Jerome Guordine is 77, has eight kids, 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren – but he’s still Little Anthony.
And that’s who Villager Bob Dunn came to see Friday at Savannah Center. Last month, Dunn was on an operating table having open heart surgery. He and his wife, Sharon, were part of a sold-out crowd listening to Little Anthony and the Imperials bring the past into the present with doo-wop harmony and glossy pop vocals.
They performed such classics as “Tears On My Pillow,” “Two People in the World,” “Shimmy Ko Ko Bop,” “Take Me Back” and “Hurt So Bad.”
“This is my first night out after surgery and I have been looking forward to seeing Little Anthony ever since I got out of the hospital,” Dunn said. “We might get old but Little Anthony’s music is timeless.”
“This night means a lot to both of us,” added Sharon Dunn, president of the Michigan Club of The Villages. “We saw Little Anthony in Detroit for a Valentine’s Day concert. I’m here tonight with Bob to see him again and we still love his music.”
Time is irrelevant when it comes to the music of Jerome Anthony Guordine. He was dubbed Little Anthony by legendary DJ Alan Freed back in the 1950s and the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Anthony – with original Imperial Ernest Wright, along with Johnnie Britt and Robert DeBlanc – captivated the big crowd with everything from sweet-sounding acapella harmony to romantic ballads to soulful rockers.
Anthony started the concert in dramatic style. He came out wearing a black rhinestone-covered jacket and stood in front of a nine-piece band. Then, he started singing the classically-sounding number “All By Myself.” Near the middle of the song, the other three Imperials came out to join Anthony, and they combined to hit the high notes with a flourish.
The beat picked up as they covered Marvin Gaye’s Motown number, “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
Anthony then took a breather and started some on-stage banter, which would periodically continue throughout the concert.
“It’s great to be here in Lady Lake, the land of lakes,” Anthony said.
“I thought Minnesota was the land of lakes,” Ernest Wright shot back. “No, this is Florida,” Anthony replied, adding that he now lives in Florida.
It didn’t take long to go for a spin on a musical time machine. The lights dimmed, the spirits moved and teenage romance filled the air as Little Anthony and the Imperials sang “Tears On My Pillow.”
That was a smash back in 1958 but on this night it still sounded straight out of Brooklyn.
Still, there are concessions to age.
“I need a chair; it’s hot up here,” Anthony joked. “I hurt; you know how it is when you get old.”
He didn’t stay seated for long. The band rocked as Anthony and the Imperials did some 1950s rapping jive to “Shimmy Ko Ko Bop.”
“I still don’t know what that song means,” Anthony said afterwards. “It paid a lot of bills,” Wright added.
Wright then told the story of how he wrote one of doo-wop’s most popular songs, “Two People In the World.”
“I had something in common with Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes,” Wright said. “I was in love with Ava Gardner.”
So, Wright wrote the song for the famed movie actress and he and the Imperials sang an a cappella version on stage that earned a huge ovation. “That’s the way we used to sing it, in the subways in Brooklyn,” Anthony said. “We’d sing it under a streetlight.”
Anthony then sang lead on another oldie, “Goody Goody,” done back in the ‘50s by Frankie Lymon. He then paid tribute to another singer with “Little” in his name – Little Richard, singing “Lucille.”
Unlike many other 1950s’ groups, Little Anthony and the Imperials also prospered during the 1960s and beyond. Four of their biggest hits, “Take Me Back,” “I’m On the Outside Looking In,” “Hurt So Bad,” and “Going Out of My Head,” came during the years of the British Invasion. They sounded as fresh as today.
“These guys can sing anything,” said Villager Dennis Black. “The way they sing this kind of music never gets old.”
Tony Violanti is a veteran journalist and writes for Villages-News.com.