Jimmy Merchant said he always had a gift for singing, but it took his baseball coach to tune him in to it.

Merchant said he was about 12 and was making scooters out of orange crates, roller skates and two-by-fours with a buddy when his coach walked by and reminded him about an upcoming practice.

After the boys responded that they knew about practice, the coach asked, "By the way, can you guys sing?"

"We said, 'Whatta you mean, can we sing?' " Merchant said he answered. "He said, 'Can you do this, Oooo, Oo Ooooo.' I said, 'What, Oooo, Oo Ooooo.' "

In realizing that he could sing, Merchant, who grew up in the Bronx, said he started thinking of the music he was hearing in terms of singing. He would watch his father sing along with bebop records, while his mother was enjoying the music of Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole.

"I'm taking in all their music, and while I'm taking in the music I'm listening to the horn parts," he said. "So. I'm listening to harmony. I realized I could duplicate harmony parts. I had a gift of hearing. I had an ear for music.

"When the coach comes to me that day, it's time for me to go. I became a singer, a vocal group singer."

Merchant wasted little time. Within three years, the group he joined, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, were national stars with "Why Do Fools Fall in Love."

Merchant and buddies Herman Santiago, Joe Negroni and Sherman Garnes were 15 when the song hit in January 1956, and Lymon was 12.

"What happens is we were appointed to be the leaders in a new movement called teenagers in the record industry," said Merchant, inducted with the Teenagers into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame and Museum in 2000. "We were the first. When you look at vocal groups today like Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, Boyz II Men, that all leads back to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and that's where I came from."

The group played into the teen theme with follow-up singles such as "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent" and "Teenage Love."

Although the group fizzled out after the hits stopped in 1960, its influence on vocal music cannot be understated.

"I was just speaking with Otis Williams (of the Temptations) here 15-20 minutes and he always just tells me the same story," Merchant, who lives in eastern Virginia, said at the vocal hall's 2002 induction ceremony. "It was the Fox Theater in Detroit and him and his friend, Melvin (Franklin), from the original Temptations, went and they saw us and they were so starry-eyed, and they said, 'This is what we're gonna do.' "

These days, Merchant, 62, and Santiago, 61, the only surviving members of the Teenagers, sing with Lymon's younger brother, Louis.

Louis Lymon headed Louis Lymon and the Teenchords, which had a number of hits, most notably "I'm So Happy (Tra-La-La-La-La-La)" in 1956.

With "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" the group's signature tune, the Teenagers sing it whenever they sing.

"'Why Do Fools Fall in Love' gets sung wherever we go, all through the years," he said. "If we're called on to do one song only, that's the song, of course, that you sing. If you're called on to do two, 90-minute sets, you're gonna sing 'Why Do Fools Fall in Love' twice."

Merchant, the group's vocal arranger, said he never tires of singing the song.

"I'm still feeling the same feeling that I felt at Radio City Music Hall, and the New York Paramount with Alan Freed."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at

jpinchot@sharonherald.com