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3 episodes with i love you so
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Send us a Text Message.Welcome to Guess the Year! This is an interactive, competitive podcast series where you will be able to play along and compete against your fellow listeners. Here is how the scoring works:1 point: get the year correct within 10 years (e.g., you guess 1975 and it is between 1965-1985)4 points: get the year correct within 5 years (e.g., you guess 2004 and it is between 1999-2009)7 points: get the year correct within 2 years (e.g., you guess 1993 and it is between 1991-1995)10 points: get the year dead on!Guesses can be emailed to drandrewmay@gmail.com or texted using the link at the top of the show notes.I will read your scores out on the following episode, along with the scores of your fellow listeners! Please email your guesses to Andrew no later than 12pm EST on the day the next episode posts if you want them read out on the episode (e.g., if an episode releases on Monday, then I need your guesses by 12pm EST on Wednesday; if an episode releases on Friday, then I need your guesses by 12 pm EST on Monday). Note: If you don't get your scores in on time, they will still be added to the overall scores I am keeping. So they will count for the final scores - in other words, you can catch up if you get behind, you just won't have your scores read out on the released episode. All I need is your guesses (e.g., Song 1 - 19xx, Song 2 - 20xx, Song 3 - 19xx, etc.). Please be honest with your guesses! Best of luck!!The answers to today's ten songs can be found below. If you are playing along, don't scroll down until you have made your guesses. .....Have you made your guesses yet? If so, you can scroll down and look at the answers......Okay, answers coming. Don't peek if you haven't made your guesses yet!.....Intro song: Right Thurr by Chingy (2003)Song 1: I Love You So by The Walters (2014)Song 2: She Don't Know She's Beautiful by Sammy Kershaw (1993)Song 3: Everlong by Foo Fighters (1997)Song 4: Forever by Noah Kahan (2024)Song 5: Happy Trails by Roy Rogers & Dale Evans (1952)Song 6: I Wanna Be Sedated by Ramones (1978)Song 7: Are We Still Friends? by Tyler, The Creator (2019)Song 8: Superstar by Rainbow Kitten Surprise (2024)Song 9: Ghost by Justin Bieber (2021)Song 10: Shut Up My Moms Calling by Hotel Ugly (2020)
主播 | 李叔 小伙子 在2020年，日谈公园联合云听平台推出了系列节目《日谈时光机-听见1990》，节目中回顾了从1990年到2000年间华语乐坛的人和事。节目上线后受到了大家的广泛好评，“还未听够”的声音也一直未曾停歇。就在今天，《日谈时光机》以特别篇的形式再度重启，节目将把目光聚焦在具体的音乐人身上，本期节目中我们的主人公是：香港“四大天王”之一的巨星郭富城。 郭富城1965年出生于香港，1984年以舞蹈演员的身份出道，之后他演电视、演电影、出唱片、开演唱会，至今已在演艺界活跃整整四十年。小伙子作为郭富城的忠实歌迷，在节目中细细梳理了他入行以来的重要时刻：“郭富城头”如何风靡，“四大天王”是谁评选的，千禧年时期的重要转型是如何发生的，李叔、小伙子最喜欢的郭富城电影又是哪一部等话题，都将在节目中一一展现。 四十年的时间既漫长又短暂，多少人来了又走，多少人望不到回头路，而郭富城的长情陪伴却仿佛是一副隽永画面。在他身上，有意外、有坚持、有目标、有收获，也有人生千般滋味酿成的酒香。1990年的一声“对你爱不完”至今萦绕耳边，那是来时路，亦是未来途。 | Song List |01.郭富城 - 对你爱不完02.郭富城 - 动起来03.郭富城 - I LOVE YOU SO太爱你｜关注我们｜移步点击日谈公园品牌官网（链接：https://www.ritanbbpark.com），了解更多微信公众号：日谈公园微博：@日谈公园小红书：日谈公园即刻：日谈李小日B站：日谈公园| 商务合作 |欢迎发送邮件至 bbpark@ritanbbpark.com
Back 2 Back business on the beach in Ayia Napa with Nick Power & DJ RoMo. Dawn Talman – “Get Here” (DJ Beloved & DJ Spen Vocal) [Quantize Recordings] Mark Lewis – “Forever” (Vocal) [Real Flow Records] Paris Cesvette ft Scott Paynter – “I Love You So” (Main Vocal) [Quantize Recordings] Seamus Haji & Michael […] The post Soul Kandi Radio Show 29th Jul 2023 appeared first on SSRadio.
Don McLean is one of the great examples of a single song changing a life. Back in 1972, American Pie launched him into stardom - and became a defining song of the 20th century. That launched a multi-decade career which included hits like Vincent, Castles in the Air and I Love You So. Now - he's coming our way for a tour in May 2023. Don McLean joined the Mike Hosking Breakfast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Don McLean is one of the great examples of a single song changing a life. Back in 1972, American Pie launched him into stardom - and became a defining song of the 20th century. That launched a multi decade career which included hits like Vincent, Castles in the Air and I Love You So. And of course, we have the recent collaboration with Tyson Fury. Now - he's coming our way for a tour in May next year. Don McLean joined the Mike Hosking Breakfast. Ticket details Tuesday 2 May - Trafalgar Centre, Nelson Thursday 4 May - Civic Theatre, Invercargill Friday 5 May - Town Hall, Christchurch Sunday 7 May - Regent Theatre, Palmerston Nnorth Tuesday 9 May - Town Hall, Auckland Tickets on sale Friday 11 November from 9.00am from oneworldentertainment.co.nzSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The parking situation in Chicago, the truest art form, and drive-thru liquor stores. Mj Tirabassi (The Walters, Corduroy) "A true phenomenon in the world of indie-pop, The Walters first burst onto the scene in 2014 with “I Love You So” -- a self-released smash that quickly brought the Chicago-bred five-piece massive streaming success, all on the strength of their heart-on-sleeve songwriting and harmony-driven sound. After building a global fanbase and touring all over the country, The Walters began an indefinite hiatus in 2017, signing off with a crowd-thrilling set at Lollapalooza 2017. Just as they started plotting their return, the band found themselves thrown back into the pop zeitgeist when “I Love You So” exploded on TikTok in 2021, a whirlwind turn of events that's generated more 10 billion global TikTok views to date. Along with reaching platinum status and climbing the charts at Top 40 radio—in addition to surpassing 480 million streams on Spotify (and still growing week after week) and hitting #1 in over seven countries on the Viral 50—“I Love You So” soon led to The Walters' signing with Warner Records. Their debut release for the label, the six-track EP Try Again marks a major triumph for lead vocalist Luke Olson, lead guitarist Walter Kosner, rhythm guitarist/vocalist MJ Tirabassi, bassist Danny Wells, and drummer Charles Ekhaus, spotlighting the band's newly sharpened songcraft while retaining their homespun charm. Produced by Ekhaus and spiked with elements of surf-pop, classic 70's sounds and gently inventive alt-rock, Try Again mines inspiration from timeless artists like The Beach Boys, Elliot Smith and Neil Young, expertly preserving the carefree intimacy that makes The Walters so magnetic. Newly based in L.A., The Walters are now gearing up for a debut full length album that fully delivers on their undeniable promise as a musical and creative force." Excerpt from https://yourwalters.com/about The Walters: Bandcamp: https://thewalters.bandcamp.com/music Instagram: @thewalters_ Website: https://yourwalters.com Merch: https://yourwalters.com/categories/all The Vineyard: Instagram: @thevineyardpodcast Website: https://www.thevineyardpodcast.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSn17dSz8kST_j_EH00O4MQ/videos
I Love You So by Maher Zain Courtesy : Maher Zain
Umsjón: Lovísa Rut Kristjánsdóttir Alls konar skemmtileg tónlist í fyrsta Popplandi ársins 2022, nýtt og gamalt efni í bland og plata vikunnar kynnt til leiks sem er platan What I Like Do To með hljómsveitinni Gróu og plata dagsins er platan KEYS, ný plata með bandarísku söngkonunni Aliciu Keys. Jónas Sig - Þyrnigerðið Roxy Music - Love is The Drug U2 - Your Song Saved My Life Hjálmar - Kona ft. Kári Stef Jón Jónsson - Fyrirfram Tame Impala - No Choice Sucks To Be You Nigel - Raflost Between Mountains - Little Sunny Flower Courtney Barnett - Write a List of Things To Look Forward To Gróa - Ég Skal Bíða Eftir Þér Mitski - The Only Heartbreaker Tears For Fears - No Small Thing Borko - Haustpeysan Stan Getz - The Girl From Ipanema Khruangbin - B-Side OMAM - King & Lionheart Egó - Mescalin Daníel Ágúst - Dansarinn Laufey Lín - Like The Movies Sigrún Stella - Baby Blue Sykurmolarnir - Regina Quarashi - Mr. Jinx Beach House - Once Twice Melody Adele - Easy On Me Alicia Keys - Best of Me Alicia Keys - LALA Bergrós Halla - Slow Me Down Silk Sonic - Smokin? Out The Window Coldplay - Let Somebody Go ft. Selena Gomez Madonna - Like a Prayer Vök - Spend The Love Ceasetone, Rakel & JóiPé - Ég Var að Spá Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus The Perfect Weekender - Keeper of Cool Snorri Helgason - Ingileif Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again Tracy Chapman - Fast Car Caroline Polacheck - Bunny Is A Rider Arlo Parks - Caroline Wet Leg - Too Late Júníús Meyvant - Ástarsæla Unnsteinn & Vigdís - Ef Þú Hugsar Eins og Ég (Áramótaskaup 2021)? Egill Sæbjörnsson - I Love You So
Umsjón: Lovísa Rut Kristjánsdóttir Alls konar skemmtileg tónlist í fyrsta Popplandi ársins 2022, nýtt og gamalt efni í bland og plata vikunnar kynnt til leiks sem er platan What I Like Do To með hljómsveitinni Gróu og plata dagsins er platan KEYS, ný plata með bandarísku söngkonunni Aliciu Keys. Jónas Sig - Þyrnigerðið Roxy Music - Love is The Drug U2 - Your Song Saved My Life Hjálmar - Kona ft. Kári Stef Jón Jónsson - Fyrirfram Tame Impala - No Choice Sucks To Be You Nigel - Raflost Between Mountains - Little Sunny Flower Courtney Barnett - Write a List of Things To Look Forward To Gróa - Ég Skal Bíða Eftir Þér Mitski - The Only Heartbreaker Tears For Fears - No Small Thing Borko - Haustpeysan Stan Getz - The Girl From Ipanema Khruangbin - B-Side OMAM - King & Lionheart Egó - Mescalin Daníel Ágúst - Dansarinn Laufey Lín - Like The Movies Sigrún Stella - Baby Blue Sykurmolarnir - Regina Quarashi - Mr. Jinx Beach House - Once Twice Melody Adele - Easy On Me Alicia Keys - Best of Me Alicia Keys - LALA Bergrós Halla - Slow Me Down Silk Sonic - Smokin? Out The Window Coldplay - Let Somebody Go ft. Selena Gomez Madonna - Like a Prayer Vök - Spend The Love Ceasetone, Rakel & JóiPé - Ég Var að Spá Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus The Perfect Weekender - Keeper of Cool Snorri Helgason - Ingileif Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again Tracy Chapman - Fast Car Caroline Polacheck - Bunny Is A Rider Arlo Parks - Caroline Wet Leg - Too Late Júníús Meyvant - Ástarsæla Unnsteinn & Vigdís - Ef Þú Hugsar Eins og Ég (Áramótaskaup 2021)? Egill Sæbjörnsson - I Love You So
