The Three D’s
“Gather ‘round, everybody, for you’re about to hear the show that’s gonna make you smile from ear to ear! It’s Arnie Ginsburg on the Night Train show! He plays the old, the new, the swinging and the blue, he plays all the records, especially for you! It’s Arnie Ginsburg on the Night Train show, so come on, Arnie, let’s go, go, go!” If you lived in the Boston area from 1958 through the mid-‘60s and listened to top-40 radio, then you heard that theme, which The Three D’s performed every night on WMEX for over 10 years.
FORMATION
The group’s roots go back to the early ‘50s, when Boston-area high school students Arty Doyle and Johnny Dalton, both of whom had sung in church choirs, decided to form a duo. While performing at a variety show, they met vocalist-guitarist Dean Paley and started harmonizing together. A friend who was listening said, “You should call yourselves ‘The Three D’s’ since you all have D’s in your name.” And that’s how the trio came to be.
At the time, the airwaves were dominated by male and female crooners such as Jerry Vale, Al Martino, Doris Day, Patti Page and similar acts. However, if you searched around the radio dial a bit, you could find stations with not much of a signal playing doo-wop, which was essentially the punk rock of the era. And it was the kind of music The Three D’s wanted to make.
“LITTLE BOY BLUE,” AMERICAN BANDSTAND, “GRAVEYARD CHA CHA”
Arnie Ginsburg introduced the boys to New York City-based Paris Records and, after one release on local label Pilgrim, they signed a long-term contract. Their first single, “Little Billy Boy,” met with both regional and national success. The Three D’s appeared on American Bandstand five times and toured extensively with just about every major star of the day except Elvis Presley, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Frankie Avalon, Fabian and Connie Francis.
They cut numerous records from 1956 through 1959 and even established a label of their own, Square Records. In 1959, they released the Halloween song “Graveyard Cha Cha,” written and recorded three years before Bobby “Boris” Pickett of “Monster Mash” fame. Amazingly, “Graveyard Cha Cha” was never played on the radio and no one even noticed the track until 2013, when it was posted on YouTube. In the seven years since, it’s garnered over one million views.
The trio stopped performing around 1962 as the pop-music landscape totally changed with the unparalleled success of The Beatles and the ensuing British Invasion. Arty Doyle once told me that he went to see a Rolling Stones show in the mid-‘60s and walked out realizing The Three D’s, though they had their day in the sun, were right to quit when they did.
(by Lennie Petze)
