Just imagine, as a teenager, sitting at home at age 16, seeing a pretty young blonde teenager who I once dated as the lead singer of a group called the “Angels” singing a hit song called, “’Till”, on American Bandstand, a new rock & roll TV show out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Shocked” wasn’t the word for my surprise .. But this was only the first of many surprises I was about to encounter later, in my twenty-one plus years in the music business.
I met “Linda Jankowski” (later named, “Linda Jansen”) at “Fun Fair”, a totally new concept in an indoor Bowling and Amusement complex located in Hillside, New Jersey. She and I were driven by a friend named Steve who was 17 years old. Steve and I doubled with our dates to a local drive-in movie. As a perfect gentleman, I never attempted a, “move” and since I was shy, myself! Unfortunately, I never saw her again.
Linda, who was also shy, after her stint with the Angels singing a second hit called, “Cry Baby Cry”, she went back to the real world, only to be seen as the lead singer of the revived singing group, “The Original Angels”, as she was supported in this new endeavor by her husband, “Sal Russo”. Incidentally, I couldn’t have known then that those original, “Angels” would, once again, cross my path with much bigger hit songs and recordings via a long 50+ year career in the music business! Peggy, the new lead of the original group and I wrote songs and I learned an awful lot from her outstanding talent.