《蘇Cafe》本期节目的嘉宾是网易云音乐用户@Noutopia 。欢迎你在网易云音乐搜索关注他的歌单。喜欢节目吗？请点赞评论，转发分享，鼓励小"叔叔"加油更新。《曲目清单》请关注 "DJsusu苏酱" 建立在网易云音乐APP的主播歌单《蘇Cafe》。01:42 吉田美奈子《Light'n Up》07:13 久保田早紀《異邦人》（异邦人）11:30 大橋純子《I Love You So》16:41 Junk Fujiyama《星屑のパイプライン》（星尘通道）《Disclaimer》本节目基于2021年8月1日平台版权框架发布，音频数据存储在网易云音乐。查看节目原文：https://music.163.com/m/program?id=2490471763
Mod Marty shares his birthday with On Target! In this milestone episode On Target turns 7 as Marty turns..... more than that ;). Join us for an hour of the sound that makes Mods tick and fuels On Target every week. ALL LINKS: linktr.ee/mod.marty ----------------------------------------------- The Playlist Is: "Chantilly Lace" Shorty Long - Soul "Got My Mojo Working" Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks - Hawk "Darlin' I Love You So" The Wallace Brothers - Sims "Mr. Pitiful" Otis Redding - Atlantic "You're Doing With Her - When It Should Be Me" Rhetta Hughes - Tetragrammaton "Uhh" Dyke & The Blazers - Original Sound "Get Out My Life Woman" Five D - Sir John A. "Outta Sight" Them - Them Again (LP only) "All Night Long" The Dave Clark Five - Columbia "Number One Guy" The Ferris Wheel (featuring Linda Lewis) - Philips "You're Doing Something Awfully Good" Jackye Owens - Groovy "Am I Falling In Love" Maxine Brown - ABC - Paramount "Helpless" Kim Weston - Gordy "I Feel An Urge Coming On" Jo Armstead - Giant "Talkin' 'Bout You Baby" The Mighty Marvellows - ABC "Try Too Hard" The Dave Clark Five - Columbia "Booga Dee" Mike Felix - Pye "Stand By Me" Gregory Carroll - Epic "Moon Hop" Derrick Morgan - Crab "Little Did You Know" The Techniques - Treasure Isle "Cotton Tree" Tommy McCook & the Skatalites - Ska Beat
Gaea Star Crystal Radio Hour #396 is an hour of visionary acoustic improv music featuring the Gaea Star Band with Mariam Massaro on vocals, native flute, acoustic guitar and shrudi box, Bob Sherwood on piano, Craig Harris on congas and native drums and Robin Rooney on vocals and djimbe. Recorded live at Singing Brook Studio in Worthington, Massachusetts in May 2020, today’s show begins with the relaxed and very evocative “I Love You So”, a powerful and plaintive song of praise and love. “Peaceful Harmony As You Open Your Wings” is a stately, gospel-influenced piece with fine vocals from Mariam and Robin and “Right Before Our Eyes” is a driving rock song about transformation in our time with dramatic piano from Bob and compelling vocals from Mariam. “Go Deep” is a little swiss watch of a song with call and response vocals from Mariam and Robin and an expansive piano figure from Bob and “Andaya Nayana” closes the show with a beautiful, meditative groove built on Mariam’s beautiful vocals and shrudi box.Learn more about Mariam here: http://www.mariammassaro.com
Umsjón: Lovísa Rut Kristjánsdóttir Góð stemning í Popplandi þennan sólríka miðvikudag, allskonar ný íslensk tónlist og erlend, Ásgeir Trausti kíkti við, förum yfir þessar helstu tónlistarfréttir og plata vikunnar á sínum stað sem er í höndum Febrúar og heitir About Time. Jón Jónsson - Dýrka Mest Charlie Puth & Stella Lennon - Summer Feelings Doja Cat - Say So Aron Hannes - Girl Like You Ásgeir - Minning Mannakorn - Garún Beta - Do It On My Own Arlo Parks - Black Dog Febrúar - The Deep Of it All Pet Shop Boys - What Have I Done To Deserve This Jason Mraz - Look For The Good Alfie Templeman - Happiness In Liquid Form The Eagles - One Of These Night Mafni & Svartfell - Draumur Jordan Mackampa - What Am I Góss - Sólarsamba Kristín Sesselja - What Would I Do Without You Dua Lipa - Break My Heart Fleetwood Mac - Seven Wonders Guðmundur R. - Sameinaðar Sálir The Weeknd - In Your Eyes Lionel Ritche - All Night Long Baldur Viggóson Dýrfjörð - Gleymmérei Stefán Hilmarsson - Dagur Nýr Skuldapadda - Wild Card Hipsumhaps - Fuglar Friðrik Ómar & Jógvan - Sveitalíf Jamiroquai - Space Cowboy Febrúar - Ghost Stories Sóley Stefáns - Smashed Birds The Killers - Fire In Bone Patti Smith - Because The Night Rihanna - Umbrella Ezekiel Carl - Líður Svo Vel Bob Marley - Stir It Up Celebs - Kannski Hann Egill Sæbjörnsson - I Love You So
Umsjón: Lovísa Rut Kristjánsdóttir Góð stemning í Popplandi þennan sólríka miðvikudag, allskonar ný íslensk tónlist og erlend, Ásgeir Trausti kíkti við, förum yfir þessar helstu tónlistarfréttir og plata vikunnar á sínum stað sem er í höndum Febrúar og heitir About Time. Jón Jónsson - Dýrka Mest Charlie Puth & Stella Lennon - Summer Feelings Doja Cat - Say So Aron Hannes - Girl Like You Ásgeir - Minning Mannakorn - Garún Beta - Do It On My Own Arlo Parks - Black Dog Febrúar - The Deep Of it All Pet Shop Boys - What Have I Done To Deserve This Jason Mraz - Look For The Good Alfie Templeman - Happiness In Liquid Form The Eagles - One Of These Night Mafni & Svartfell - Draumur Jordan Mackampa - What Am I Góss - Sólarsamba Kristín Sesselja - What Would I Do Without You Dua Lipa - Break My Heart Fleetwood Mac - Seven Wonders Guðmundur R. - Sameinaðar Sálir The Weeknd - In Your Eyes Lionel Ritche - All Night Long Baldur Viggóson Dýrfjörð - Gleymmérei Stefán Hilmarsson - Dagur Nýr Skuldapadda - Wild Card Hipsumhaps - Fuglar Friðrik Ómar & Jógvan - Sveitalíf Jamiroquai - Space Cowboy Febrúar - Ghost Stories Sóley Stefáns - Smashed Birds The Killers - Fire In Bone Patti Smith - Because The Night Rihanna - Umbrella Ezekiel Carl - Líður Svo Vel Bob Marley - Stir It Up Celebs - Kannski Hann Egill Sæbjörnsson - I Love You So
Episode sixty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Maybe” by the Chantels, and covers child stardom, hymns in Latin, and how to get discovered twice in one day. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Don’t You Just Know It” by Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The only book actually about the Chantels is barely a book — Maybe, Renee Minus White’s self-published memoir, is more of a pamphlet, and it only manages even to get to that length with a ton of padding — things like her fruit cake recipe. Don’t expect much insight from this one. A big chunk of the outline of the story comes from Girl Groups; Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World by John Clemente, which has a chapter on the Chantels. This article on Richie Barrett’s career filled in much of the detail. My opinions of George Goldner come mostly from reading two books — Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz, which talks about Leiber and Stoller’s attempts to go into business with Goldner, and Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy by Richard Carlin. There are innumerable collections of the small number of recordings the Chantels released — this one is as good as any. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? ERRATUM: I refer to “Summer Love” rather than “Summer’s Love” Transcript We’ve already seen one girl group, when we looked at “Mr Lee” by the Bobbettes, but already within a few months of the Bobbettes’ breakout hit, other groups were making waves with the public. The Chantels were one such group, and one of the best. They were pretty much exact contemporaries of the Bobbettes – so much so that when the Bobbettes were forming, they decided against calling themselves the Chanels, because it would be too similar. The Chantels, too, changed their name early on. They were formed by a group of girls at a Catholic school – St Anthony of Padua school in the Bronx – and were originally named “the Crystals”, but they found that another group in the area had already named themselves that, and so they changed it. (This other group was not the same one as the famous Crystals, who didn’t form until 1961). They decided to name themselves after St Francis de Chantal after their school won a basketball game against St. Francis de Chantal school – when they discovered that the Chantal in the saint’s name was from the same root as the French word for singing, it seemed to be too perfect for them. Originally there were around a dozen members of the group, but they slowly whittled themselves down to five girls, between the ages of fourteen and seventeen – Arlene Smith, Lois Harris, Sonia Goring, Jackie Landry, and Renee Minus. According to Renee (who now goes by her married name Renee Minus White) the group’s name came from a brainstorming session between her, Lois, Jackie, and Sonia, with Arlene agreeing to it later – this may, though, have more to do with ongoing disputes between Arlene and the other group members than with what actually happened. They were drawn together by their mutual love of R&B vocal groups – a particular favourite record of theirs was “In Paradise” by the Cookies, a New York-based girl group who had started recording a few years earlier, and whose records were produced by Jesse Stone, but who wouldn’t have any major chart successes for several years yet: [Excerpt: The Cookies, “In Paradise”] So they were R&B singers, but the fact that these were Catholic schoolgirls, specifically, points to something about the way their music developed, and about early rock and roll more generally. We’ve talked about the influence of religious music on rock and roll before, but the type of religious music that had influenced it up until this point had generally come from two sources – either the black gospel music that was created by and for worshippers in African-American Pentecostal denominations, or the euphemistically-named “Southern Gospel” that is usually made by white Pentecostals, and by Southern Baptists. These denominations, in 2020, have a certain amount of institutional power – especially the Southern Baptists, who are now one of the most important power blocs within the Republican Party. But in the 1950s, those were the churches of the poorest, most despised, people. By geography, class, and race, the people who attended those churches were overwhelmingly those who would be looked down on by the people who had actual power in the USA. The churches that people with power overwhelmingly went to at the time were those which had been established in Western Europe – the so-called mainline Protestant churches – and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church. The music of those churches had very little influence on rock and roll. It makes sense that this would be the case – obviously underprivileged people’s music would be influenced by the churches that underprivileged people went