54 Years After Brit Invasion, Italian Doo-Wop Groups Seek Reparations

BOSTON.  Salvatore “Scuzzi” Saltimbocca is 70 years old, but the tears are rolling down his cheeks like a toddler seeing “Old Yeller” for the first time.  “Those s.o.b.’s,” he says as he watches grainy black-and-white footage from his youth on the television at the St. Anthony of Padua Home for Aging Doo-woppers on Hanover Street in Boston’s Italian North End.  “They caught us totally by surprise.”

The horror!

Saltimbocca is referring to the mid-60’s British Invasion of America, launched fifty-four years ago this month when The Beatles appeared for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show, and commemorated this week by retrospectives on the profound and lasting influence that groups such as The Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits and Gerry and the Pacemakers had on American culture.

Herman’s Hermits:  A form of torture now banned by Geneva Convention.

 

The crotchety septugenarian was a member of an Italian “greaser group” that sang in the doo-wop style perfected by black close harmony quartets that couldn’t break the race barrier to get airplay on higher-wattage AM radio stations.  Once the Brits landed, however, musical acts such as Saltimbocca’s–The Del-Vikings–were about as popular as day-old spaghetti.  “I was combing the chicks out of my hair until they came along,” he says.  “After ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’–nothing.”

So now Saltimbocca and other former self-proclaimed “guinea” teen crooners have banded together to file claims against the United Kingdom with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, seeking recompense and a little of their dignity back from the nation that caused them to be cast aside on the ash heap of former adolescent idols.  “It’s not about the money,” says Carmine “Flip” de Fillipo, former lead singer for The Cannolis as he signs an affidavit to be attached to a complaint that seeks $100 million in damages.  “Well, actually it is, but nobody ever says that.”

The Swingin’ Goombahs

 

Legal experts say veterans of the Italian musical genocide face an uphill battle to retake the pop high ground they lost back in the mid-1960’s.  “It will be difficult to prove that the British Invasion was the proximate cause of these groups’ lost income,” says Professor Thomas Avenici, an expert on international law at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.  “Especially with background vocals like ‘Bop-itta-bop-a-dang-a-dang-dinga-lang-a-ding dong.”