The Bosstones

This article is about the doo wop group. For the ska punk band, see The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

The Bosstones (also known as The Boss-Tones) were an American musical group who performed in the instrumentally-sparse, a cappella-based harmonic style known as Philadelphia doo-wop.

The Bosstones apparently released only one record in their history: "Mope-Itty Mope" b/w "Wings of an Angel" in 1959 on the Boss Records label.^[1] The record was a not a national or regional hit (although it did manage to scrape into the playlists of a few stations, such as KIMN in Denver in May of that year).

"Mope-Itty Mope" would probably have fallen into complete obscurity except for fact that Mexican border blaster XEAK decided to play it in 1961 -- in fact, they played it over and over for 72 straight hours, stunting its new format: "Extra News", the first 24-hour all-news station in Southern California (and one of the first in the United States).

In 1962, The Dovells remade "Mope-itty Mope" as "The Mope-itty Mope Stomp".^[2]

In 1983, a ska punk band, calling themselves The Bosstones, was formed in Boston, Massachusetts. After finding out about the long-defunct group of the same name, the newer band changed its name to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones,^[3] at the suggestion of a bartender friend, in order to avoid any possible legal hassles.

Notes

1. Dave Thompson (8 April 2016). Standard Catalog of American Records. Penguin Publishing. pp. 148–. ISBN 978-1-4402-4628-9. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
2. Barry Blinderman; Paul Laffoley; University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Gallery of Contemporary Art (2000). The UFO show. University Galleries, Illinois State University. ISBN 978-0-945558-30-9.
3. Dave Thompson (2000). Alternative Rock. Miller Freeman Books. pp. 495–. ISBN 978-0-87930-607-6.