Lenny Cocco (lead singer of The Chimes - "Once in Awhile", #11, 1960)

[News]

http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2015/05/passings-lenny-cocco-of-chimes.html

"Passings: Lenny Cocco of The Chimes"

Lenny Cocco, lead singer for the group The Chimes, died on Thursday [May 7].
Although no details have been released, there was a tribute written on the
Facebook page of John Martelli:

So Sad my friend Lenny Cocco has passed. Lenny is a great talent, and a
great man. His musical contribution to this world will endure therefore he
lives for ever.


Cocco started the doo wop group the Capris in 1957 Brooklyn but renamed them
The Chimes after realizing there was already a Capris from nearby Rockaway
Beach.

Influenced by his father's advice, the group decided to concentrate on
standards including the old Tommy Dorsey hit Once in Awhile. After a few
years of performing locally, the group finally entered the studio in 1960
and soon found themselves signed to TAG Records. Their first single, the
Dorsey song, went to number 11 nationally and the follow up, I'm In the Mood
For Love, went to number 38.

They continued recording standards including Let's Fall in Love, with the
occasional original such as Paradise, which Cocco wrote, but they never hit
the charts again. They were popular enough regionally, though, to be signed
to Metro Records where they released Who's Heart Are You Breaking Now.

In 1963, tragedy struck the group when bass singer Pat McGuire was killed by
a drunk driver. Cocco made the decision that, from that point on, the group
would perform only as a quartet without a bass singer in honor of McGuire.

They once again changed labels in late 1963 to Laurie and, the next year, to
Vee-Jay but their loss and the changing music industry was too much and the
group broke up.

Cocco has resurrected the Chimes a number of times over the years and was
still performing with them up through this past February.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqmxbYtbbvw

"Once in Awhile" by The Chimes (#11, Sept. 1960)

--

"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. ...Confident
and unafraid, we must labor on--not towards a strategy of annihilation but
towards a strategy of peace."
--Pres. John F. Kennedy (American Univ.; June 10, 1963)

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fkKnfk4k40

"War is the health of the State."
--Randolph Bourne (1886-1918)

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and
hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
--H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
--George Satanyana (1863-1952)