Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

MARCUCCI, Bob

(b Robert Phillip Marcucci, 28 February 1930, Philadelphia; d 9 March 2011, Ontario CA) Lyricist, publicist, label boss. He teamed up as a teenager with songwriter Peter DeAngelis, and they formed Chancellor Records. He went to hear Rocco and the Saints, a popular local group, and was not impressed with their singer, but trumpet player Frankie Avalong sang a couple of songs, and Marcucci said to Avalon, "I can make you into a big star," or so he told John Broven, author of Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneers (2009). After two flop singles, Marcucci and DeAngelis had written "DeDe Dinah", and had Avalon hold his nose while singing to make an unusual sound. Marcucci thought it was terrible, he said later, but it sold 250,000 copies in three weeks. Avalon's 'Venus' and 'Why' were both no. 1 hits in 1959, and so began the fall in The Rise And Fall of Popular Music, which you can read elsewhere on this site.

Worse was to come. Driving through a neighborhood where a friend lived, Marcucci saw an ambulance parked, and pulled over to see a teenager sitting on his front steps, who, Marcucci thought, looked like a pop star. Asked if he could sing and if he wanted to be a recording artist, Fabiano Forte said no twice, but Marcucci persisted. [Stan Freberg sent this whole thing up on a comedy record: he can't sing? 'Believe me, kid, that don't matter.'] A publicity campaign asked 'Who Is Fabian?,' 'What Is a Fabian?' and 'Fabian Is Coming!' When Fabian first appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in June 1958, 'The little girls at the hop went wild,' Clark told The Washington Post in 1980. 'They started screaming and yelling for this guy who didn’t do a thing but stand there.' Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman wrote some of Fabian's hits, so at least the songs should have been better.

The Chancellor label lasted until 1965. Its last brush with the big time was Claudine Clark’s 'Party Lights', a top 10 hit in 1962.

Marcucci moved to Los Angeles, worked as a talent agent, and some years later began writing his memoirs. A former client, Gene Kirkwood, bought the rights and made a film, The Idolmaker (1980), a fictionalized account, with Marcucci as technical adviser. It was actually not a bad film of its kind, perhaps benefitting from hindsight, but Fabian took offense and sued for defamation of character and invasion of privacy and received a settlement. 'Watching the movie I became aware of things that I shouldn’t have done, even though they were successful,' Marcucci told The Washington Post. But it was too late: the tiny minority of high school kids who had some taste in music had grieved in 1959 while Marcucci cried all the way to the bank.