Don & Juan - Live at the Academy of Music - 1970

The first of the legendary rock’n’roll revival shows at the Academy of Music, located on East 14th Street in New York City, took place over two nights, Friday and Saturday April 17-18, 1970. In front of enthusiastic sellout audiences, the Harptones, Danny and the Juniors, Don & Juan, the Del Vikings, Monotones, Bobbettes, Mystics, Cadillacs, Passions, Dubs, Cleftones, Orioles and Skyliners all sang their classic hits. The event was conceived and produced by MCA Records producer Fred Bailin. Veteran disc jockey Alan Fredericks, host of the popular “Night Train” radio show," and Gus Gossert of WCBS-FM's “The Doo Wop Shop” were selected as the hosts. For the house band, Bailin brought in many of the musicians who worked with the acts 1950s and appeared with the Alan Freed Orchestra. For these performances, they were conducted by Count Basie band alumni Earle Warren and included tenor sax players Big Al Sears and Budd Johnson. Both nights were professionally recorded and mixed for a double album release of the concert, later released on CD in 2000 by Goldisc Records. A one camera black and white film of the first night’s concert was shot but was never professionally produced or released. Several collectors were believed to have copies of the print.
Claude “Sonny” Johnson (1934-2002) was an original recording member of the Genies, a Long Beach, Long Island-based R&B vocal group who hit with the doo wop rocker “Who’s That Knocking”, in 1959, a tune Johnson had co-written. Three years later, Johnson was working as a house painter and singing for fun with a co-worker, Ronald Trone. The pair came to the attention of an agent who referred them to Big Top Records. “It was common back then for everybody to ask, ‘what’s your name?’, and there was a girl I would see in a grocery store that I wanted to meet,” Johnson recalled. “Finally, I told her I had seen her and wanted to know, ‘what’s your name?’ and the idea stuck with me.” The duo, christened Don & Juan, scored a top 10 hit with the song in early 1962. The duo recorded prolifically until 1967 but only managed one additional charted hit, “Magic Wand”.
At the time of this performance, Johnson, who was “Juan”, was singing with the first of several replacement “Dons”. Unfortunately, his identity is unknown. Trone, who suffered from substance abuse problems, died in Nassau, Long Island in 1982 at age 45.
“To be perfectly honest with you,” the original Don is not here,” Johnson told a backstage interviewer. “He’s out on Long Island and whatever he’s doing, that’s his business. I have a new Don, and I think he’s just as good and even better than the first Don. I want the name of Don & Juan to keep traveling.” By the late 1980s, Alexander “Buddy” Faison, who had sung with Johnson in the Genies, had assumed the role of Don. Johnson continued performing until his death in the fall of 2002.
In this footage, Don & Juan open their brief two-song set with their signature hit, “What’s Your Name?” and closed with “Chicken Necks”, a song Johnson had first written for the Genies and re-recorded with Trone for the flipside of “What’s Your Name?”.
If YOU can positively identify who is singing with Sonny "Juan" Johnson in this film, please let me know!!!!