to, rather than the ones that privileged people attended, and rock and roll was, at this point, still a music made almost solely by people who were underprivileged on one or more axis – but it’s still worth pointing out, because for the first time we’re going to look at a group who – while they were also underprivileged, being black – were influenced by Catholic liturgical music, rather than gospel or spiritual music. Because there’s always been a geographical variation, as well as one based on class and race, in what religions dominate in the US. While evangelical churches predominate in the southern states, in the North-East there were, especially at the time we’re talking about, far more mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish people. The Chantels were a New York group, and it’s notable that New York groups were far more likely to have been influenced by Catholic or Episcopalian liturgical music, and choral music in general, than vocal groups from other areas. This may go some way towards explaining Johnny Otis’ observation that all the LA vocal groups he knew had pitching problems, while the New York groups could sing in tune – choir practice may have made the New York groups more technically adept (though to my own ears, the New York groups tend to make much less interesting music than the LA groups). Certainly when it comes to the Chantels, the girls had all sung in the choir, and had been taught to read music and play the piano, although a couple of them had eventually been kicked out of the choir for singing “that skip and jump music”, as the nuns referred to rock and roll. Indeed, at their very first appearance at the Apollo, after getting a record contract, one of the two songs they performed was a Catholic hymn, in Latin – “Terra Tremuit”. That piece remains in the group’s repertoire to this day, and while they’ve never formally recorded it, there are videos on YouTube of them performing it: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Terra Tremuit”, soundcheck recording] The story of how the Chantels were discovered, as it’s usually told, is one that leaves one asking more questions than it answers. The group were walking down the street, when they passed a rehearsal room. A young man spotted them on the street and asked them if they were singers, since they were dressed identically. When they said “yes”, he took them up to a rehearsal studio to hear them. The rehearsal studio happened to be in the Brill Building. We’ve not mentioned the Brill Building so far, because we’re only just getting to the point where it started to have an impact on rock and roll music, but it was a building on Broadway – 1619 Broadway to be exact – which was the home of dozens, even hundreds at times, of music publishers, record labels, and talent agencies. There were a few other nearby buildings, most notably 1650 Broadway, which became the home of Aldon Music, which often get lumped in with the Brill Building when most people talk about it, and when I refer to the Brill Building in future episodes I’ll be referring to the whole ecosystem of music industries that sprang up on Broadway in the fifties and early sixties. But in this case, they were invited into the main Brill Building itself. They weren’t just being invited into some random room, but into the heart of the music industry on the East Coast of America. This was the kind of thing that normally only happens in films – and relatively unrealistic films at that. So far, so cliched, though it’s hard to believe that that kind of thing ever really happened. But then something happened that isn’t in any of the cliches – the girls noticed, through the window, that three members of the Valentines, one of their favourite groups, were walking past. We’ve mentioned the Valentines a few months ago, when talking about Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and we talked about how Richie Barrett, as well as being a singer and songwriter in the group, was also a talent scout for George Goldner’s record labels. The Valentines had released several records, but none of them had had anything but local success, though records like “The Woo Woo Train” have since become cult favourites among lovers of 1950s vocal group music: [Excerpt: The Valentines, “The Woo Woo Train”] The girls loved the Valentines, and they also knew that Barrett was important in the industry. They decided to run out of the rehearsal room and accost the group members. They told Richie Barrett that they were a singing group, and when he didn’t believe them, they burst into song, singing what would later become the B-side of their first record, “The Plea”: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “The Plea”] That song was one they’d written themselves, sort of. It was actually based on a song that a group of boys they knew, who sang in a street-corner group, had made up. That song had been called “Baby”, but the Chantels had taken it and reworked it into their own song. The version that they finally recorded, which we just heard, was further revamped by Barrett. Barrett was impressed, and said he’d be in touch. But then he never bothered to get in contact with them again, until Jackie Landry managed to obtain his home address and get in touch with him. She got the address through a friend of hers, a member of the Teenchords, a vocal group fronted by Frankie Lymon’s brother Lewis, who recorded for one of George Goldner’s labels, releasing tracks like “Your Last Chance”: [Excerpt: Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, “Your Last Chance”] They tracked down Barrett, and he agreed to try to get them signed to a record deal. That story has many, many, problems, and frankly doesn’t make any kind of sense, but it’s the accepted history you’ll find in books that deal with the group. According to Renee Minus White’s autobiography, though, each of the girls has a different recollection of how they first met Barrett – in her version, they simply waited at the stage door to get autographs, and told him they were a singing group. My guess is that the accepted story is an attempt to reconcile a bunch of irreconcilable versions of the story. Whatever the true facts as to how they started to work with Richie Barrett, the important thing is that they did end up working with him. Barrett was impressed by their ability not just to sing the “oohs” and “aahs”, but the complex polyphonic parts that they sang in choir. For the most part, doo-wop groups either sang simple block chords behind a lead singer, or they all sang their own moving parts that worked more or less in isolation – the bass singer would sing his part, the falsetto singer his, and so on. I say “his” because pretty much all doo-wop groups at this point were male. They were all singing the same song, but doing their own thing. The Chantels were different – they were singing block harmonies, but they weren’t singing simple chords, but interlocking moving lines. What they were doing ended up being closer to the so-called “modern harmony” of jazz vocal groups like the Four Freshmen: [Excerpt: The Four Freshmen, “It’s a Blue World”] But where other groups singing in that style had no R&B background, the Chantels were able to sing a rhythm and blues song with the best of them. Barrett signed the group to End Records, one of George Goldner’s stable of record labels. But before recording them, he spent weeks rehearsing them, and teaching them how to perform on stage. The first record they made, when they finally went into the studio, was a song primarily written by Arlene Smith, who also sang lead, though the composition is credited to the girls as a group. And listening to it, you have in this record for the first time the crystallisation of the girl-group sound, the sound that would later become a hallmark of people like Phil Spector. [Excerpt: The Chantels, “He’s Gone”] It’s a song about adolescent anguish, written by and for adolescents, and it has a drama and angst to it that none of the other records by girl groups had had before – it’s obviously inspired by groups like the Penguins and the Platters, but there’s a near-hysteria to the performance that hadn’t really been heard before. That strained longing is something that would appear in almost every girl-group record of the early sixties, and you can hear very clear echoes of the Chantels in records by people like the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Shangri-Las. It’s a far cry from “Mr. Lee”. Most of the time, when people talk about the Chantels’ vocals, they – rightly – draw attention to Arlene Smith’s leads, which are astonishing. But listen to the a capella intro, which is repeated as the outro, and you can hear those choir-trained voices – this was a vocal group, not just a singer and some cooing background vocalists: [Excerpt: the Chantels, “He’s Gone”] As well as being pioneers in the girl-group sound, the Chantels were also one of the first self-contained vocal groups to play their own instruments on stage. This was not something that they did at first, but something that Barrett encouraged them to do. Some of them had instrumental training already, and those who didn’t were taught how to play by Barrett. Sonia and Jackie played guitar, Arlene bass, Lois piano, and Renee the drums. They even, according to Renee’s autobiography, recorded an instrumental by themselves, called “The Chantels’ Rock”. Almost immediately, the girls were pulled out of Catholic school and instead sent to Quintano’s School for Young Professionals, the same school that the Teenagers went to, which was set up to accommodate children who had to go on tour. But there was one exception. Lois’ mother would not let her transfer schools, or go on tour with the group. She could sing with them in the studio, and when they were performing in New York, but until she graduated high school that was all. In many ways her mother was right to be worried, or at least Richie Barrett believed she had good reason to be. They started touring as soon as “He’s Gone” came out, but the girls, at the time, resented Barrett, who came along on tour with them, because he would lock them in the dressing rooms and only let them out for the show itself, not allowing them to socialise with the other