In the grand scheme of American pop music, doo-wop may seem like just a quaint piece of the past, but Kenny Vance is doing his best to keep the vocal-group sound alive.
The 65-year-old singer, dubbed "the Dylan of doo-wop" by Paul Shaffer, has had quite an eventful 50-year career that shows no signs of slowing down. A founding member of Jay and the Americans, he performed with that group when it opened for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He was the music director of the 1978 movie
American Hot Wax
and later of TV's
Saturday Night Live,
and he helped launch the career of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.
These days, with his group the Planotones, the Brooklyn native focuses on vintage songs from the pre-Beatles era, and shows just how vital the music can still be in an era when it gets virtually no airplay, and in a culture that worships Beyoncé more than Dion. He puts out albums that are terrifically moving blends of passion and craft, and he performs all over the country.
"As the years go by and people look at the whole history of music that was created in America . . . they'll look back and they'll discover that the compositions of those days were very special," Vance says over the phone from his home in Rockaway Beach, N.Y. "Things that touch you when you're a kid stay with you forever. These songs are not only ingrained in me, they're certainly ingrained in the audience. So when we sing these songs, not only does it resonate with
them
, that vibe comes back to us, and we're all transported to a different time. . . . That's a very special feeling not only for the performers but for the audience."
"Looking for an Echo," a Planotones staple, probably sums up Vance best, as it celebrates harmonizing and dreams.
"It's the story of the whole generation of guys who didn't go into sports, didn't go into a gang, or academics," he says. "It was just a bunch of guys who were captured by the music and wanted to be singers. . . . Then you would try to parlay that by taking the subway to the Brill Building and maybe for a hundred bucks, for three hundred bucks in those days, make a record that could conceivably sell a million copies. . . .
"As long as you still have a dream it propels you in a different way than if you didn't have a dream. And I still have it."