 and 1959. A hand-scrawled letter stressed the importance of listening to the CDs in order. On the CD cases were blurry photocopied photographs of Shively at various stages in his career—teenage Val holding up a 45 single, mustachioed Val in the 1970s wearing a cowboy shirt, late-middle-aged Val in a turtleneck sweater. The wall of records behind him remained almost the same in each image.
I listened to the CDs on the plane to Philadelphia, cocooned in my headphones, transported back to an era when cars had tail fins and young men in African American neighborhoods sang harmonies on street corners and formed groups such as the Quails, the Larks, the Feathers, the Opals, the Paragons, the Spaniels. I was a newcomer to this music and at first it sounded too stylized, sentimental and formulaic for my taste. Then the form of the music started to fade away and my ears opened up to the amazing lead vocal performances, the precision of the accompanying ooh-wahs and wop-wops, and the yearning, aching emotions evoked by the songs.
“Street corner opera,” is how Levinson describes this music: “The cult is around lead singers with crazy upper registers, plus the lushness and intricacy of the harmony singers. That’s what Val fell in love with and he never really moved on. He just tunneled deeper and deeper into it.”
FROM THE CENTER CITY OF Philadelphia, Levinson and I took the subway out to 69th Street and emerged into the gritty, multiethnic streets of Upper
Darby. We ate lunch in a Latin diner while Shively finished up his church services and then we walked over to his store. Actually we walked right past his store, realized our mistake, and turned back again. R&B Records has no sign or display windows, just a metal-framed door in the blank wall of a three-story building with a noticeable lean.
On the door was a “Do Not Enter” sign, with “Unless You Know What You Want!” printed across it in tiny letters. Another sign said, “New Rules. 5 Minutes and You’re Gone.” I was puzzled, so Levinson explained: “Val doesn’t allow browsing. Most of his business is mail-order, and if you come here as a customer, you need to have a list of what you want. And if you haggle over prices, or complain that he doesn’t have something, or act just a little bit snotty, your ass is going out the door.”
Stepping inside, I was confronted by a scene of overwhelming chaos and claustrophobic madness. Vinyl records were stacked on shelves to the high ceiling, with insanely narrow aisles between the towering stacks, and debris and garbage everywhere. The store hadn’t been cleaned in decades. Cats prowled around. A plastic skeleton hung from the ceiling with a sign on its midriff: “The last guy we caught stealing!!!” Another sign read, “Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.”
And there in a small island of space, sitting at a scarred old desk heaped with Rolodexes, vinyl 45s, crumpled trash and random novelty items, was the white-haired emperor of this extraordinary domain. When he said, “Fat people can’t come in here,” he was not stating a policy. He was describing a physical reality. Levinson and I were of average girth, but the only way we could fit through the aisle to Shively’s desk was to turn sideways and shuffle.
He greeted us with an exuberant burst of profanity. He threw his arms out. “Look at this!” he said. “Complete insanity!” Of the five million vinyl records that he estimated were in the building—on two stories above us in equally overcrowded conditions and in the truly hellish chaos of the basement—more than four million were seven-inch 45 rpm singles. He bought them in bulk from bankrupt jukebox companies, radio stations, record companies, record stores, pressing plants, distributors and individual collectors. “Nothing in here is computerized,” he said. “I hate computers and we don’t need them. Chuck knows where everything is.”
He called out for his assistant, Chuck Dabagian. From a dimly lit slot canyon in the far stacks, shuffling smoothly sideways, there emerged a calm, introverted man who started working for Val as a teenager in 1972. Like his boss, Dabagian commands a mind-boggling knowledge of American music and African American music in particular. “Everything in the store is arranged by record label and then it’s alphabetized,” Dabagian said. “Val and I know all the labels—which label the original pressing was on, and which label the other pressings were on.”
“Labels are a sickness,” said Shively. “When I started collecting, I didn’t give a s--- about labels. Then I had to have everything on the original label, even if it took all the money I had. You start out lov