Whither Bells?

Wow, there are a lot of songs about bells. Do you know which genre has the most songs about bells? You might guess something like electronica, or maybe jazz, but you'd be wrong. It's doo-wop. FUCKING doo-wop. Doo-wop, you know, defined as "a style of vocal-based rhythm & blues music, which developed in African-American communities in the 1940s & which achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s & early 1960s." I swear to you, I listened to fifty or more doo-wop songs for this show. I might have more to listen to. I'm not done.

(Incidentally, while we call that music "doo-wop" now, the Wikipedia article I quote above points out that it wasn't used at the time, at least until 1961 or so.)

I thought, as I was listening to all that doo-wop, how interesting it might be to do a radio show - perhaps just one hour - that featured doo-wop, not only of the time, of course, but modern stuff too, if it exists, which I am sure it does. There are probably people who obsessively hoard it, & there are probably doo-wop shows on community &/or college radio stations right now. Why in fact there are!

The doo-wop songs I listened to were concerned with school bells, wedding bells, chapel bells, bells in their hearts, bells bells bells. I don't know if it's the subject matter - marriage, school, heartbreak - or the lovely sound of the word "bell" that made them want to sing so many songs about bells. Or maybe bells were more prominent in their world, in urban centers where doo-wop was born & flourished. The only bell I ever hear around here is from a church a few blocks to the south & frankly it's a bit anemic.