acts. In retrospect, given that they were girls in their teens, and they were touring with large numbers of male musicians, many of them with reputations as sexual predators, Barrett’s protectiveness (and his apparent threats to several of these men) was probably justified. For example, in early 1958, the girls were sent out on a tour that became legendary – and given its lineup it’s easy to see why. As well as the Chantels, the tour had Frankie Lymon, Danny & the Juniors, the Diamonds, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Larry Williams, Buddy Holly, and as alternating headliners Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. We’ll talk more about that tour in the next couple of episodes, but aside from the undoubted musical quality of the performers, that was simply not a group of people who young women were going to be safe around (though several of the individuals there were harmless enough). One could, of course, argue that young girls shouldn’t be put in that situation at all, but that never seems to have occurred to anyone involved. By the time of that tour, they’d recorded what would become by far their biggest hit, their second single, “Maybe”: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Maybe”] “Maybe” was a song that was originally co-credited to George Goldner and an unknown “Casey”, but for which Richie Barrett later sued and won co-writing credit. Barrett was presumably the sole writer, though some have claimed that Arlene Smith was an uncredited co-writer – something the other Chantels deny. It was very much in the mould of “He’s Gone”, and concentrated even more on Smith’s lead vocal, and that lead vocal took an immense amount of work to obtain. In total they recorded fifty-two takes of the song before they got one that sounded right, and Smith was crying in frustration when she recorded the last take. “Maybe” reached number fifteen on the pop charts, and number two on the R&B charts, and it became a classic that has been covered by everyone from Janis Joplin to the Three Degrees. The group’s next two records, “Every Night (I Pray)” and “I Love You So”, both charted as well, though neither of them was a massive hit in the way that “Maybe” was. But after this point, the hits dried up – something that wasn’t helped by the fact that George Goldner went through a phase of having his artists perform old standards, which didn’t really suit the Chantels’ voices. But they’d had four hit records in a row, which was enough for them to get an album released. The album, which just featured the A- and B-sides of their first six singles, was originally released with a photo of the group on the front. That version was quickly withdrawn and replaced with a stock image of two white teenagers at a jukebox, just in case you’ve forgotten how appallingly racist the music industry was at this point. They continued releasing singles, but they were also increasingly being used as backing vocalists for other artists produced by Barrett. He had them backing Jimmy Pemberton on “Rags to Riches”: [Excerpt: Jimmy Pemberton, “Rags to Riches”] And they also backed Barrett himself on “Summer Love”, which got to the lower reaches of the top one hundred in pop, and made the top thirty in the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett and the Chantels, “Summer Love”] There had also been some attempts to give Arlene a separate career outside the Chantels, as she duetted with Willie Wilson on “I’ve Lied”: [Excerpt: Willie Wilson and the Tunemasters, “I’ve Lied”] Unfortunately, after a year of success followed by another year of comparative failure, the group discovered that their career was at an end, thanks to George Goldner. We’ve talked about Goldner before, most significantly in the episode on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”, but he had an almost unique combination of strong points and flaws as a record executive. His strongest point was his musical taste. Nobody who knew him respected his taste, but everyone respected his ability to pick a hit, and both of these things sprang from the same basic reason – he had exactly the same musical tastes as a typical teenage girl from the period. Now, it’s an unfortunate fact that the tastes of teenage girls are looked down upon by almost anyone with any power in the music industry, because of the almost universal misogyny in the industry, but the fact remains that teenage girls were becoming a powerful demographic as customers, and anyone who could accurately predict the music that they were going to buy would have a tremendous advantage when it came to making money in the music industry. And Goldner definitely made himself enough money over the years, because he engaged in all the usual practices of ripping off his artists – who were, very often, teenagers themselves. He would credit himself as the writer of their songs, he would engage in shady accounting practices, and all the rest. But Goldner’s real problem was his gambling addiction, and so there’s a pattern that happens over and again throughout the fifties and sixties. Goldner starts up a new record label, discovers some teenage and/or black act, and makes them into overnight stars. Goldner then starts getting vast amounts of money, because he’s ripping off his new discoveries. Goldner starts gambling with that money, loses badly, gets into debt with the mob, and goes to Morris Levy for a loan in order to keep his business going. Levy and his Mafia friends end up taking over the whole company, in exchange for writing off the debts. Levy replaces Goldner’s writing credits on the hits with his own name, stops paying the artists anything at all, and collects all the money from the hits for the rest of his life, while Goldner is left with nothing and goes off to find another bunch of teenagers. And so End Records met the same fate as all of Goldner’s other labels. It went bankrupt, and closed down, owing the Chantels a great deal of money. After End records closed, the Chantels wanted to carry on – but Arlene Smith decided she wanted to go solo instead. She recorded a couple of singles with a new producer, Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Arlene Smith, “Love, Love, Love”] And she also recorded another single with Richie Barrett as producer: [Excerpt: Arlene Smith, “Everything”] At first, that looked like it would be the end of the Chantels, but then a year or so later Richie Barrett got back in touch with the girls. He had some ideas for records that would use the Chantels sound. By this point, Lois had decided that she was going to retire from the music business, but Jackie, Renee, and Sonia agreed to restart their career. There was a problem, though – they weren’t sure what to do without their lead singer. Barrett told them he would sort it out for them. Barrett had been working with another girl group, the Veneers, for a couple of years. They’d released a few singles on Goldner-owned labels, like “Believe Me (My Angel)”: [Excerpt: The Veneers, “Believe Me (My Angel)”] And they’d also been the regular backing group Barrett used for sessions for male vocalists like Titus Turner: [Excerpt: Titus Turner, “The Return of Stagolee”] But they’d never had a huge amount of success. So Barrett got their lead singer, Annette Swinson, to replace Arlene. To make it up to the Veneers, he got the rest of them a job as Jackie Wilson’s backing vocalists. He changed Annette’s name to Annette Smith, and the new lineup of the group had a few more hits, with “Look in My Eyes”, which went to number six on the R&B charts and number fourteen on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Look in My Eyes”] They also backed Richie Barrett on an answer record to Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack”, titled “Well I Told You”, which made the top thirty on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett and the Chantels, “Well I Told You”] This second phase of the Chantels’ career was successful enough that Goldner, who no longer had the girls under contract, got one of his record labels to put out a new Chantels album, featuring a few tracks he owned by them that hadn’t been on their first album. To fill out the album, and make it sound more like the current group, he also took a few of the Veneers’ singles and stuck them on it under the Chantels’ name. Annette would stay with the group for a while, but the sixties saw several lineup changes, as the group stopped having chart successes, and members temporarily dropped out to have children or pursue careers. However, Sonia and Renee remained in place throughout, as the two constant members of the group (though Sonia also moonlit for a while in the sixties with another group Richie Barrett was looking after at the time, the Three Degrees). By the mid-nineties, they had reformed with all of the original members except Arlene, who was replaced by Ami Ortiz, who can do a very creditable imitation of Arlene’s lead vocals. Sadly Jackie Landry died in 1997, but the other four continued to tour, though only intermittently in between holding down day jobs. Almost uniquely, the Chantels are still touring with the majority of their original members. Sonia Goring Wilson, Renee Minus White, and Lois Harris Powell still tour with the group, and they have several tour dates booked in for 2020, mostly on the east coast of the US. Arlene Smith spent many years touring solo and performing with her own rival “Chantels” group. She has very occasionally reunited with the rest of the Chantels for one-off performances, but there appears to be bad blood between them. She kept performing into the middle of the last decade, and as of 2018, her Facebook page said she was planning a comeback, but no further details have emerged. The Chantels never received either the money or the acclaim that they deserved, given their run of chart successes and the way that they pioneered the girl group sound. But more than sixty years on from their biggest hits, four of the five of them are still alive, and apparently healthy, happy, and performing when the opportunity arises, and three of them are still good friends. Given the careers of most other stars of the era, especially the other child stars, that’s as close to a happy ending as a group gets.
