Lymon's troubles extended to others after his death.

In the 1980s, the Teenagers had resorted to using a female singer to imitate Lymon's prepubescent voice ; and Pearl McKinnon joined the band.

Frankie Laine referred to it as " rock and roll " but Lymon's extreme youth made the style appeal to a young and enthusiastic audience.

" That was followed by a hit cover of Frankie Lymon's " Why Do Fools Fall in Love.

Dennis Jackson of Columbus, Georgia, was one of the main influences in Lymon's life.

His personal donation of $ 500 helped start Lymon's career.

Lymon's marriage to Waters was not legal in the beginning, because she was still married to her first husband.

Taylor claimed to have married Lymon in Mexico in 1965, although their relationship ended several months later purportedly because of Lymon's drug habits.

Roulette Records expressed interest in releasing Lymon's records in conjunction with Big Apple and scheduled a recording session for February 28.

After R & B singer Diana Ross returned " Why Do Fools Fall in Love " to the Top Ten in 1981, a major controversy concerning Lymon's estate ensued.

Zola Taylor, Elizabeth Waters, and Emira Eagle each approached Morris Levy, the music impressario who retained possession of Lymon's copyrights and his royalties, claiming to be Lymon's rightful widow ; Lymon had neglected to divorce both Taylor and Waters.

The complex issue resulted in lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, and in 1986, the first of several court cases concerning the ownership of Lymon's estate began.

Lymon's marriage to Eagle, on the other hand, was properly documented as having taken place at the Beulah Grove Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, in 1967 ; however, the singer was still apparently twice-married and never divorced when he married Eagle.

The first decision was made in Waters ' favor ; Eagle appealed, and in 1989, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court reversed the original decision and awarded Lymon's estate to Eagle.

Lymon was never paid his songwriting royalties during his lifetime ; one result of Emira Eagle's legal victory was that Lymon's estate would finally begin receiving monetary compensation from his hit song's success.

Lymon's high-voiced sound is said to be a direct predecessor of the girl group sound, and the list of performers who name him as an influence include Michael Jackson, Ronnie Spector, Diana Ross, The Chantels, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Len Barry, and The Beach Boys, among others.

Lymon's music and story were re-introduced to modern audiences with Why Do Fools Fall in Love, a 1998 biographical film directed by Gregory Nava, also the director of the Selena biopic.

Why Do Fools Fall in Love tells a comedic, fictionalized version of Lymon's story from the points of view of his three wives as they battle in court for the rights to his estate.

The song Harlem Roulette by The Mountain Goats off their 2012 album Transcendental Youth contains reference to Frankie Lymon and has been stated by frontman John Darnielle to be about the last night of Lymon's life.

In 1986, three women claiming to be Lymon's widow filed a law suit in New York's Superior Court claiming the rights to the song.

Sea otters are vulnerable to oil spills and the indirect effects of overfishing ; the black-footed ferret, a relative of the European polecat, suffers from the loss of American prairie ; and wolverine populations are slowly declining because of habitat destruction and persecution.

Overall readership of most newspapers is slowly declining due to increasing competition from television and the Internet.

According to Rajiv Sethi, an economist at Columbia University, black-white segregation in housing is slowly declining for most metropolitan areas in the US Racial segregation or separation can lead to social, economic and political tensions.

Though declining slowly by the years, Syracuse maintained the status of capital of the Roman government of Sicily and seat of the praetor.

The cells do not reproduce in synchrony without explicit and continual prompting ( as in experiments with stalked bacteria ) and their exponential phase growth is often not ever a constant rate, but instead a slowly decaying rate, a constant stochastic response to pressures both to reproduce and to go dormant in the face of declining nutrient concentrations and increasing waste concentrations.

With the rise in relative popularity of non-superhero comics, as well as the popularity of Japanese comics ( manga ), this trend is slowly declining.

Private networks in Canada face the same competition, but their viewership is declining more slowly than CBC Television ’ s.

In either case, such growth is unlike most European countries, especially Germany, Russia, and Greece, or Asian countries such as Japan or South Korea, whose populations are slowly declining, and whose fertility rates are below replacement.

The LETS movement saw its peak around 2002 – 2003, but since then it has been declining slowly.

The area's population peaked in 1976 at 29, 448 and has been slowly declining since.

The Town is slowly declining economically, especially after the closing of its main store.

The town's slowly declining population, eroding tax base and shrinking class sizes have created financial challenges for the Park Falls School District, geographically the largest school district in Wisconsin.

Daily newspaper circulation is also slowly declining in America, partly due to the near-demise of two-newspaper towns, as the weaker newspapers in most cities have folded:

The second reason the trees are slowly declining is due to beech bark disease.

These marshes are slowly declining.

The maximum amount of heat or mass transfer that can be obtained is higher with countercurrent than cocurrent ( parallel ) exchange because countercurrent maintains a slowly declining difference or gradient ( usually temperature or concentration difference ).

At that time the position of the Hansabund was also slowly but steadily declining because of the changes in trade routes and the growing opposition against the Hanseatic League in the Northern European naval states.

Researchers specify that people in both their 20s and 70s tend to be happier than during midlife, although the measures of happiness change at different rates ( e. g. feelings of stress and anger tend to decline after age 20, worrying drops after age 50, enjoyment had been very slowly declining but finally starts to rise after 50, etc.

Due to declining profits and mounting debts, Western Union slowly began to divest itself of telecommunications-based assets starting in the early 1980s.

Its numbers seem to be slowly declining in the west of its range since the late 19th century, coincident with the expansion of human settlement and habitat conversion in the birds ' wintering areas ; the eastern Whistling Swan populations on the other hand seem to be increasing somewhat, and altogether its numbers seem to have slightly risen in the late 20th century ( the population was estimated at about 146, 000 in 1972 ).

The standard does not evaluate the behavior of the flashlight output during run time ; a regulated flashlight may run at only a slowly declining output and then abruptly cut off, but unregulated types may have steeply-declining light output after only a short time.

Although this is a species of least concern, it is slowly declining due to habitat destruction.

However, the average speed of Muni vehicles has been slowly declining over the years due to increasing vehicular congestion and is now merely per hour.

Golden-winged Warbler populations are slowly expanding northwards, but are generally declining across its range, most likely as a result of habitat loss and competition / interbreeding with the very closely related Blue-winged Warbler, Vermivora cyanoptera.