In The Still Of The Nite

One of the most famous songs in doo-wop history, "In The Still Of The Nite" has a very unusual origin story. It was written by group member Fred Parris, who had joined the US Army. As a recruit, he travelled by train between Philadelphia and his home town of New Haven, and it was on these trips that he wrote the song. Soon after it was recorded, he shipped off for Japan, where he was stationed. When it became a hit, he watched from afar as a different permutation of The Five Satins was assembled to tour America - only two of the guys who recorded the song were part of this lineup. Parris wasn't discharged until 1958; when he returned, he set up a new version of the group and hit the road.

The song was recorded in the basement of St. Bernadette Church in the group's hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. They first tried recording the song in another New Haven building (on Whalley Avenue), but street noise degraded the recording. The church basement had great acoustics and was insulated from ambient noise, making it a perfect place to record. The group was managed by Marty Kugell, who distributed their material on his own label, Standord Records (small operations like this were common at the time). His friend Vinny Mazzetta was an altar boy at the church, and Mazzetta convinced the pastor to let the group use the basement on a Sunday afternoon following a church service. They used the church piano along with drums, a guitar, a cello tuned low for the bass sound, and a saxophone, which Mazzetta played.

In this song, the singer remembers holding a girl close on a night in May, and hoping to be with her again. Fred Parris wrote it about a former girlfriend he was hoping would return to him. She never did - when she moved from Connecticut to California, he never saw her again. She likely never knew the song was about her.