Episode sixty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Maybe” by the Chantels, and covers child stardom, hymns in Latin, and how to get discovered twice in one day. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Don’t You Just Know It” by Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The only book actually about the Chantels is barely a book — Maybe, Renee Minus White’s self-published memoir, is more of a pamphlet, and it only manages even to get to that length with a ton of padding — things like her fruit cake recipe. Don’t expect much insight from this one. A big chunk of the outline of the story comes from Girl Groups; Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World by John Clemente, which has a chapter on the Chantels. This article on Richie Barrett’s career filled in much of the detail. My opinions of George Goldner come mostly from reading two books — Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz, which talks about Leiber and Stoller’s attempts to go into business with Goldner, and Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy by Richard Carlin. There are innumerable collections of the small number of recordings the Chantels released — this one is as good as any. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? ERRATUM: I refer to “Summer Love” rather than “Summer’s Love” Transcript We’ve already seen one girl group, when we looked at “Mr Lee” by the Bobbettes, but already within a few months of the Bobbettes’ breakout hit, other groups were making waves with the public. The Chantels were one such group, and one of the best. They were pretty much exact contemporaries of the Bobbettes – so much so that when the Bobbettes were forming, they decided against calling themselves the Chanels, because it would be too similar. The Chantels, too, changed their name early on. They were formed by a group of girls at a Catholic school – St Anthony of Padua school in the Bronx – and were originally named “the Crystals”, but they found that another group in the area had already named themselves that, and so they changed it. (This other group was not the same one as the famous Crystals, who didn’t form until 1961). They decided to name themselves after St Francis de Chantal after their school won a basketball game against St. Francis de Chantal school – when they discovered that the Chantal in the saint’s name was from the same root as the French word for singing, it seemed to be too perfect for them. Originally there were around a dozen members of the group, but they slowly whittled themselves down to five girls, between the ages of fourteen and seventeen – Arlene Smith, Lois Harris, Sonia Goring, Jackie Landry, and Renee Minus. According to Renee (who now goes by her married name Renee Minus White) the group’s name came from a brainstorming session between her, Lois, Jackie, and Sonia, with Arlene agreeing to it later – this may, though, have more to do with ongoing disputes between Arlene and the other group members than with what actually happened. They were drawn together by their mutual love of R&B vocal groups – a particular favourite record of theirs was “In Paradise” by the Cookies, a New York-based girl group who had started recording a few years earlier, and whose records were produced by Jesse Stone, but who wouldn’t have any major chart successes for several years yet: [Excerpt: The Cookies, “In Paradise”] So they were R&B singers, but the fact that these were Catholic schoolgirls, specifically, points to something about the way their music developed, and about early rock and roll more generally. We’ve talked about the influence of religious music on rock and roll before, but the type of religious music that had influenced it up until this point had generally come from two sources – either the black gospel music that was created by and for worshippers in African-American Pentecostal denominations, or the euphemistically-named “Southern Gospel” that is usually made by white Pentecostals, and by Southern Baptists. These denominations, in 2020, have a certain amount of institutional power – especially the Southern Baptists, who are now one of the most important power blocs within the Republican Party. But in the 1950s, those were the churches of the poorest, most despised, people. By geography, class, and race, the people who attended those churches were overwhelmingly those who would be looked down on by the people who had actual power in the USA. The churches that people with power overwhelmingly went to at the time were those which had been established in Western Europe – the so-called mainline Protestant churches – and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church. The music of those churches had very little influence on rock and roll. It makes sense that this would be the case – obviously underprivileged people’s music would be influenced by the churches that underprivileged people went to, rather than the ones that privileged people attended, and rock and roll was, at this point, still a music made almost solely by people who were underprivileged on one or more axis – but it’s still worth pointing out, because for the first time we’re going to look at a group who – while they were also underprivileged, being black – were influenced by Catholic liturgical music, rather than gospel or spiritual music. Because there’s always been a geographical variation, as well as one based on class and race, in what religions dominate in the US. While evangelical churches predominate in the southern states, in the North-East there were, especially at the time we’re talking about, far more mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish people. The Chantels were a New York group, and it’s notable that New York groups were far more likely to have been influenced by Catholic or Episcopalian liturgical music, and choral music in general, than vocal groups from other areas. This may go some way towards explaining Johnny Otis’ observation that all the LA vocal groups he knew had pitching problems, while the New York groups could sing in tune – choir practice may have made the New York groups more technically adept (though to my own ears, the New York groups tend to make much less interesting music than the LA groups). Certainly when it comes to the Chantels, the girls had all sung in the choir, and had been taught to read music and play the piano, although a couple of them had eventually been kicked out of the choir for singing “that skip and jump music”, as the nuns referred to rock and roll. Indeed, at their very first appearance at the Apollo, after getting a record contract, one of the two songs they performed was a Catholic hymn, in Latin – “Terra Tremuit”. That piece remains in the group’s repertoire to this day, and while they’ve never formally recorded it, there are videos on YouTube of them performing it: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Terra Tremuit”, soundcheck recording] The story of how the Chantels were discovered, as it’s usually told, is one that leaves one asking more questions than it answers. The group were walking down the street, when they passed a rehearsal room. A young man spotted them on the street and asked them if they were singers, since they were dressed identically. When they said “yes”, he took them up to a rehearsal studio to hear them. The rehearsal studio happened to be in the Brill Building. We’ve not mentioned the Brill Building so far, because we’re only just getting to the point where it started to have an impact on rock and roll music, but it was a building on Broadway – 1619 Broadway to be exact – which was the home of dozens, even hundreds at times, of music publishers, record labels, and talent agencies. There were a few other nearby buildings, most notably 1650 Broadway, which became the home of Aldon Music, which often get lumped in with the Brill Building when most people talk about it, and when I refer to the Brill Building in future episodes I’ll be referring to the whole ecosystem of music industries that sprang up on Broadway in the fifties and early sixties. But in this case, they were invited into the main Brill Building itself. They weren’t just being invited into some random room, but into the heart of the music industry on the East Coast of America. This was the kind of thing that normally only happens in films – and relatively unrealistic films at that. So far, so cliched, though it’s hard to believe that that kind of thing ever really happened. But then something happened that isn’t in any of the cliches – the girls noticed, through the window, that three members of the Valentines, one of their favourite groups, were walking past. We’ve mentioned the Valentines a few months ago, when talking about Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and we talked about how Richie Barrett, as well as being a singer and songwriter in the group, was also a talent scout for George Goldner’s record labels. The Valentines had released several records, but none of them had had anything but local success, though records like “The Woo Woo Train” have since become cult favourites among lovers of 1950s vocal group music: [Excerpt: The Valentines, “The Woo Woo Train”] The girls loved the Valentines, and they also knew that Barrett was important in the industry. They decided to run out of the rehearsal room and accost the group members. They told Richie Barrett that they were a singing group, and when he didn’t believe them, they burst into song, singing what would later become the B-side of their first record, “The Plea”: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “The Plea”] That song was one they’d written themselves, sort of. It was actually based on a song that a group of boys they knew, who sang in a street-corner group, had made up. That song had been called “Baby”, but the Chantels had taken it and reworked it into their own song. The version that they finally recorded, which we just heard, was further revamped by Barrett. Barrett was impressed, and said he’d be in touch. But then he never bothered to get in contact with them again, until Jackie Landry managed to obtain his home address and get in touch with him. She got the address through a friend of hers, a member of the Teenchords, a vocal group fronted by Frankie Lymon’s brother Lewis, who recorded for one of George Goldner’s labels, releasing tracks like “Your Last Chance”: [Excerpt: Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, “Your Last Chance”] They tracked down Barrett, and he agreed to try to get them signed to a record deal. That story has many, many, problems, and frankly doesn’t make any kind of sense, but it’s the accepted history you’ll find in books that deal with the group. According to Renee Minus White’s autobiography, though, each of the girls has a different recollection of how they first met Barrett – in her version, they simply waited at the stage door to get autographs, and told him they were a singing group. My guess is that the accepted story is an attempt to reconcile a bunch of irreconcilable versions of the story. Whatever the true facts as to how they started to work with Richie Barrett, the important thing is that they did end up working with him. Barrett was impressed by their ability not just to sing the “oohs” and “aahs”, but the complex polyphonic parts that they sang in choir. For the most part, doo-wop groups either sang simple block chords behind a lead singer, or they all sang their own moving parts that worked more or less in isolation – the bass singer would sing his part, the falsetto singer his, and so on. I say “his” because pretty much all doo-wop groups at this point were male. They were all singing the same song, but doing their own thing. The Chantels were different – they were singing block harmonies, but they weren’t singing simple chords, but interlocking moving lines. What they were doing ended up being closer to the so-called “modern harmony” of jazz vocal groups like the Four Freshmen: [Excerpt: The Four Freshmen, “It’s a Blue World”] But where other groups singing in that style had no R&B background, the Chantels were able to sing a rhythm and blues song with the best of them. Barrett signed the group to End Records, one of George Goldner’s stable of record labels. But before recording them, he spent weeks rehearsing them, and teaching them how to perform on stage. The first record they made, when they finally went into the studio, was a song primarily written by Arlene Smith, who also sang lead, though the composition is credited to the girls as a group. And listening to it, you have in this record for the first time the crystallisation of the girl-group sound, the sound that would later become a