R&b singer Richard Berry doo-wopped onto the LA music scene in 1953 as part of his high school group The Flairs, three years before Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers became a household name and two years before Little Richard howled across the Billboard pop charts. It was a time when radio was segregated, and r&b was branded “Race Music” as a warning label to pearl-clutching conservative white America and played on separate stations.