It’s a long way from the street corners of Gary to the White House, but Henry Farag and some of his pals have made that trip four times. As part of the doo-wop singing group Stormy Weather that he started in 1974 doing its a cappella thing, Farag and his singing friends have also performed for U.S. troops in Bosnia and Kosovo, during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and on the sidewalks of Vienna and Amsterdam.
Together in various configurations over the last four decades, Stormy Weather is now embarking on a more ambitious trip, from the stage of the Acorn Theater in tiny Three Oaks, Mich., to the bright lights, broken hearts and busted bank accounts of Broadway, as in New York.
Their vehicle is “The Signal,” which features not only Farag and members of Stormy Weather but also members of The Soul Stirrers, once the backing group for Sam Cooke, and The Spaniels, most famous for “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight.”
It’s an ensemble that starts the show singing while walking through the audience before making its way to the stage for a 21-song, 90-minute performance.
“The Signal” signifies the sounds from the stations that poured from a crystal radio set Farag received as a Christmas gift in 1956. “That radio introduced me to doo-wop music, that pre-rock ‘n’ roll urban sound of the inner cities, what was happening in New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Gary, right outside my front door,” says Farag, who grew up in Gary, one of 11 children of a steelworker father.
The station he listened to most featured Vivian Carter, a Gary deejay and co-owner of a small music label there, Vee Jay Records. She was the first female head of a black-owned label and pioneered the rhythm-and-blues sound, helping launch the career of The Four Seasons, among others.
“She also introduced the Beatles to America, before they were signed by Capitol Records,” the 70-year-old Farag says. “And there’s no doubt she influenced me and so many others.”
Carter’s story and many others are woven into the Farag narrative that shares the stage with the music. “These are basically stories I have been telling my whole life,” says Farag, who told many of them between the covers of “The Signal,” a book published in 2001 by Indiana University Northwest. “These are the stories of coal fires and steel mills, of blue-collar guys and girls and the music we fell in love with forever.”
The show made its debut with two performances in Gary — “the right and proper place to start this adventure,” Farag says — before it formally premiered Aug. 10 at the Acorn. “The response was amazing and terrific,” says cast member Robby Celestin. And that is why the show will be back at 8 p.m. Friday (acorntheater.com).
I have yet to see the show, but I have seen Stormy Weather plenty over the years and once wrote this about it: “A cappella singing groups mostly leave me flat, but this gang, with its strong rhythm-and-blues base, has never disappointed. It’s an ebullient bunch, and it’s obvious that they are in this for the pure fun of it, spewing forth their favorite oldies. So happy do they appear onstage that we have never seen an audience do anything but share the glee.”
“We do bring that, this real sense of joy, to the show too,” Farag says.
“We have a deep love for this music,” says Linda Walla, Stormy Weather’s first female vocalist. “These songs never get old.”
Says Farag: “We all have that same feeling, and that’s why this is all so exciting. Look, if you are standing still, doing the same thing, you’re not growing. We have an important musical story to tell. I look at the success of those so-called jukebox musicals, ‘Jersey Boys’ and ‘Million Dollar Quartet,’ and I will tell you that we are as good, but grittier and truer.”
Farag knows the music entertainment business well. In addition to performing, he has long run a concert production company (Canterbury Productions), a music publishing company (Farag Music) and his own record label, Street Gold Records, which has turned out CDs by the legendary Jerry Butler and the Drifters, as well as 15 and counting from Stormy Weather.
He’s been singing since he was a teenager, forming various groups into his adult years and working the open hearth at U.S. Steel and as a private detective before Stormy Weather hit.
The past is always with him, and he talks more about Carter, saying: “She had a profound impact on me and music and the entire industry. She is an ignored person, forgotten. But the music of her time, our time, is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of so many people. I can remember hearing the Beatles for the first time, ‘Please, Please Me,’ on her show.
“That’s why I describe our show as a narrative in song, played at a 45-rpm beat.”
The other cast members have their memories, too, of growing up without much but hope in rough-and-tumble industrial towns that hug the lake. And of the music that has been part of their lives, well, almost forever. And the racial mix they have ever been part of; because that is so unlike the single hues of “Jersey Boys” and “Million Dollar Quartet” (and even “Motown: The Musical”), one imagines “The Signal” might catch the pragmatic attentions of some deep-pocketed producers.
So, what of the future?
“I do think this show has big-time potential. Another ‘Jersey Boys’? You never know,” Farag says. “But, hey, in some ways we’ve been there. In Gary we used to sing at 25th and Broadway, 11th and Broadway …”
And with that, he and his pals chuckle and break into song, and the song sounds as fresh and alive as ever.
“After Hours With Rick Kogan” airs 9-11 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.