hallmark of people like Phil Spector. [Excerpt: The Chantels, “He’s Gone”] It’s a song about adolescent anguish, written by and for adolescents, and it has a drama and angst to it that none of the other records by girl groups had had before – it’s obviously inspired by groups like the Penguins and the Platters, but there’s a near-hysteria to the performance that hadn’t really been heard before. That strained longing is something that would appear in almost every girl-group record of the early sixties, and you can hear very clear echoes of the Chantels in records by people like the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Shangri-Las. It’s a far cry from “Mr. Lee”. Most of the time, when people talk about the Chantels’ vocals, they – rightly – draw attention to Arlene Smith’s leads, which are astonishing. But listen to the a capella intro, which is repeated as the outro, and you can hear those choir-trained voices – this was a vocal group, not just a singer and some cooing background vocalists: [Excerpt: the Chantels, “He’s Gone”] As well as being pioneers in the girl-group sound, the Chantels were also one of the first self-contained vocal groups to play their own instruments on stage. This was not something that they did at first, but something that Barrett encouraged them to do. Some of them had instrumental training already, and those who didn’t were taught how to play by Barrett. Sonia and Jackie played guitar, Arlene bass, Lois piano, and Renee the drums. They even, according to Renee’s autobiography, recorded an instrumental by themselves, called “The Chantels’ Rock”. Almost immediately, the girls were pulled out of Catholic school and instead sent to Quintano’s School for Young Professionals, the same school that the Teenagers went to, which was set up to accommodate children who had to go on tour. But there was one exception. Lois’ mother would not let her transfer schools, or go on tour with the group. She could sing with them in the studio, and when they were performing in New York, but until she graduated high school that was all. In many ways her mother was right to be worried, or at least Richie Barrett believed she had good reason to be. They started touring as soon as “He’s Gone” came out, but the girls, at the time, resented Barrett, who came along on tour with them, because he would lock them in the dressing rooms and only let them out for the show itself, not allowing them to socialise with the other acts. In retrospect, given that they were girls in their teens, and they were touring with large numbers of male musicians, many of them with reputations as sexual predators, Barrett’s protectiveness (and his apparent threats to several of these men) was probably justified. For example, in early 1958, the girls were sent out on a tour that became legendary – and given its lineup it’s easy to see why. As well as the Chantels, the tour had Frankie Lymon, Danny & the Juniors, the Diamonds, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Larry Williams, Buddy Holly, and as alternating headliners Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. We’ll talk more about that tour in the next couple of episodes, but aside from the undoubted musical quality of the performers, that was simply not a group of people who young women were going to be safe around (though several of the individuals there were harmless enough). One could, of course, argue that young girls shouldn’t be put in that situation at all, but that never seems to have occurred to anyone involved. By the time of that tour, they’d recorded what would become by far their biggest hit, their second single, “Maybe”: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Maybe”] “Maybe” was a song that was originally co-credited to George Goldner and an unknown “Casey”, but for which Richie Barrett later sued and won co-writing credit. Barrett was presumably the sole writer, though some have claimed that Arlene Smith was an uncredited co-writer – something the other Chantels deny. It was very much in the mould of “He’s Gone”, and concentrated even more on Smith’s lead vocal, and that lead vocal took an immense amount of work to obtain. In total they recorded fifty-two takes of the song before they got one that sounded right, and Smith was crying in frustration when she recorded the last take. “Maybe” reached number fifteen on the pop charts, and number two on the R&B charts, and it became a classic that has been covered by everyone from Janis Joplin to the Three Degrees. The group’s next two records, “Every Night (I Pray)” and “I Love You So”, both charted as well, though neither of them was a massive hit in the way that “Maybe” was. But after this point, the hits dried up – something that wasn’t helped by the fact that George Goldner went through a phase of having his artists perform old standards, which didn’t really suit the Chantels’ voices. But they’d had four hit records in a row, which was enough for them to get an album released. The album, which just featured the A- and B-sides of their first six singles, was originally released with a photo of the group on the front. That version was quickly withdrawn and replaced with a stock image of two white teenagers at a jukebox, just in case you’ve forgotten how appallingly racist the music industry was at this point. They continued releasing singles, but they were also increasingly being used as backing vocalists for other artists produced by Barrett. He had them backing Jimmy Pemberton on “Rags to Riches”: [Excerpt: Jimmy Pemberton, “Rags to Riches”] And they also backed Barrett himself on “Summer Love”, which got to the lower reaches of the top one hundred in pop, and made the top thirty in the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett and the Chantels, “Summer Love”] There had also been some attempts to give Arlene a separate career outside the Chantels, as she duetted with Willie Wilson on “I’ve Lied”: [Excerpt: Willie Wilson and the Tunemasters, “I’ve Lied”] Unfortunately, after a year of success followed by another year of comparative failure, the group discovered that their career was at an end, thanks to George Goldner. We’ve talked about Goldner before, most significantly in the episode on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”, but he had an almost unique combination of strong points and flaws as a record executive. His strongest point was his musical taste. Nobody who knew him respected his taste, but everyone respected his ability to pick a hit, and both of these things sprang from the same basic reason – he had exactly the same musical tastes as a typical teenage girl from the period. Now, it’s an unfortunate fact that the tastes of teenage girls are looked down upon by almost anyone with any power in the music industry, because of the almost universal misogyny in the industry, but the fact remains that teenage girls were becoming a powerful demographic as customers, and anyone who could accurately predict the music that they were going to buy would have a tremendous advantage when it came to making money in the music industry. And Goldner definitely made himself enough money over the years, because he engaged in all the usual practices of ripping off his artists – who were, very often, teenagers themselves. He would credit himself as the writer of their songs, he would engage in shady accounting practices, and all the rest. But Goldner’s real problem was his gambling addiction, and so there’s a pattern that happens over and again throughout the fifties and sixties. Goldner starts up a new record label, discovers some teenage and/or black act, and makes them into overnight stars. Goldner then starts getting vast amounts of money, because he’s ripping off his new discoveries. Goldner starts gambling with that money, loses badly, gets into debt with the mob, and goes to Morris Levy for a loan in order to keep his business going. Levy and his Mafia friends end up taking over the whole company, in exchange for writing off the debts. Levy replaces Goldner’s writing credits on the hits with his own name, stops paying the artists anything at all, and collects all the money from the hits for the rest of his life, while Goldner is left with nothing and goes off to find another bunch of teenagers. And so End Records met the same fate as all of Goldner’s other labels. It went bankrupt, and closed down, owing the Chantels a great deal of money. After End records closed, the Chantels wanted to carry on – but Arlene Smith decided she wanted to go solo instead. She recorded a couple of singles with a new producer, Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Arlene Smith, “Love, Love, Love”] And she also recorded another single with Richie Barrett as producer: [Excerpt: Arlene Smith, “Everything”] At first, that looked like it would be the end of the Chantels, but then a year or so later Richie Barrett got back in touch with the girls. He had some ideas for records that would use the Chantels sound. By this point, Lois had decided that she was going to retire from the music business, but Jackie, Renee, and Sonia agreed to restart their career. There was a problem, though – they weren’t sure what to do without their lead singer. Barrett told them he would sort it out for them. Barrett had been working with another girl group, the Veneers, for a couple of years. They’d released a few singles on Goldner-owned labels, like “Believe Me (My Angel)”: [Excerpt: The Veneers, “Believe Me (My Angel)”] And they’d also been the regular backing group Barrett used for sessions for male vocalists like Titus Turner: [Excerpt: Titus Turner, “The Return of Stagolee”] But they’d never had a huge amount of success. So Barrett got their lead singer, Annette Swinson, to replace Arlene. To make it up to the Veneers, he got the rest of them a job as Jackie Wilson’s backing vocalists. He changed Annette’s name to Annette Smith, and the new lineup of the group had a few more hits, with “Look in My Eyes”, which went to number six on the R&B charts and number fourteen on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Look in My Eyes”] They also backed Richie Barrett on an answer record to Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack”, titled “Well I Told You”, which made the top thirty on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett and the Chantels, “Well I Told You”] This second phase of the Chantels’ career was successful enough that Goldner, who no longer had the girls under contract, got one of his record labels to put out a new Chantels album, featuring a few tracks he owned by them that hadn’t been on their first album. To fill out the album, and make it sound more like the current group, he also took a few of the Veneers’ singles and stuck them on it under the Chantels’ name. Annette would stay with the group for a while, but the sixties saw several lineup changes, as the group stopped having chart successes, and members temporarily dropped out to have children or pursue careers. However, Sonia and Renee remained in place throughout, as the two constant members of the group (though Sonia also moonlit for a while in the sixties with another group Richie Barrett was looking after at the time, the Three Degrees). By the mid-nineties, they had reformed with all of the original members except Arlene, who was replaced by Ami Ortiz, who can do a very creditable imitation of Arlene’s lead vocals. Sadly Jackie Landry died in 1997, but the other four continued to tour, though only intermittently in between holding down day jobs. Almost uniquely, the Chantels are still touring with the majority of their original members. Sonia Goring Wilson, Renee Minus White, and Lois Harris Powell still tour with the group, and they have several tour dates booked in for 2020, mostly on the east coast of the US. Arlene Smith spent many years touring solo and performing with her own rival “Chantels” group. She has very occasionally reunited with the rest of the Chantels for one-off performances, but there appears to be bad blood between them. She kept performing into the middle of the last decade, and as of 2018, her Facebook page said she was planning a comeback, but no further details have emerged. The Chantels never received either the money or the acclaim that they deserved, given their run of chart successes and the way that they pioneered the girl group sound. But more than sixty years on from their biggest hits, four of the five of them are still alive, and apparently healthy, happy, and performing when the opportunity arises, and three of them are still good friends. Given the careers of most other stars of the era, especially the other child stars, that’s as close to a happy ending as a group gets.
