One of the most distinctive hits of the early rock and roll era, Stay by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs was, at 1 minute and 36 seconds, the shortest record ever to make it to No 1 in the US pop charts. Into that abbreviated span it crammed so much incident – including a falsetto-led chorus, a slinky Latin-inflected rhythm, and Williams’s exultant shout of “Whoops! La-di-dah … ” on the fadeout – that it made an indelible impression on a generation of listeners hearing it for the first time in 1960.
A Black record rooted in the doo-wop tradition, it was soon being covered by white musicians. For the Hollies, from Manchester, it became their first Top 10 hit, released in 1963. The Four Seasons, from New Jersey, enjoyed a US Top 20 hit with the song in the same year. It was a cherished golden oldie by the time Jackson Browne, the Californian singer-songwriter, revived it in 1978 and took it back into the US and UK Top 20 before singing it as a duet with Bruce Springsteen in two No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden in 1979.
