Willie Winfield

Willie Winfield (24 August 1929 – 27 July 2021) was an American doo-wop singer, best known as the founding lead vocalist of the Harptones.

Early Life

Winfield grew up singing in a church choir alongside his brothers, though he later recalled that the choir's strongest, most soulful voices were reserved for the group's spirituals. He was drawn to rhythm and blues vocal harmony through radio, discovering the Virginia-based group the Five Keys via their weekly fifteen-minute programme broadcast out of Norfolk, an experience he credited with sharpening his musical focus and drawing him toward group harmony singing.

Career

In 1953, Winfield became a founding member and lead vocalist of the Harptones, formed in Manhattan, New York, alongside Raoul Cita on piano, Billy Brown on bass, Claudie "Nicky" Clark on first tenor, William Dempsey on second tenor and William "Dicey" Galloway on baritone.

The group made its debut at the Apollo Theater's famously demanding Amateur Night in November 1953, an appearance for which a visibly nervous Winfield had to be pushed onto the stage by his bandmates. With Cita as one of doo-wop's first full-time in-house pianists and arrangers, the Harptones built a reputation as one of the genre's most technically accomplished vocal groups, recording for Coed Records and other labels. Although the group never placed a record on the pop top forty or the Billboard R&B chart, their catalogue, including "A Sunday Kind of Love" (1953), "Why Should I Love You?" (1954), "Life Is But a Dream" (1955), "The Shrine of St. Cecilia" (1956) and "What Will I Tell My Heart" (1961), earned lasting acclaim among vocal harmony enthusiasts; the Harptones were featured more times than any other group in the United in Group Harmony Association's official top 500 vocal group recordings list.

In 1956, the group recorded several tracks, including "Mambo Boogie," "Ou Wee Baby" and "High Flying Baby," for the film Rockin' the Blues. Decades later, "Life Is But a Dream" reached a new generation of listeners when it was featured on the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese's 1990 film GoodFellas.

In recognition of their contribution to American vocal harmony, the Harptones received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Pioneer Award in 1998, were inducted into the Brooklyn Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002, and appeared on the PBS retrospective special Doo Wop 50 in 1999.

Winfield remained the Harptones' lead voice through numerous personnel changes across more than six decades, performing into his late eighties and giving his final performance in April 2019. His family organised a retirement gala in his honour on 1 June 2019 in Woodhaven, New York, and four days later he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the East Coast Music Hall of Fame at the Wildwood Convention Center in Wildwood, New Jersey.

Personal Life

Winfield's wife, Alice, predeceased him in 2011. He was survived by two daughters, three sons, two sisters, two brothers, 44 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. He died on 27 July 2021 of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 91.

Winfield is remembered as one of doo-wop's defining lead voices, an influence cited by generations of vocal group singers and a central figure in New York's mid-century street-corner harmony scene.