Episode sixty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Maybe" by the Chantels, and covers child stardom, hymns in Latin, and how to get discovered twice in one day. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Don't You Just Know It" by Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The only book actually about the Chantels is barely a book -- Maybe, Renee Minus White's self-published memoir, is more of a pamphlet, and it only manages even to get to that length with a ton of padding -- things like her fruit cake recipe. Don't expect much insight from this one. A big chunk of the outline of the story comes from Girl Groups; Fabulous Females Who Rocked the World by John Clemente, which has a chapter on the Chantels. This article on Richie Barrett's career filled in much of the detail. My opinions of George Goldner come mostly from reading two books -- Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz, which talks about Leiber and Stoller's attempts to go into business with Goldner, and Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy by Richard Carlin. There are innumerable collections of the small number of recordings the Chantels released -- this one is as good as any. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? ERRATUM: I refer to “Summer Love” rather than “Summer's Love” Transcript We've already seen one girl group, when we looked at “Mr Lee” by the Bobbettes, but already within a few months of the Bobbettes' breakout hit, other groups were making waves with the public. The Chantels were one such group, and one of the best. They were pretty much exact contemporaries of the Bobbettes – so much so that when the Bobbettes were forming, they decided against calling themselves the Chanels, because it would be too similar. The Chantels, too, changed their name early on. They were formed by a group of girls at a Catholic school – St Anthony of Padua school in the Bronx – and were originally named “the Crystals”, but they found that another group in the area had already named themselves that, and so they changed it. (This other group was not the same one as the famous Crystals, who didn't form until 1961). They decided to name themselves after St Francis de Chantal after their school won a basketball game against St. Francis de Chantal school – when they discovered that the Chantal in the saint's name was from the same root as the French word for singing, it seemed to be too perfect for them. Originally there were around a dozen members of the group, but they slowly whittled themselves down to five girls, between the ages of fourteen and seventeen – Arlene Smith, Lois Harris, Sonia Goring, Jackie Landry, and Renee Minus. According to Renee (who now goes by her married name Renee Minus White) the group's name came from a brainstorming session between her, Lois, Jackie, and Sonia, with Arlene agreeing to it later – this may, though, have more to do with ongoing disputes between Arlene and the other group members than with what actually happened. They were drawn together by their mutual love of R&B vocal groups – a particular favourite record of theirs was “In Paradise” by the Cookies, a New York-based girl group who had started recording a few years earlier, and whose records were produced by Jesse Stone, but who wouldn't have any major chart successes for several years yet: [Excerpt: The Cookies, "In Paradise"] So they were R&B singers, but the fact that these were Catholic schoolgirls, specifically, points to something about the way their music developed, and about early rock and roll more generally. We've talked about the influence of religious music on rock and roll before, but the type of religious music that had influenced it up until this point had generally come from two sources – either the black gospel music that was created by and for worshippers in African-American Pentecostal denominations, or the euphemistically-named “Southern Gospel” that is usually made by white Pentecostals, and by Southern Baptists. These denominations, in 2020, have a certain amount of institutional power – especially the Southern Baptists, who are now one of the most important power blocs within the Republican Party. But in the 1950s, those were the churches of the poorest, most despised, people. By geography, class, and race, the people who attended those churches were overwhelmingly those who would be looked down on by the people who had actual power in the USA. The churches that people with power overwhelmingly went to at the time were those which had been established in Western Europe – the so-called mainline Protestant churches – and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church. The music of those churches had very little influence on rock and roll. It makes sense that this would be the case – obviously underprivileged people's music would be influenced by the churches that underprivileged people went to, rather than the ones that privileged people attended, and rock and roll was, at this point, still a music made almost solely by people who were underprivileged on one or more axis – but it's still worth pointing out, because for the first time we're going to look at a group who – while they were also underprivileged, being black – were influenced by Catholic liturgical music, rather than gospel or spiritual music. Because there's always been a geographical variation, as well as one based on class and race, in what religions dominate in the US. While evangelical churches predominate in the southern states, in the North-East there were, especially at the time we're talking about, far more mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish people. The Chantels were a New York group, and it's notable that New York groups were far more likely to have been influenced by Catholic or Episcopalian liturgical music, and choral music in general, than vocal groups from other areas. This may go some way towards explaining Johnny Otis' observation that all the LA vocal groups he knew had pitching problems, while the New York groups could sing in tune – choir practice may have made the New York groups more technically adept (though to my own ears, the New York groups tend to make much less interesting music than the LA groups). Certainly when it comes to the Chantels, the girls had all sung in the choir, and had been taught to read music and play the piano, although a couple of them had eventually been kicked out of the choir for singing “that skip and jump music”, as the nuns referred to rock and roll. Indeed, at their very first appearance at the Apollo, after getting a record contract, one of the two songs they performed was a Catholic hymn, in Latin - “Terra Tremuit”. That piece remains in the group's repertoire to this day, and while they've never formally recorded it, there are videos on YouTube of them performing it: [Excerpt: The Chantels, "Terra Tremuit", soundcheck recording] The story of how the Chantels were discovered, as it's usually told, is one that leaves one asking more questions than it answers. The group were walking down the street, when they passed a rehearsal room. A young man spotted them on the street and asked them if they were singers, since they were dressed identically. When they said “yes”, he took them up to a rehearsal studio to hear them. The rehearsal studio happened to be in the Brill Building. We've not mentioned the Brill Building so far, because we're only just getting to the point where it started to have an impact on rock and roll music, but it was a building on Broadway – 1619 Broadway to be exact – which was the home of dozens, even hundreds at times, of music publishers, record labels, and talent agencies. There were a few other nearby buildings, most notably 1650 Broadway, which became the home of Aldon Music, which often get lumped in with the Brill Building when most people talk about it, and when I refer to the Brill Building in future episodes I'll be referring to the whole ecosystem of music industries that sprang up on Broadway in the fifties and early sixties. But in this case, they were invited into the main Brill Building itself. They weren't just being invited into some random room, but into the heart of the music industry on the East Coast of America. This was the kind of thing that normally only happens in films – and relatively unrealistic films at that. So far, so cliched, though it's hard to believe that that kind of thing ever really happened. But then something happened that isn't in any of the cliches – the girls noticed, through the window, that three members of the Valentines, one of their favourite groups, were walking past. We've mentioned the Valentines a few months ago, when talking about Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and we talked about how Richie Barrett, as well as being a singer and songwriter in the group, was also a talent scout for George Goldner's record labels. The Valentines had released several records, but none of them had had anything but local success, though records like “The Woo Woo Train” have since become cult favourites among lovers of 1950s vocal group music: [Excerpt: The Valentines, "The Woo Woo Train"] The girls loved the Valentines, and they also knew that Barrett was important in the industry. They decided to run out of the rehearsal room and accost the group members. They told Richie Barrett that they were a singing group, and when he didn't believe them, they burst into song, singing what would later become the B-side of their first record, “The Plea”: [Excerpt: The Chantels, "The Plea"] That song was one they'd written themselves, sort of. It was actually based on a song that a group of boys they knew, who sang in a street-corner group, had made up. That song had been called “Baby”, but the Chantels had taken it and reworked it into their own song. The version that they finally recorded, which we just heard, was further revamped by Barrett. Barrett was impressed, and said he'd be in touch. But then he never bothered to get in contact with them again, until Jackie Landry managed to obtain his home address and get in touch with him. She got the address through a friend of hers, a member of the Teenchords, a vocal group fronted by Frankie Lymon's brother Lewis, who recorded for one of George Goldner's labels, releasing tracks like “Your Last Chance”: [Excerpt: Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, "Your Last Chance"] They tracked down Barrett, and he agreed to try to get them signed to a record deal. That story has many, many, problems, and frankly doesn't make any kind of sense, but it's the accepted history you'll find in books that deal with the group. According to Renee Minus White's autobiography, though, each of the girls has a different recollection of how they first met Barrett – in her version, they simply waited at the stage door to get autographs, and told him they were a singing group. My guess is that the accepted story is an attempt to reconcile a bunch of irreconcilable versions of the story. Whatever the true facts as to how they started to work with Richie Barrett, the important thing is that they did end up working with him. Barrett was impressed by their ability not just to sing the “oohs” and “aahs”, but the complex polyphonic parts that they sang in choir. For the most part, doo-wop groups either sang simple block chords behind a lead singer, or they all sang their own moving parts that worked more or less in isolation – the bass singer would sing his part, the falsetto singer his, and so on. I say “his” because pretty much all doo-wop groups at this point were male. They were all singing the same song, but doing their own thing. The Chantels were different – they were singing block harmonies, but they weren't singing simple chords, but interlocking moving lines. What they were doing ended up being closer to the so-called "modern harmony" of jazz vocal groups like the Four Freshmen: [Excerpt: The Four Freshmen, "It's a Blue World"] But where other groups singing in that style had no R&B background, the Chantels were able to sing a rhythm and blues song with the best of them. Barrett signed the group to End Records, one of George Goldner's stable of record labels. But before recording them, he spent weeks rehearsing them, and teaching them how to perform on stage. The first record they made, when they finally went into the studio, was a song primarily written by Arlene Smith, who also sang lead, though the composition is credited to the girls as a group. And listening to it, you have in this record for the first time the crystallisation of the girl-group sound, the sound that would later become a hallmark of people like Phil Spector. [Excerpt: The Chantels, "He's Gone"] It's a song about adolescent anguish, written by and for adolescents, and it has a drama and angst to it that none of the