A Doo-Wop Shop Prepares to Close, Signaling the End of a Fading Genre
By PETER APPLEBOME
CLIFTON, N.J. — The end is near for Ronnie I’s Clifton Music after 40 years on Main Avenue — yet another victim of the Internet, the economy, and changing tastes in music and shopping.

But this time it is not just a store that is dying, four years after its founder did, but perhaps a whole genre of music as well. For the aging fans of the group harmony of the Harptones and the Heartbeats, the Orioles and the Ravens, the Five Keys and the Five Satins, the passing of Clifton Music is a reminder that rock ’n’ roll may never die, but one hyperbolic sect, the fading kingdom of doo-wop, just might.

In a world where fans and the remaining performers are almost invariably in their 60s and 70s, or older, no one did more to keep it alive than Ronnie Italiano, a beverage company delivery man turned doo-wop dynamo. He ran the store, which carried only doo-wop, and put out around 150 CDs, either compilations or originals he produced and recorded, and at least 50 LPs and more than 100 45s. He formed an organization, the United in Group Harmony Association, with 2,000 members at its peak, that became the community square for fans and put on 354 monthly doo-wop shows.

His efforts, and those of others, will provide a permanent historical record, whether on dusty liner notes or on YouTube videos, that augments iconic songs like “Rama Lama Ding Dong” by the Edsels or “In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins. But fans and collectors say that as a business, a living tradition and a part of American entertainment, doo-wop seems destined to go the way of Clifton Music.

“This music is going when we do,” said Val Shively, owner of R & B Records in Upper Darby, Pa., who is considered the leading doo-wop collector. “Everyone is old or dying, and no one new is coming up to replace them. If it has 10 years left, that’s a lot in my opinion.”

Fellow fans say Mr. Italiano’s biggest achievement may have been to bring back aging groups — the Four Fellows, Lillian Leach and the Mellows, the Solitaires — for a final curtain call, with nearly all of the 354 shows recorded on VHS tapes and DVDs.

But Mr. Italiano died of cancer at age 67 in 2008, the group harmony organization died with him, and his widow, Sandra, after struggling to keep the store going, has sold it to someone who wants to sell eyeglasses there. Clifton Music, with its faded green linoleum, its colored wax 45s and 33s hanging from the pressed-tin ceiling, the old Don Mattingly poster and Ronnie I’s silver and turquoise show jackets hanging in the rear, is scheduled to close sometime this month.

“There’s no replacement for Ronnie I; everyone knows that,” Ms. Italiano said. “So I’m sad because this is Ronnie’s legacy, but I’m relieved to have the financial burden off my shoulders.”

A product of urban life and street-corner singers, white and black, the music boomed in the 1950s and early ’60s. About 200 to 300 45s were released every week from 1955 to 1962....