Pittsburgh Oldies All Stars isn't a tribute show, it's a DeLorean ride

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of time traveling, looking back at different Pittsburgh eras that I didn’t get to experience. Nostalgia is popular (the implications of which I’ll leave aside), and as a millennial, I’m on trend, curious about various “golden ages” and days gone by. Yet I was still ill-prepared for the portal back to the 1960s that opened at the Pittsburgh Oldies All Stars concert at The Palace Theater — a direct line to dance halls and American Bandstand.

The Oldies All Stars concert is advertised as “one big trip down memory lane.” It promised to bring together “five legendary groups,” all originally hailing from Pittsburgh, to pay tribute to the music of the ‘60s, including doo-wop, “oldies,” and rock. From the advertising, I assumed these would be tribute bands, with singers in golden costume jackets and shimmering ankle-length gowns belting out hits from my grandparents’ youth — and I wasn’t entirely wrong. The Palace Theater in Greensburg, it seems, has become a hotspot for tribute bands, with upcoming acts including “Fleetwood Macked,” Cash Unchained, a Johnny Cash tribute, and Hotel California, celebrating, as you might guess, The Eagles.

Arriving to the sold-out show, which bussed in seniors from all over the region, it quickly becomes evident that I am about 25 years younger than the majority of the audience. Even more egregious, I am underdressed. As the crowd pushed in, fully coiffed in their Sunday best, I spot pearls, gold earrings that might’ve also seen the ‘60s, leopard print heels, men’s tuxedo suspenders, and at least one fur stole. For some reason, I didn’t anticipate the grandeur of the nearly century-old Palace Theater — comparable to Heinz Hall — with its marble staircases, chandeliers, painted murals of French fairytales, and classic stage with full proscenium arch. But the audience’s formal attire, I suspect, has as much to do with dressing up for the theater as it does with paying proper deference to the upcoming acts.

The first group, Pure Gold, is indeed a tribute band — a “revitalized rendition” of Pittsburgh’s 1978 Acapella Gold that, according to their website, performed for 43 years with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Frankie Valli, and Smokey Robinson. This younger group, with a seven-piece band, took the stage in old-school white dinner jackets, saddle shoes, and glittery gowns, opening with “More Today Than Yesterday,” first released April 1969.

“Do any of you remember Little Anthony and the Imperials?” they ask the theater before launching into the second number.

“Yeah!” the audience shouts back, cheering wildly — the first of several times a group or song that I couldn’t identify to save my life is met with blanket applause. (By my count, the most recent song played during the two-and-a-half-hour show was from 1984.)

Pure Gold wind up for a rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” (more recognizable by its chorus, “Go, Johnny, go!”) by citing it as “the beginning of rock and roll” in 1958.

When the second group, Chuck Blasko’s The Vogues, stride out dressed like the Rat Pack, the energy picks up further. The group is introduced as among the top 10 record sellers of the late ‘60s, and “You’re the One” — which I’d never heard, but the Vogues performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965 — pulls the entire audience into a sing-along.
Blasko pauses to regale us with a story of making his first record deal, the thrill of being flown from his hometown of Turtle Creek to the Warner Brothers Studio in Los Angeles. At this point it dawns on me: this isn’t just stage banter. This is actually Chuck Blasko, the last original member of The Vogues, age 80, in his 59th year of show business.

Suddenly, I understand the show better — we’re not just appreciating, we are going back — and I crane in my seat to watch Blasko, who still gets fan mail, step-tap and perform “5 O’Clock World.” (Younger generations might recognize it as an opening theme from The Drew Carey Show.) The Vogues get a standing ovation.
Jimmy Ross from The Jaggerz, described as “a blue-eye soul band known for their rich vocals and soulful grooves,” sings a cover of “God Bless the USA” that has the crowd standing and pumping its fists. And he, too, is here to transport us.

“Let’s go back to 1970!” he shouts, hyping up the audience for the Jaggerz’ biggest hit, apparently beloved by Pittsburghers, ”The Rapper.”

“You wanna go back?” he asks.

“Yeah!!”

“Gasoline was 36 cents a gallon!”
Not to undersell the the fourth group, The Skyliners — who also earned a standing ovation — but nothing compared to the liveliness of the closing act, The Marcels.

The quartet, wearing peach-colored satin three-piece suits, enters to the opening theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  “Feels like a party in here!” they declare before launching directly into Sam Cooke’s "Having A Party” (1962). Their synchronized dance moves, including spins, get the audience clapping and on its feet.

The term “doo-wop” was coined for The Marcels, originally formed in Pittsburgh in 1959. It appeared in news coverage describing the group’s 1961 version of “Blue Moon,” with its signature “bomp-a-bomp" harmony (Oldies All Stars bills The Marcels as “the guys who put the ‘Bomp’ in the ‘Bomp-A-Bomp’”). Though no original members are still in the group, two of the current Marcels have been touring since the ‘90s, with lead singer Richard Harris, who's also responsible for the crowd-pleasing choreography, performing since 1965. After the show in the lobby, members of the audience run up to shake his hand.
Perhaps as the closing act, The Marcels give us the greatest push backward in time.

“Remember school dances in the gymnasium with girls on one side and boys on the other?” they ask. The audience murmurs in agreement, transported to high school, before the group barrels into a medley including “Earth Angel," "I Only Have Eyes for You," and “Sea of Love.” The finale, Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” draws a gaggle of screaming fans who might as well be teenage girls. They jump and down against the stage amid spotlights that sweep the theater like a gimmick from an old game show.

What strikes me listening to doo-wop and similar music from the ’50s and ‘60s is how few direct descendants I could point to today, the sound instead largely absorbed by other genres. Unlike the music of the ‘70s and ‘80s, which persists and even recycles, only select revival groups and those carrying the torch like those at Oldies All Stars regularly perform these past hits live, adding to the feeling of having DeLorean-ed my way into the show. And of course, as time passes, though the songs stay classics, we lose their original performers and fans, and living memory of them shrinks.

The supposed advantage of the streaming era is having all genres of recorded music, from every decade, at our fingertips, a time machine in its own right. But it was refreshing to be taken back to an era when songs were released and obsessed over at a slower pace, and reverberate in their fans’ lives even as they pass retirement age.