Cadillacs Singer Made U-Turn to Doo-Wop Roots : Nostalgia: Earl (Speedo) Carroll and his group will appear Sunday at UCI.

As Earl (Speedo) Carroll tells it, he wasn’t pleased when one of his partners in the Cadillacs gave him the nickname that eventually became his calling card on the ‘50s R & B scene.

Carroll is the lead singer of the Cadillacs, who began in 1953 as a teen-age doo-wop vocal group harmonizing on Harlem street corners (the Cadillacs will headline Sunday in a “Roots of Rock and Roll” oldies program at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center that also features Larry Chance and the Earls, the Del Vikings, the Jive Five, Earl Lewis and the Channels, and host Machine Gun Kelly and the ‘G’ Men).

Speaking over the phone this week from his home in New York City, Carroll recalled that the Cadillacs were about to head home from a road trip when he first heard himself called “Speedo.”

“We were working an armory in Massachusetts, and there was a big (artillery) shell outside the armory,” the soft-spoken Carroll said. That gave Bobby Phillips, the Cadillacs’ bass singer, an idea for a new way to taunt Carroll, the lead tenor.

“He said, ‘Speedo, that’s your torpedo,’ ” Carroll recalled. “Bobby gave me the name then. I don’t know why, it was just off the top of his head. My head is kind of pointy, so he was teasing me.”

Carroll says he defended himself as best he could. “I said, ‘Listen, my name isn’t Speedo, it’s Earl.’ ”

As the Cadillacs drove back to New York, the group members quickly fell to tossing around that line and turning it into fodder for a new song refrain: “Well, they often call me Speedo, but my real name is Mr. Earl.” Released in 1955, “Speedoo” became the Cadillacs’ signature song. The lyrics contained no references to torpedo-shaped heads; Carroll instead bragged melodiously about being nicknamed “Speedo” in honor of his ability to make fast conquests among the opposite sex.

“You know, that was the thing,” he explained with a chuckle. “I thought I was somewhat of a playboy.”

Carroll said he has no idea why the published song title came out “Speedoo” instead of “Speedo,” which is how he pronounced it on the record.

The catchy “Speedoo,” and a 1959 novelty number, “Peek-A-Boo,” (which Carroll says was first rejected by the Coasters) were the two Cadillacs’ 45s to make Billboard’s Top 40. Such Cadillacs songs as “Gloria,” a soaring romantic ballad, and the lively “Zoom” also became doo-wop standards.

As the ‘50s ended, Carroll had a falling-out with the Cadillacs and took up a better offer: an invitation from the Coasters to fill a vacancy in their lineup. While the Cadillacs were known for pioneering the synchronized dance steps that came to be a distinguishing mark for most subsequent R & B vocal groups, Carroll believed that the Coasters were taking performance a step further with their play-acting on such comic hits as “Charlie Brown” and “Yakety Yak.”

“I always admired the Coasters because they were doing more than singing. They were acting, too, and that’s my thing,” said Carroll, whose performing trademark these days is a fancy white hat and cane. Besides, when Carroll joined the Coasters in 1959, they were on a hot streak of hits that carried over into the early ‘60s.

Carroll said he continued singing with the Coasters (or, at least, one of the many splinter versions of the group) until 1983. A few years before that, he and Bobby Phillips formed a new version of the Cadillacs as part of a Subaru advertising campaign in which various groups and individual celebrities named for various automotive models proclaimed their preference for Subaru.

Carroll says he never stopped performing, but in 1982 he found a steadier line of work--as a custodian at a Manhattan elementary school, PS 87, a job he has held ever since.

Carroll said he became friendly with custodians at the school and it turned into a job offer.

“They said, ‘Earl, do you want to try (working as a custodian)?’ I did, and I fell in love with the kids. It was something different. I could wear two hats at the same time.”

Carroll said some musical associates scoffed: “A guy in the Coasters asked me, ‘How can you tell people you’re a custodian, that you clean the school?’ But you have to have pride in what you do. It’s an honest job, the pay is fantastic, the benefits are out of sight, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know where I’m coming from. My head is screwed on right.”

Naomi Hill, the principal at PS 87, said Carroll is a big favorite with children.

“Most of (the custodians) just sweep and don’t even talk to the kids,” she said in a phone interview from her office. “But he’s wonderful with the children. As sweet as his tenor is, that’s how sweet his nature is. The kids always cluster around him. He calls them his ‘teeny-weenys.’ ”

Hill said it slowly dawned on school officials that they had an old-time rock ‘n’ roller in their midst. A few years ago, at the school administration’s suggestion, the television show “20/20” did a story on Carroll’s double life as a singer and janitor.

Last week, Carroll became perhaps the first full-time janitor ever to sing at Carnegie Hall, where he and the Cadillacs (the current group also includes original member Bobby Phillips and two more recent additions, John Brown and Gary K. Lewis) performed on a bill of ‘50s R & B vocal groups.

“When we started out, my thoughts were that if I could just get to the Apollo Theatre I’d be happy,” Carroll said.

Like a lot of early rockers, Carroll says, he and the Cadillacs were victimized by their naivete about the music business. On most of the band’s best-known songs (which are available now on compact disc in a recent Rhino Records compilation, “The Best of the Cadillacs”), the writing credit goes to Esther Navarro, who according to the Rhino compilation’s liner notes signed the group to its first recording contract.

Carroll says the group members, not Navarro, came up with songs like “Speedoo” and “Gloria.”

“We weren’t familiar with copyrighting and publishing at that time, and she took the credit for that,” he said. “What’s done was done. That’s water under the bridge, as far as I’m concerned. Life goes on, and I’m still in the business I love.”

“Roots of Rock and Roll” features the Cadillacs, Larry Chance and the Earls, the Del Vikings, the Jive Five, Earl Lewis and the Channels, and Machine Gun Kelly, starting Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Bren Events Center, off Bridge Road on the UC Irvine campus. Tickets: $20. Information: (714) 856-5000.