Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers

Ronnie Spector, in her autobiography, Be My Baby,  wrote, “A lot of entertainers can’t or won’t tell you where they got their style from. But I know exactly where I got my voice. Frankie Lymon…I was twelve when I first heard Frankie and the Teenagers sing ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’. Frankie had the greatest voice I’d ever heard.” 

Diana Ross has said that she started out trying to emu­late Lymon’s high-pitched, crystalline voice, his enuncia­tion and whip-crack timing. Marvin Gaye, upon first wit­nessing his Motown labelmate Michael Jackson in action, commented, “It was Frankie Lymon all over again.”