“I fell for you, and I knew. The vision of your love’s loveliness.”

Earth Angel is such a beautiful song. Released to the world in October 1954 by The Penguins. Some may think of Marty in one of the final scenes of Back to the Future. It’s beautiful in that film as well.

This wonderful doo-wop number was first recorded in a Los Angels garage as a demo, and was later meant to be the B-side to the relatively unknown Hey Señorita. The drums were muffled with pillows, so as to not overwhelm the vocals. A neighbor’s pet dog stopped many takes by it’s barking. The first five seconds of the intro were cut off of the recording by accident. Regardless of all of that, I think most who have heard would agree they did pretty darn great that day. The song was a #1 on the Billboard R&B charts, and later in 2005, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, deeming it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.” Not too shabby.

Where did they even come up with the icy, cool bird name for their group? The 1950’s were a time when the world didn’t know, or perhaps didn’t want to know, how bad smoking was for you. “We wanted to be cool, so we took our name off Willie the Penguin, the trademark on Kool cigarette packs,” Cleveland Duncan (one of original band members and lead singer on this track) told a reporter. As a bonus nugget, it was 1964 when the U.S. Surgeon General issued a definitive report that linked smoking cigarettes with lung cancer. This was around the time that Willie the Penguin was phased out of Kool cigarettes’ marketing campaign, raising the question if the cartoon bird succumbed to lung cancer.

The Penguins left us with this masterpiece that will remain a representation of true love. If high school boys still made mix-tapes to show a girl that he likes her, then this would be a must to be included. Pull it up, hit play, close your eyes, and listen.

• Cleveland Duncan (lead) 7/23/1935-11/7/2012.
• Curtis Williams (tenor) 12/11/1934-8/10/1979.
• Dexter Tisby (baritone) 3/10/1935-5/2019.
• Bruce Tate (tenor) 1/27/1937-6/20/1973.