other records by girl groups had had before – it's obviously inspired by groups like the Penguins and the Platters, but there's a near-hysteria to the performance that hadn't really been heard before. That strained longing is something that would appear in almost every girl-group record of the early sixties, and you can hear very clear echoes of the Chantels in records by people like the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Shangri-Las. It's a far cry from “Mr. Lee”. Most of the time, when people talk about the Chantels' vocals, they – rightly – draw attention to Arlene Smith's leads, which are astonishing. But listen to the a capella intro, which is repeated as the outro, and you can hear those choir-trained voices – this was a vocal group, not just a singer and some cooing background vocalists: [Excerpt: the Chantels, "He's Gone"] As well as being pioneers in the girl-group sound, the Chantels were also one of the first self-contained vocal groups to play their own instruments on stage. This was not something that they did at first, but something that Barrett encouraged them to do. Some of them had instrumental training already, and those who didn't were taught how to play by Barrett. Sonia and Jackie played guitar, Arlene bass, Lois piano, and Renee the drums. They even, according to Renee's autobiography, recorded an instrumental by themselves, called “The Chantels' Rock”. Almost immediately, the girls were pulled out of Catholic school and instead sent to Quintano’s School for Young Professionals, the same school that the Teenagers went to, which was set up to accommodate children who had to go on tour. But there was one exception. Lois' mother would not let her transfer schools, or go on tour with the group. She could sing with them in the studio, and when they were performing in New York, but until she graduated high school that was all. In many ways her mother was right to be worried, or at least Richie Barrett believed she had good reason to be. They started touring as soon as “He's Gone” came out, but the girls, at the time, resented Barrett, who came along on tour with them, because he would lock them in the dressing rooms and only let them out for the show itself, not allowing them to socialise with the other acts. In retrospect, given that they were girls in their teens, and they were touring with large numbers of male musicians, many of them with reputations as sexual predators, Barrett's protectiveness (and his apparent threats to several of these men) was probably justified. For example, in early 1958, the girls were sent out on a tour that became legendary – and given its lineup it's easy to see why. As well as the Chantels, the tour had Frankie Lymon, Danny & the Juniors, the Diamonds, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Larry Williams, Buddy Holly, and as alternating headliners Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. We'll talk more about that tour in the next couple of episodes, but aside from the undoubted musical quality of the performers, that was simply not a group of people who young women were going to be safe around (though several of the individuals there were harmless enough). One could, of course, argue that young girls shouldn't be put in that situation at all, but that never seems to have occurred to anyone involved. By the time of that tour, they'd recorded what would become by far their biggest hit, their second single, “Maybe”: [Excerpt: The Chantels, "Maybe"] “Maybe” was a song that was originally co-credited to George Goldner and an unknown “Casey”, but for which Richie Barrett later sued and won co-writing credit. Barrett was presumably the sole writer, though some have claimed that Arlene Smith was an uncredited co-writer – something the other Chantels deny. It was very much in the mould of “He's Gone”, and concentrated even more on Smith's lead vocal, and that lead vocal took an immense amount of work to obtain. In total they recorded fifty-two takes of the song before they got one that sounded right, and Smith was crying in frustration when she recorded the last take. “Maybe” reached number fifteen on the pop charts, and number two on the R&B charts, and it became a classic that has been covered by everyone from Janis Joplin to the Three Degrees. The group's next two records, “Every Night (I Pray)” and “I Love You So”, both charted as well, though neither of them was a massive hit in the way that “Maybe” was. But after this point, the hits dried up – something that wasn't helped by the fact that George Goldner went through a phase of having his artists perform old standards, which didn't really suit the Chantels' voices. But they'd had four hit records in a row, which was enough for them to get an album released. The album, which just featured the A- and B-sides of their first six singles, was originally released with a photo of the group on the front. That version was quickly withdrawn and replaced with a stock image of two white teenagers at a jukebox, just in case you've forgotten how appallingly racist the music industry was at this point. They continued releasing singles, but they were also increasingly being used as backing vocalists for other artists produced by Barrett. He had them backing Jimmy Pemberton on “Rags to Riches”: [Excerpt: Jimmy Pemberton, “Rags to Riches”] And they also backed Barrett himself on "Summer Love", which got to the lower reaches of the top one hundred in pop, and made the top thirty in the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett and the Chantels, “Summer Love”] There had also been some attempts to give Arlene a separate career outside the Chantels, as she duetted with Willie Wilson on “I've Lied”: [Excerpt: Willie Wilson and the Tunemasters, "I've Lied"] Unfortunately, after a year of success followed by another year of comparative failure, the group discovered that their career was at an end, thanks to George Goldner. We've talked about Goldner before, most significantly in the episode on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”, but he had an almost unique combination of strong points and flaws as a record executive. His strongest point was his musical taste. Nobody who knew him respected his taste, but everyone respected his ability to pick a hit, and both of these things sprang from the same basic reason – he had exactly the same musical tastes as a typical teenage girl from the period. Now, it's an unfortunate fact that the tastes of teenage girls are looked down upon by almost anyone with any power in the music industry, because of the almost universal misogyny in the industry, but the fact remains that teenage girls were becoming a powerful demographic as customers, and anyone who could accurately predict the music that they were going to buy would have a tremendous advantage when it came to making money in the music industry. And Goldner definitely made himself enough money over the years, because he engaged in all the usual practices of ripping off his artists – who were, very often, teenagers themselves. He would credit himself as the writer of their songs, he would engage in shady accounting practices, and all the rest. But Goldner's real problem was his gambling addiction, and so there's a pattern that happens over and again throughout the fifties and sixties. Goldner starts up a new record label, discovers some teenage and/or black act, and makes them into overnight stars. Goldner then starts getting vast amounts of money, because he's ripping off his new discoveries. Goldner starts gambling with that money, loses badly, gets into debt with the mob, and goes to Morris Levy for a loan in order to keep his business going. Levy and his Mafia friends end up taking over the whole company, in exchange for writing off the debts. Levy replaces Goldner's writing credits on the hits with his own name, stops paying the artists anything at all, and collects all the money from the hits for the rest of his life, while Goldner is left with nothing and goes off to find another bunch of teenagers. And so End Records met the same fate as all of Goldner's other labels. It went bankrupt, and closed down, owing the Chantels a great deal of money. After End records closed, the Chantels wanted to carry on – but Arlene Smith decided she wanted to go solo instead. She recorded a couple of singles with a new producer, Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Arlene Smith, "Love, Love, Love"] And she also recorded another single with Richie Barrett as producer: [Excerpt: Arlene Smith, "Everything"] At first, that looked like it would be the end of the Chantels, but then a year or so later Richie Barrett got back in touch with the girls. He had some ideas for records that would use the Chantels sound. By this point, Lois had decided that she was going to retire from the music business, but Jackie, Renee, and Sonia agreed to restart their career. There was a problem, though – they weren't sure what to do without their lead singer. Barrett told them he would sort it out for them. Barrett had been working with another girl group, the Veneers, for a couple of years. They'd released a few singles on Goldner-owned labels, like “Believe Me (My Angel)”: [Excerpt: The Veneers, "Believe Me (My Angel)"] And they'd also been the regular backing group Barrett used for sessions for male vocalists like Titus Turner: [Excerpt: Titus Turner, "The Return of Stagolee"] But they'd never had a huge amount of success. So Barrett got their lead singer, Annette Swinson, to replace Arlene. To make it up to the Veneers, he got the rest of them a job as Jackie Wilson's backing vocalists. He changed Annette's name to Annette Smith, and the new lineup of the group had a few more hits, with “Look in My Eyes”, which went to number six on the R&B charts and number fourteen on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Chantels, "Look in My Eyes"] They also backed Richie Barrett on an answer record to Ray Charles' “Hit the Road Jack”, titled “Well I Told You”, which made the top thirty on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett and the Chantels, "Well I Told You"] This second phase of the Chantels' career was successful enough that Goldner, who no longer had the girls under contract, got one of his record labels to put out a new Chantels album, featuring a few tracks he owned by them that hadn't been on their first album. To fill out the album, and make it sound more like the current group, he also took a few of the Veneers' singles and stuck them on it under the Chantels' name. Annette would stay with the group for a while, but the sixties saw several lineup changes, as the group stopped having chart successes, and members temporarily dropped out to have children or pursue careers. However, Sonia and Renee remained in place throughout, as the two constant members of the group (though Sonia also moonlit for a while in the sixties with another group Richie Barrett was looking after at the time, the Three Degrees). By the mid-nineties, they had reformed with all of the original members except Arlene, who was replaced by Ami Ortiz, who can do a very creditable imitation of Arlene's lead vocals. Sadly Jackie Landry died in 1997, but the other four continued to tour, though only intermittently in between holding down day jobs. Almost uniquely, the Chantels are still touring with the majority of their original members. Sonia Goring Wilson, Renee Minus White, and Lois Harris Powell still tour with the group, and they have several tour dates booked in for 2020, mostly on the east coast of the US. Arlene Smith spent many years touring solo and performing with her own rival “Chantels” group. She has very occasionally reunited with the rest of the Chantels for one-off performances, but there appears to be bad blood between them. She kept performing into the middle of the last decade, and as of 2018, her Facebook page said she was planning a comeback, but no further details have emerged. The Chantels never received either the money or the acclaim that they deserved, given their run of chart successes and the way that they pioneered the girl group sound. But more than sixty years on from their biggest hits, four of the five of them are still alive, and apparently healthy, happy, and performing when the opportunity arises, and three of them are still good friends. Given the careers of most other stars of the era, especially the other child stars, that's as close to a happy ending as a group gets.
Traditional Gospel Chorus Popular In the Jesus Movement Of the 1970s—Composer UnknownEm D C B7 Em D C B7Je-sus, Je-sus Can I Tell You How I Feel?Em D C B7You Have Given Me Your Spirit,Em D EmI Love You So© 2013 Shiloh Worship Music CO
周啟生在廣州的一個慈善售票演出，我在其中。Songlist - 天長地久 ﹣ 愛像雲煙 ﹣ I Love You So ﹣ 站別 ﹣ 又是下月天
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