{"id":6210,"date":"2026-08-08T10:48:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=6210"},"modified":"2026-08-08T10:50:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:50:31","slug":"little-darlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/little-darlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Darlin&#8217; (Latin rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Little Darlin&amp;apos;\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HOeS8_KT_aU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of the less-explored byways of rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll history is the influence of &#8220;Latin&#8221; or Caribbean rhythms, styles, and instrumentation. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-6198 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/RockVSIcover-e1784990381494.jpg?resize=152%2C239&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"152\" height=\"239\" \/>I have a section on this in my new book, <a href=\"https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/rocknrollvsi.html\"><em>Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll: A Very Short Introduction<\/em><\/a>, including such relatively familiar touchstones as &#8220;La Bamba&#8221; (which I will post about at more length one of these days); &#8220;Louie Louie,&#8221; which took its trademark riff from &#8220;El Loco Cha Cha,&#8221; by the Cuban bandleader Ren\u00e9 Touzet; and the use of the Brazilian bai\u00e3o beat on &#8220;Stand By Me,&#8221; &#8220;Spanish Harlem,&#8221; and a bunch of hits by the Drifters.<\/p>\n<p>There are plenty of other examples, like the mambo-inflected bassline of Big Mama Thornton&#8217;s &#8220;Hound Dog,&#8221; played on the original by the Puerto Rican bass player Mario Delagarde and mimicked on the Elvis version. But the most explicitly Latin percussion on a rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll hit is rarely mentioned: the Gladiolas&#8217; &#8220;Little Darlin&#8217;,&#8221; composed by the group&#8217;s lead singer, <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-6213 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Maurice-Williams-e1785267690557.jpg?resize=182%2C249&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"182\" height=\"249\" \/>Maurice Williams (who went on to have a huge hit with &#8220;Stay&#8221; a few years later, with another group, the Zodiacs) and recorded in Nashville in 1956. It&#8217;s a classic doo-wop record, and opens with some kind of shaker, then claves, then some kind of conga drum &#8212; all kind of makeshift. (I asked my friend <a href=\"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/\">Wayne Marshall<\/a>, who has better ears for this stuff than I have, to identify the shaker, he couldn&#8217;t, and then pointed out that the conga wasn&#8217;t really a conga, and the claves probably aren&#8217;t really claves.) Who knows what instruments were handy in a Nashville studio in 1956? Whatever they were using, they provide creditable Latin percussion and a straight-ahead mambo beat.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t know any of that when I first heard the song, which is another I&#8217;ve known forever. Typically for my age, race, and place, I first heard it done by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/book-of-love\/\">Sha Na Na<\/a>, who were my entry to the world of doo-wop, then picked up an oldies set that had what I thought of as the original version, by the Diamonds, and only years later heard the real original.\u00a0Sha Na Na were also imitating the Diamonds, a white Canadian doo-wop group, and, listening back, I realize my version of the spoken monologue in the middle of the song is still theirs, rather than the Gladiolas&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, the Diamond&#8217;s treatment of the monologue is sillier, which in this case may be a plus &#8212; but I see from Wikipedia that some modern critics think the Diamonds&#8217; version is better overall, and no. Just no. I&#8217;ll grant that their pitch may be a bit more solid, but the <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-6214 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Little-Darlin-45-e1785267775860.jpg?resize=226%2C225&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"226\" height=\"225\" \/>Gladiolas&#8217; record is clearly superior. To my eternal shame, as a 13-year-old I similarly preferred the Crew-Cuts&#8217; version of &#8220;Sh-Boom&#8221; to the Chords&#8217; original. (That&#8217;s another case of clean-cut white Canadians covering a hit composed and performed by Black teenagers and outselling the original in a racist pop market. I write about all of this in my book.) But I grew up. Maurice Williams and his crew, all the way.<\/p>\n<p>I sang this occasionally for fun when I got together with other folks who knew doo-wop &#8212; that used to happen fairly often. I particularly remember a very early morning in Vancouver, BC, when a bunch of us who had drunk our way through the night on Jameson&#8217;s Irish Whiskey wandered to the back porch of someone&#8217;s third-floor apartment and sang a bunch of this stuff, and at dawn a neighboring couple came out on their porch to sit and listen to us.<\/p>\n<p>Since I don&#8217;t have a doo-wop group at the moment, I had to come up with an alternative and did what I always do for this kind of rhythm, which is fall back on what I learned from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\">Jean-Bosco Mwenda<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/\">Edouard Masengo<\/a> in the\u00a0 Congo and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wazee-wa-kisa\/\">Herbert Misango<\/a> in Nairobi, reworked in various ways. It&#8217;s all pretty absurd, but fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the less-explored byways of rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll history is the influence of &#8220;Latin&#8221; or Caribbean rhythms, styles, and instrumentation. I have a section on this in my new book, Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll: A Very Short Introduction, including such relatively familiar touchstones as &#8220;La Bamba&#8221; (which I will post about at more length one &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/little-darlin\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Little Darlin&#8217; (Latin rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Little Darlin&#039; 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I've written about the Drifters before, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2027\/08\/Doc-Pomus-on-crutches-e1786563012737.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6196,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/great-balls-of-fire\/","url_meta":{"origin":6210,"position":1},"title":"Great Balls of Fire!","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 25, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I've got a new book out, a history of rock 'n' roll in Oxford's \"Very Short Introduction\" series, and it prompted me to revive a bunch of songsI've known since my early teens but rarely perform, since I rarely have a rock 'n' roll band or vocal group handy. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Jerry-Lee-Lewis-e1784990617252.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1111,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/much-monkey-business\/","url_meta":{"origin":6210,"position":2},"title":"Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"An early masterpiece from Chuck Berry and one of the most brilliantly composed lyrics I know, with some further thoughts on his genius.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"chuck berry after school","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/chuck-berry-after-school-300x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5856,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/besos-y-copas\/","url_meta":{"origin":6210,"position":3},"title":"Besos y Copas (Victor Cordero)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned \"Besos y copas\" from the soundtrack album to Chulas Fronteras, Les Blank's documentary about norte\u00f1o music, which I'm pretty sure I owned before seeing the film. It was performed by Chavela Ortiz, a fine singer and accordion player, who fronted the San Jose, California, group\u00a0Brown Express and was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Chavela-Ortiz-e1752187362926.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6241,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/no-particular-place\/","url_meta":{"origin":6210,"position":4},"title":"No Particular Place to Go (Chuck Berry)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 5, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Still on a rock 'n' roll kick, celebrating my new Rock 'n' Roll: A Very Short Introduction, this is another favorite from the brilliant Mr. Berry, my nominee for the greatest rock 'n' roll songwriter of all time. I've said all this before, but he had an incredible gift for\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/no-particular-place\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Berry-No-Particular-Place.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1103,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/money-honey\/","url_meta":{"origin":6210,"position":5},"title":"Money Honey (Tom Rush\/The Drifters)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A classic early R&B hit from Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, though I originally heard it from Tom Rush, to whom I am forever grateful.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Tom Rush take a little walk","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Tom-Rush-take-a-little-walk.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6210"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6219,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6210\/revisions\/6219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}