About The Song
Arguably the greatest song in the history of doo-wop was written while its composer had a brief leave from the military and was recorded in the basement of a church in New Haven, Connecticut, and the guy who played the saxophone solo was a parishioner there.
Yet there is no doubt that “In The Still Of The Night” (or “Nite,” as it was also labelled) cast a long shadow over one of the predominant genres of music at around the time of the birth of rock and roll. Credited to the Five Satins, a group, like so many other harmony groups, that would change members with regularity as the years passed, the two-verse-and-a-bridge song, released in 1956, captures the wonder and awe of romance with stunning efficiency.
The fellow responsible for writing the song, Fred Parris, recalled to NJ.com back in 2010 how he found out about the song’s success while stationed in Japan, and how it gained him some mitigated credibility with his buddies. “I had told a couple of the guys I was stationed with about ‘In the Still of the Night’ — that I was a recording artist and so forth,” Parris remembered. “But no one really believed me. And one Saturday morning on the radio, the disc jockey said, ‘We’ve had so many requests for this song. It’s called “In the Still of the Night.” It’s by the Five Satins. But we don’t have a copy of that, so we’re going to play one by Ella Fitzgerald.’ Which, of course, was different from our song, ‘In the Still of the Night.’”
While only a moderate hit when first released (peaking at No. 24 on the national pop charts), it has received considerable airplay over the years and is notable as one of the best known doo-wop songs.
The Five Satins’ original version was included in Robert Christgau’s “Basic Record Library” of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and ranked No. 90 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
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