Good morning, readers looking to know it all! In today’s installment of the Friday Know-It-All, Chuck hops into his musical DeLorean and takes a trip through time to examine one of America’s most chronically over-revived — yet criminally underappreciated — musical genres: doo-wop. Why was it everywhere when he was a kid? Shoop shoop ba-doop…

So I was listening to the radio the other day when I came across an interview about a new book whose title caught my ear — which makes sense, since the title of this is also the chorus of one of the catchier songs I’ve ever heard. The book is called “But Will You Love Me Tomorrow”; its noble and overdue aim: to celebrate an entire generation of singers from the late ’50s and early ’60s, most of them Black and female, who have mostly faded from our collective recollection (or, more often, never received proper credit in the first place) despite recording many of those decades' most popular songs. Sounds like a great book. Its premise — that everyone knows these songs, but no one remembers who recorded them — was demonstrated by the host of the radio program I was listening to in the following way: “You’ve heard the song that gives this book its title, right?” she asked, setting up the listener like a trial lawyer zeroing in on a vulnerable defendant. “Of course you have. But do you know who sang it?”

At which point I practically screamed into my radio: “THE SHIRELLES!”

Now, there are a couple reasons why I know that the Shirelles sang “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (and also that it was the first No. 1 song by an all-female Black act, and possibly the first “girl group” hit song, and that it was written by Carole King.) One is that I own a trivia company and it’s my job to know these things. (This is also how I know that the radio host was right — the vast majority of people don’t know who sang “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” I know this because Trivia Mafia included this song in a sound round in April 2022, and out of 115 teams who played that night, just 16 correctly identified the group).

But the real reason I know The Shirelles did “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” is because I really, really love doo-wop music. (My bona fides here include the fact that I briefly performed with an all-bearded-male singing group called Dude Wop.) And the reason I love doo-wop is that I was 7 years old in 1986.

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The ’50s and ’60s were all the rage in the ’70s and ’80s, and it’s no secret why. Pop culture recycles itself, reemerging like cicada broods every 20 years or so. Thank capitalism: Every generation is nostalgic for its own childhood, and once that generation enters its 30s and accumulates enough wealth and social capital, every major movie studio, TV network, and record label in the country mobilizes to commodify those fuzzy memories. (Trivia companies are guilty of this as well. Look for “Shrek” trivia next month!) This is why Boomers couldn’t get enough of “Happy Days” and “Grease” in the ’70s, why “The Big Chill” was so big in 1983, and why the most popular movie of 1985 was about transporting yourself back to 1955. And the children of those Boomers were brought along for the ride.

As a child of the ’80s, I wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand any of this at the time. I just thought all the best movies and TV shows had music from the ’50s and ’60s, and therefore that was the best music. And I wasn’t wrong: It really was the best. I learned about Chuck Berry from “Back to the Future.” I learned about the Rolling Stones because “Paint It Black” was the theme song to a short-lived ’80s show about Vietnam called “Tour of Duty.” And I learned about the Beatles (by way of Joe Cocker) thanks to my favorite TV show, “The Wonder Years.”

But my favorite music by far was doo-wop, thanks entirely to two movies, both released in 1986: “Stand By Me” and “Little Shop of Horrors.”

It’s hard to overstate the impression that “Stand By Me” left on me as a 7-year-old growing up in Fargo, North Dakota. The train bridge scene, the leech scene, the puking scene, the dead body scene — all are sacred foundational texts of my boyhood. But what really shook me was watching these kids, not much older than myself, having real, adult-sounding conversations about their dreams and their fears, about growing up. Everyone should get to have a movie like that come out when they’re 7. And under it all, punctuating every emotional turn in the story, was a steady stream of doo-wop bangers: “Mr. Lee” by the Bobbettes. “Lollipop” by the Chordettes. “Whispering Bells” by the Del-Vikings. That fall, I asked for a cassette player and the soundtrack for my birthday. I learned every song by heart, and to this day I can whistle the sax solo from “Yakkety Yak” note-for-note.

That winter, I saw “Little Shop of Horrors,” and learned that the music I loved didn’t have to be old. People could write new doo-wop too! (I suppose I might have learned that from Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time,” released in 1984, but even then I think I hated that song.) Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, years before they became Disney royalty, created a weird off-Broadway B-movie send-up with a doo-wop group (names: Crystal, Chiffon, and Ronette) acting as the show’s Greek chorus, and I couldn’t get enough of it. And I still can’t: Just last month, Trivia Mafia arranged a late-night screening of this movie for our hosts (did I mention this job is awesome? Apply to be a host here). And guess what: Still great! (I’m obliged to mention at this point that I played the Dentist in a high school production of “Little Shop.” It’s a rule that all former Dentists must abide by. We’re insufferable.)

Pretty soon I started noticing doo-wop everywhere. It was in the “Muppet Babies” theme song. It was in these Nickelodeon bumpers. It was in these other Nickelodeon bumpers. It was in multiple Huey Lewis songs. And it was in “Hairspray,” which, being a sendup of “Grease” and a parody retro-fetishization generally, probably gave me my first inkling that it was time to move on and start listening to my own generation’s music. (Huey Lewis really should have been my first clue.) Soon after that, a friend’s older brother introduced me to “License to Ill” and “Paul’s Boutique,” and my doo-wop days were dooby-dooby-done.

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Doo-wop itself carries on, of course. Culture doesn’t just come around after 20 years and disappear–those cycles have echoes all their own. Cher opened the ’90s with a song called “The Shoop Shoop Song,” and Lauryn Hill finished it with “Doo Wop (That Thing).” The 2000s gave us Amy Winehouse and another burst of “Hairspray.” (Here in the Twin Cities, there was a short-lived but excellent local group around this time called The God Damn Doo Wop Band.) And the 2010s gave us “Tattooed Heart,” “All About That Bass,” and “Doo-Wops and Hooligans,” the latter of which didn’t really contain any doo-wop, but Bruno Mars obviously does, in, or perhaps tattooed on, his heart. There’s even an argument to be made that all of punk rock owes a debt to doo-wop, built as they both are out of simple chord structures, nonsense words, and hormonal teenagers. Listen to the Ramones and tell me they’re not just a doo-wop band with distortion pedals.

Put another way: Doo-wop is more than a moment’s pleasure. It’s a lasting treasure. Yes, The Shirelles. We will still love you tomorrow.