Little Darlin’ · The Diamonds · 1957

  Play the song.  

In the early days of Rock and Roll, some of the popular music consisted of R&B hits that were “cleaned up and repackaged” to make them “suitable” for mainstream America. This was done by having popular white singing artists record their own versions of tunes that had been hits for their black counterparts.

For example, Pat Boone’s early career featured quite a few covers of hit R&B material: In 1955, he recorded “Ain’t That A Shame” (which was a #1 R&B and #10 Pop hit for Fats Domino), and in 1956, he covered the songs “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally” (#2 and #1 R&B and #17 and #6 Pop hits for Little Richard.) There were other alternate recordings of other rock and roll songs by other artists too.

Though few of these covers have stood the test of time, one notable exception is The Diamonds’ classic version of “Little Darlin’“, which had been a #11 R&B hit for the song’s writer Maurice Williams and his group The Gladiolas in 1957.

However, unlike the three songs cited above, and much to his own frustration, Williams’ own version of “Little Darlin’” was never able to cross over into the Pop top 40. The Diamonds had remarkable success with their version, though, as they kept it hovering at position #2 for eight weeks. (It never reached #1 thanks to Perry Como’s “Round and Round“, and Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up“.) But in 1960, Maurice Williams and his new group, The Zodiacs, finally broke into the Pop top 40, and in fact, topped the Pop chart with another song that he had written: “Stay.”

“Stay” proved to be an evergreen, hitting the top 20 two more times: once when the Four Seasons took it to number 16 in 1964, and with Jackson Browne’s #20 version in 1978. (In Britain, the Hollies recorded it in 1963.)

For the short of it, here is the hit version of “Stay” by Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs, which (clocking in at one minute and 37 seconds), must be the shortest #1 pop hit of the Rock era.

  Stay · Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs · 1960