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In Doo-Wop Acappella: A Story of Street Corners, Echoes, and Three-Part Harmonies, scholar and musician Lawrence Pitilli details this too-little-explored area of 1950's - early 60's American culture. As Kenny Vance and the Planotones suggested in their classic song "Looking for an Echo," every doo-wop acapella group's mission - the search "for a sound, a place to be in harmony, a place we almost found" - was more than the story of street kids seeking recording glory. It is the tale of urban change, mass migrations, ethnic acculturation, a changing radio and recording industry, and the dynamics of cultural change in the "sounds" - sonic and linguistic - that every generation seeks to make and re-make for itself. In his study of this neglected period, Pitilli uncovers a rich musical tradition practiced largely by amateurs in an almost mythologized urban America.