I’ve always wanted to be a Pip!

I admit it! I have always wanted to be a Pip! Now before you spit out the coffee you just drank, being a Pip is pretty cool, at least to those of us of a certain age.

I am talking in broader terms than being a member of the classic soul group, Gladys Knight and the Pips. Not being a member of the Atlanta Georgia family, I would not qualify. I’m talking about being a backing singer in a doo-wop or soul band in the golden age of oldies 1955 – 1975. You know those guys and gals who had the great dance moves and harmony that made those acts fun to watch as well as to listen to.

It would have been cool to be standing in the shadows of Motown or backing a doo-wop act, just out of the beam of the glaring spotlight. Hey, it was easier to spot the hot chicks in the audience if you didn’t have that glaring light shining in your eyes. Better yet, it would have been fun to make those dance moves back and forth behind the microphone even taking a complete spin if you were a member of the Temptations or the Drifters.

Another reason being a Pip is better than being the lead singer is that you don’t have to remember as much as they do. Not only that, but the backing lyrics are the ones that most people relate to the song. So there is little risk of forgetting the lyrics in the middle of the song and if you do, you can fake it while your fellow “Pips” cover for you. I’ll give you an example; Take the song Lady Soul by the Temptations. Here are all the lyrics that the backup singers have to know.

'Cause you are my, my, my, my lady soul
You warm my heart when I grow cold
Oh you are my, my, my, my lady soul
You are my life, you make me whole

That’s It! Just sing those words three times and you are done! The rest is all oohs and ahhhs and nobody forgets those. So you can put your brain into idle and scope out the aforementioned hot chicks. What’s more, as long as you are not the drummer, you are a hot commodity yourself. (With apologies to all my drummer friends, who are already picked on by the rest of the band.)

Alas, I never got to be a Pip. Although I got to sit in with several bands over the years and that was a lot of fun, but I never made to Pip status. Many thanks go out to the bands that put their reputations on the line allowing me to have my moments on stage with them.

The closest I ever got to being a Pip was back in 1968 at a “Woody With the Goodies Hop-a-roonie”, put on by our Program Director at WCOS, Woody Windham. The main act was Peaches and Herb who sang their big hits accompanied by a local band augmented with recorded tracks. They didn’t bring backup singers with them. So the other WCOS DJs and I created a makeshift doo-wop line somewhere between “For Your Love” and “Lets Fall In Love,” By the time we got to “Love Is Strange,” Herb Fame, nee Feemster, the male half of the duo had had enough. He turned around to us and said with a big grin, “You guys are terrible!” You know what, he was right. We were terrible but everybody including Peaches was having a great time. Our response to Herb was, “Yeah man, but we have radio shows and you don’t.”

To make it up to Herb, we invited him to come into the station the next morning and do an hour-long show with the bunch of us. Just like our doo-wop efforts, that show was probably better consigned to the fog of our memories than having been recorded for posterity.

But my desire to be a Pip was never sated. Even today, when a great old doo-wop or soul song is on the air, I have been known to be sitting in the studio singing along at the top of my voice. It is a good thing that there is an off switch on that microphone, or I would have zero audience, everyone would be fleeing to the hills.

Heck, one Monday morning a couple of years ago, I had Gladys Knight and the Pips spinning at 45 RPM on WUSC-FM, and as usual I was singing in the studio at the top of my lungs when one of the campus police officers stuck his head in the door to check that I was not strangling someone in there. Yup – Herb was right; I’ll never be a Pip. Oh MY!