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Steve Applebaum, urban-harmony fanatic

STEVE APPLEBAUM spent much of his life haunting the numerous venues around the region where his beloved urban-harmony music groups were performing.

STEVE APPLEBAUM spent much of his life haunting the numerous venues around the region where his beloved urban-harmony music groups were performing.

To say Steve had a passion for this kind of music would be an understatement. He was a fanatic. Steve accumulated an enormous cache of records, many featuring the once-popular, but many largely forgotten, groups that practiced R&B, doo-wop and soul music, known as "urban harmony."

It was almost as though the different jobs he held to keep body and soul together were incidental to his restless search for musical harmony.

Steve died of cancer Tuesday. He was 63 and lived in the Northeast.

He was so knowledgeable about singing groups that whenever his friend Bob Bosco, a local music historian and writer, would write about some aggregation, he would check his facts with Steve.

"When I wrote any article, and they were based mostly on Philly acts, I always checked with him for accuracy, particularly where the dances were held and so forth," Bosco said. "His memory was infallible."

Steve told Bob that he started buying records at age 12. He and friends from Northeast High School started going to shows at the legendary Uptown Theater.

"This was in the early '60s so usually we were the only white kids in attendance," he told Bosco, "but we loved the music and always felt comfortable."

He saw such groups as the Ethics, the Twilighters, the Volcanos, Pookie Hudson & the Spaniels, Barbara Mason and others who sang the same kind of harmonized urban music he adored.

After he married his second wife, Carol, in the early '80s, they made a team scouting the East Coast, from Boston to Baltimore, for their kind of music.

They went to theaters and clubs to hear music by the Rainbows, the Universals, the Moonglows, the Flamingos, the Teenagers and others.

Steve was a big Jerry Blavat fan and went to most of the dances at the old Chez Vous and Wagner's Ballroom back in the day.

Even when he was ill a few months ago, he and Carol and some friends drove to Massachusetts to see the Cadillacs ("Speedo," a hit in 1956), the Cleftones ("String Around My Heart, also a hit in 1956) and the Swallows ("Dearest," a small hit in 1951).

"He was in heaven," Bosco said. "He told me how much fun he had, that he managed to stay in the same hotel as the acts and had breakfast with them.

"Plus, he was able to go to rehearsals and took fabulous pictures with his idols. He forgot for a few days just how poorly he felt."

Another longtime friend was Charlie Horner, who for years hosted the Urban Harmony show on WXPN (88.5-FM), which Steve co-produced.

"Steve Applebaum's knowledge of '50s R&B vocal groups was encyclopedic, and his love and support of our music was immeasurable," Charlie said.

Steve Applebaum, who also attended Temple University, worked for the last five years for a limousine company chauffeuring charitable fundraisers, and before that at Oteri's Bakery, at 5th and Rockland streets, for about 15 years.

"In recent months, Steve welcomed dozens of his close friends to his Northeast home," Bosco said. "While he was increasingly unable to interact with them as he did in the past, he regaled them with his remarkable DVD collection of shows long past, some going as far back as the 1950s and 1960s."

Besides his wife, Steve is survived by a daughter, Amy; a stepdaughter, Shari, and his first wife, Geri.

Services: Graveside service 1 p.m. Wednesday at Montefiore Cemetery, Church Street and Borbeck Avenue.