Brian Slattery Photo
Fred Parris, at right, at Monday’s bash.
The kids at St. Bernadette School had practiced “In The Still of the Night” all week, memorizing, singing it at home, so that Monday they could perform it for the man who originally recorded it in their church’s basement six decades ago — and created a doo-wop classic.
“The song got into their DNA,” the Rev. Frank T. Carter told Fred Parris, leader of the Five Satins.
On Monday morning, Parris joined a full house of community members, students, press, and city officials gathered at St. Bernadette to mark the 60th anniversary of the recording of the song there, and the neighborly goodwill that led to its creation.
The event began with the song itself. Rev. Carter said everyone would have a chance to sing the song at the end of the celebration, and asked first that the students be allowed to sing it by themselves.
Parris, sitting in the front row, turned himself around to listen as the song filled the church.
Afterward, Carter looked over the full pews. “Some of you cheated,” he said, to laughter.
Rev. Carter.
Carter then recounted how the Five Satins came to record at St. Bernadette’s when young saxophonist and parishioner Vinny Mazzetta asked his priest, Charles Hewitt, if the group could use the church to record. As a recent Hartford Courant story related, the group had tried to record at a spot on Whalley Avenue — unsuccessfully, due to traffic noise.
“Father Hewitt opened the door and he trusted that it was going to work,” Carter said. “Pure hospitality. No conditions. I can almost hear Hewitt say, ‘Why not?’”
The basement of St. Bernadette’s now has a wide space for tables and chairs. A warm, wooden stage overlooks that space, and reporters could be forgiven for believing that’s where the recording took place. But the stage wasn’t built until the early ‘60s, and the group didn’t set up their microphones in the middle of the room.
The spot where the Five Satins recorded.
No, “In the Still of the Night” and nine other Five Satins songs were recorded in a hallway. And this time the hoary cliché is actually true: The rest is history.
With a little detour to take a (perhaps unnecessary) dig at hip hop, Carter argued that “In the Still of the Night” has lasted thanks to its simplicity. It is a “pure romance,” he said.
“St. Paul once said, ‘Put into your mind everything that his good, just, and pure,” he added. “We are what we hear.”
Parris, gracious and humbled, rose from the first pew to a standing ovation.
“I hear those lovely voices singing my song, and it’s blowing me away,” he said. “What you make me think of is going home and writing another song.”
Parris and Mazzetta (center of choir).
Though at the end of the celebration — when the students assembled at the altar, all the cameras came out, and everyone crowded to the front of the church and sang together — it was pretty clear that just one song can be more than enough.