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The Four Lads
Istanbul (Not Constantinople) / I Should Have Told You Long Ago - 7"
Columbia - 1953
Michael Panontin
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There are no doubt some aging GenXers who remember They Might Be Giants' perky cover of 'Istanbul (Not Constantinople)', but probably fewer who realize that the Four Lads' original was a US top-ten hit in 1953. Actually, that novelty record traces its history back another 25 years to a group called Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. Whiteman, who at the time led one of the more popular dance bands of the '20s and '30s, issued a little-known slab of shellac called 'C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-O-P-L-E', which as luck would have it came out just two years before the Turkish city officially changed its name to Istanbul.
Fast forward about twenty years to Toronto and four young teens who were learning to sing at St. Michael's Choir School. They dubbed themselves the Four Dukes, but after hearing there was a Detroit group with that name they rechristened themselves the Four Lads. The original quartet - lead singer Jimmy Arnold, bass Corrado 'Connie' Codarini, tenor Bernie Toorish and baritone Frankie Busseri - got their big break while attending a show by their idols, the Golden Gate Quartet, at the Casino Theatre on Queen Street.
"We were avid fans of theirs. We patterned our style after them. They were black, spiritual singers," Busseri told the Classic Bands site. After the show, the guys made their way backstage and, with equal parts naivete and chutzpah, talked their way into meeting their heroes. "We just told the people at the stage door who we were and we were avid fans and we'd just like to be able to say hello. Fortunately for us, they were very nice people. They said, 'Yeah, c'mon, send 'em on back.'"
The GGQ were impressed, especially, it seems, the group's bass vocalist Orlandus Wilson. "He told his manager in New York and the next thing we knew, he asked us to do a demonstration record, which we did and sent it to him," Busseri recalled. "He listened...and the next thing you know, he asked us to come to New York. So, that's when we got on the train out of Toronto and went to New York City."
That was April 5, 1950, and from that moment there was really no looking back for the boys. Mitch Miller caught their act at a club and hooked them up with Johnny Ray, who sort of made the Four Lads his go-to backing singers. They taped a couple of sides with Ray, 'Cry' and 'The Little White Cloud That Could'. The single, issued as Johnny Ray and the Four Lads, went positively stratospheric, with the top side reaching #1 on both the pop and R&B charts in 1951.
'Istanbul (Not Constantinople)' wasn't the Four Lads' biggest hit - they sent an unbelievable twenty-one singles into the Billboard top 30 between 1952 and 1958, including a couple of #2s and one #3 - but it is without a doubt the one that has survived to the present day. Bing Crosby performed it on his weekly radio show, including in a cool duet with Ella Fitzgerald near the end of 1953. And Caterina Valente's swinging jazz rendition the following year is also pretty swell. The song actually started to sink into obscurity during the '60s, '70s and '80s until it was revived by They Might Be Giants. In fact, of the nearly 100 versions listed on the Secondhand Songs site, nearly half came out after TMBG's 1990 version, of which one of the most interesting has to be the Phantom Surfers' surf instrumental take on it.
Despite their massive popularity, the Four Lads pretty well dropped off the charts after 1959. The times, as they say, they were a-changing...and fast. "When rock 'n' roll started to come in, we had a big discussion about that," Busseri explained. "We said, well, if it becomes that serious, we're dead because we can't do it. It's not our bag. The Beatles came around and it was all over."
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