1960 Songs: Little Bitty Pretty One

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I’m coasting downhill on an old-folks tricycle with no brakes toward the age of 65. In honor of that, I’m celebrating with a look at songs from the year I was born. We had one to dance to from 1965, and why should 1960’s song be any different? Here’s today’s song. Little Bitty Pretty One - Frankie Lymon One of the local meteorologists pointed out that today (April 8) is the anniversary of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s body being discovered at his home. It seems appropriate, then, to feature a song by the man who was the poster child for “cautionary tales” featuring success and drugs. While Cobain is a member of the infamous “27 Club” (celebrities who died at the age of 27, usually by excess or the byproducts thereof), Frankie Lymon didn’t even live to be that “old.” Lymon was the lead singer of the Teenagers, later renamed “Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.” Their big hit, and the name of the biopic they did about Lymon, is “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” He was a superstar at 14 and a has-been at 18. Oh, and a heroin junkie at 15. The Teenagers broke up right at the wrong time: when rock and roll was pushing the doo-wop sound to the background. As a result, Lymon’s solo career was relegated to a few singles, none of which made the top 40 on the pop charts. This, a cover of the 1957 Bobby Day song (which was also a hit for Thurston Harris), was the closest Lymon could manage. This is one of those songs you probably don’t know by name, but once you hear it you think, “Oh, yeah, I remember that.” Eight years after this song, at the age of 25, Lymon was lying dead on his grandmother’s bathroom floor, a victim of heroin and the pitfalls of success too soon. Lymon and the Teenagers are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Oh, what could have been. Little Bitty Pretty One Written by Bobby Day Recorded by Frankie Lymon Released as a single, 1960 Come on and talk to me: