Shirley
Alston (1941 - ), Adeline “Miki” Harris
(1940 - 1982),
Doris
Coley (1941 - 2000), Beverly Lee (1941 - )
Soon after signing the Shirelles, Florence
Greenberg started another record company,
Scepter Records, and engaged experienced
songwriter/producer Luther Dixon to supervise
creatively The Shirelles' music.
What
Dixon had in mind to broaden their appeal was
to move them from R&B material to Pop
material.
A little more than a year later, he had the
Shirelles sing a song composed by Carole King
and her husband Gerry Goffin - the classic
teenage girl’s question: “Will You Love Me
Tomorrow?”
It
was a perfect marriage of voice and song, and
went all the way to #1 on Billboard’s record
charts. (Billboard’s Hot 100 has been
the gold standard of how successful a song is
in sales, radio play, and -- now -- streaming
services since 1958.)
The success of this song prompted Greenberg to
reissue an earlier Shirelles song that had
stalled at the bottom of the charts a year
earlier. The reissue peaked at #3 and
stayed on the charts for 4 months:
Dedicated
to the One I Love
Dixon then co-wrote their next hit (which
peaked at #4):
Mama
Said
Enter
composer Burt Bacharach into the orbit of
Scepter Records.
Bacharach
provided the music for another classic
Shirelles song that also cracked the Top
Ten, peaking at #8.
Baby,
It's You
(FYI
-- That's Luther Dixon surrounded by The
Shirelles.)
[And here's a little sidebar on Burt
Bacharach:
Scepter Records is how Burt Bacharach met
Dionne Warwick, who’d been signed by Scepter
in late 1962. The two of them, along
with lyricist Hal David, had a decade-long
string of Top 40 songs. And Warwick,
early on in her association with Scepter,
often filled in for any Shirelle who was
unable to be there for a live performance.]
In
1962, The Shirelles once again topped the
charts with “Soldier Boy,” which one of us
remembers as the perfect slow-dance song for
junior high school parties in somebody’s
basement with the lights turned down
low. (FYI again -- That basement was
in New Jersey, not New Hampshire):
Soldier
Boy
Now
for the heartbreak time:
The
verbal promise Florence Greenberg made
when she signed the Shirelles was that she
would hold back on some of their income
and put it into a trust that they could
have when they were 21.
When they reached those milestone
birthdays, they started asking about it,
but they got vagueness and evasion.
When push came to shove, it was revealed
that there was no trust fund.
The Shirelles quit the label and sued for
the missing income. Scepter, in
turn, counter-sued The Shirelles, claiming
that quitting was a breach of contract.
Ironically-titled, the final Shirelles
song to chart in the Top 10 was:
Foolish
Little Girl
After
several years of legal back and forth, a
private settlement was reached, which
included the Shirelles continuing to
record for Scepter, which they did thru
1967.
But
times had changed. There were the
Beatles, the British invasion, the Motown
explosion of talent, the hippie culture,
and psychedelic music. This all left
The Shirelles out.
Although they continued to perform
throughout the 60’s, their records (on a
whole variety of different labels) were
barely registering with DJs or the
record-buying public.
Then an interesting thing happened 50
years ago, at the beginning of the
1970’s.
Nostalgia became a major element of the
entertainment business (a development that
continues to this day - think “Mamma Mia”
and jukebox musicals and movies about
Elvis, etc.).
Tours were packaged composed of “Oldies”
acts that proved to be wildly and
enduringly popular with Baby
Boomers.
The Shirelles were prime beneficiaries of
this interest and have been performing off
and on for the last 50 years, adding new
members (or not) due to retirements or
deaths, but still with that terrific
Shirelles sound.
Will
You Love Me Tomorrow?
We
love a happy ending.
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