A QUICKEE RE: DICK AND DEE DEE

On Don Barrett’s Los Angeles Radio People website (LARP), I read an email sent in by a fan who couldn’t get out of his head what he considered a major performance sham perpetrated by Dick and Dee Dee at a small town teen-age nightclub in the middle 60s.

It seems somehow sad that his only remembrance of their performance, was as fakers who were booed by their Clarkston, Washington fans for lip-syncing their records.

As you all are well aware, I myself have NEVER lip-synced records (my performances of the top records of the 60s, including Diana Ross, the other two Supremes and, lest we forget, Cher, were performed using my own beautifully modulated voice).

However, it was common knowledge that the largest majority of my guest artists lip-synced their hits. This was also a usual practice in small performance venues as well. In the 60s most stages didn't have the hi-tech facilities to duplicate the over-dubbed affect of what helped make records hits in the first place. In the recording studio artists many times performed to pre-recorded over-dubbed tracks. So Dick and Dee Dee singing along with their own records in the 60s was not a “sham.” When you think about it, their performance was actually just one more over-dub.

Dick and Dee Dee were always great Lloyd Thaxton show guests. They sang along with their records and the kids cheered.

My mother’s great lessen to me as a kid, “If you can’t say anything nice about a person, don’t say anything at all” should be a reality rule for everyone.