Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: The group formed in 1955 (Manhattan, New York City, NY), and consisted of Frankie Lymon, Herman Santiago, Jimmy Merchant, Joe Negroni, and Sherman Garnes.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: They were the first rock and roll group entirely made up of teenagers.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: They were the first "boy group", establishing the template for all of the boy/girl groups to follow....
... and Berry Gordy of Motown modeled his assembly-line approach to vocal groups after The Teenagers.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Frankie became the first black teenage pop star. His youthful rise to fame served as a prototype for such Sixties stars as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Lymon popularized the falsetto lead in pop, R&B, and rock.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Originally called The Earth Angels, the group went through a string of name changes--among them The Coupe de Villes, The Ermines--...
... before settling on The Premiers. They got an audition with noted producer George Goldner at his Gee Records. They had planned to perform a song members Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant had written--...
... and which was rewritten by 13-year-old new member Frankie Lymon--called "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" Santiago was to sing lead on the record, but on the day of the audition he was too sick to sing,...
... so Lymon was chosen to perform. Goldner was so impressed with the power of the young boy's voice that he signed them immediately, changing their name to The Teenagers.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia:"Why Do Fools Fall in Love?", a #1 hit for the Teenagers, was released in January 1956 to avoid the Christmas rush. ...
... The group was not notified that it was released - they found out when a group member heard a classmate singing it at school.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" reached No. 1 on the R&B chart, No. 6 on Billboard's Pop Singles chart, and number 1 on the UK Singles Chart .
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: By February 1956, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" had reached Number One. Lymon, who had just started junior high, suddenly became a star, a "Teenage idol".
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: A string of hits followed, and by 1957 the group was being billed as Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, a situation that the other group members were not happy about....
... Goldner solved that problem by taking Lymon out of the group for a solo career and hiring another singer to take his place. The singer he hired, Billy Lobrano, was white, making them among rock's first integrated...
... (with black, Hispanic and white members) groups. The group continued to record, with various personnel changes, into the 2000s.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: The half-black, half-Puerto Rican Teenagers began as an assemblage of schoolmates and neighbors practicing popular R&B in the hallways of their respective apartment buildings.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: An apartment neighbor gave the group some poems his girlfriend had written to him as letters -- partly in an attempt to get them to practice something new...
... One poem was worked into a song called "Why Do Birds Sing So Gay,". When the Teenagers auditioned with the Gee label, the song morphed into "Why Do Fools Fall In Love," featuring Lymon on lead.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Despite the squeaky-clean image of the group, they were no innocents -- Harlem native Lymon had been a pimp at ten -- ...
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Frankie seems to have married three women, while divorcing none.
... and when Frankie was convinced to go solo, his lack of hits and the eventual loss of his falsetto to puberty doomed him to a downward spiral.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Lymon, who'd been abusing drugs at sixteen, eventually became a full-fledged heroin addict. He died in his grandmother's apartment at the age of 25;
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Believe it or not, Lymon got Alan Freed's"Big Beat" show canceled by dancing with a white girl during an appearance.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: The group caused a controversy by allegedly trashing their hotel rooms on a British tour.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: Lymon's two, possibly three widows fought over his estate for years.
Frankie & Teenagers Trivia: The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1993), Vocal Group Hall of Fame (2000), and the Grammy Hall of Fame (2001).