But did you know about \u201cThe Girl Groups\u201d and the influence they had on our lives?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/lewis-richard-presley.j750.jpg\")
(Clockwise from top) Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. All photos: WikimediaCommons<\/p><\/div>\n
A Bit of Musical History<\/h3>\n
The music revolution of the 50s and 60s touched all of our lives. The Rock and roll era of the 50s replaced the Big Band\/Swing music through stars like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, joined the scene in 1954.<\/p>\n
Songs like Hound Dog (1956) and Great Balls of Fire (1958), mega-hits that solidified Rock and Roll, shocked parents and awakened teens.<\/p>\n
Elvis and his brand of “expressive” Rock and Roll began to fade from the scene when he joined the army in 1958.<\/p>\n
A new, short era of popular music emerged and flourished from 1958 until the British invasion took off, unofficially marked by the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and followed by the rapid rise of groups like The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who.<\/p>\n
In that intervening period, from 1958 to 1964, American teen music swirled in the conflicted emotions of relationships, love, and heartache.<\/p>\n
The Baby Boomers who were teenagers then fondly recall the simpler times of American Bandstand, going steady, slumber parties, drive-ins, and late-night AM radio jocks who spun those great songs with such, oh gosh, real meaning.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/chiffons.-leslie-gore.-1967.750w.jpg\")
(Left to right) The Chiffons, Leslie Gore 1967. Photo: Wikimedia commons<\/p><\/div>\n
Top of the Charts<\/h3>\n
Chart-topping lyrics of the early sixties defined what was really important to America\u2019s youth: \u201cTake Good Care of My Baby\u201d (Bobby Vee), \u201cHe\u2019s So Fine\u201d (The Chiffons), \u201cBig Girls Don\u2019t Cry\u201d (Four Seasons), \u201cIt\u2019s My Party and I\u2019ll Cry if I Want To\u201d (Leslie Gore), Breaking Up is Hard to Do\u201d (Neil Sedaka), \u201cLittle Surfer Girl\u201d (Beach Boys) and many, many more that immortalized adolescent heartaches and their romantic dreams.<\/p>\n
The lyrics of social consciousness, free love, and Viet Nam that followed the British Invasion were still light-years away.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/All-photographs-are-courtesy-of-Rosa-Hawkins.700.jpg\")
The Dixie Cups. Photo: Courtesy of Rosa Hawkins<\/p><\/div>\n
The Girl-Group Takes Center Stage<\/h3>\n
The distinctive early sixties sounds emerged from the California beaches, the Motor City, South Philly, the Big Easy, and the Big Apple.<\/p>\n
Catchy repetitive lyrics, multi-instrument arrangements, and finger snappin\u2019 choreography helped meld rhythm and blues, Soul music, doo-wop, gospel, and original rock and roll. It was a sound that spawned one of the most popular genres to surface from the early sixties, The Girl Group.<\/p>\n
The Supremes, the most successful female Girl Group of all times, emerged with their first hit, \u201cWhere Did Our Love Go?\u201d in 1964. But their way was paved by the Shirelles (\u201cWill you Still Love Me Tomorrow?\u201d), the Chiffons (\u201cHe\u2019s So Fine\u201d), the Shangri-La\u2019s (\u201cLeader of the Pack\u201d), the Ronettes (\u201cBe My Baby\u201d), and an unlikely trio of black teenagers from New Orleans that topped the charts with their very first recorded song, \u201cChapel of Love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cinderella Story of the Dixie Cups<\/h3>\n
Theirs is a Cinderella story of how the Dixie Cups came to be and in a few short months turned \u201cChapel of Love\u201d into an unprecedented mega-hit that topped the pop charts for three straight weeks in June of 1964.<\/p>\n
And now, the newly released book Chapel of Love, The Story of New Orleans Girl Group, the Dixie Cups<\/em> as told by original Dixie Cup, Rosa Hawkins, to writer Steve Bergsman goes behind the scenes to describe how it all happened.<\/p>\n The book explores the ups and downs of one of the most successful girl groups of the early 1960s, how they were discovered, their meteoric rise to the top with \u201cChapel of Love,\u201d and all the behind-the-scenes trauma of abuse and exploitation by the group\u2019s manager.<\/p>\n The original Dixie Cups in 1965, with Joan Marie Johnson. Photo: Courtesy of Rosa Hawkins<\/p><\/div>\n One could say that it all began on February 3, 1963, in New Orleans at the annual \u201cSt Augustine\u2019s City-Wide Talent Show.\u201d On that night, three local teenage girls and one boy who called themselves the Meltones sang \u201cLovey Dovey Pair,\u201d an esoteric doo-wop number originally recorded by the Three Playmates.<\/p>\n The Meltones didn\u2019t win, didn\u2019t place, and never saw a penny of the $100 in prize money offered that night.<\/p>\n An aspiring talent scout on the hunt for undiscovered stars circled them on his show program. As sometimes happened in the cauldron of youthful sounds of the sixties, a new group with a new sound inauspiciously started its meteoric rise to the top.<\/p>\n The talent scout turned out to be Joe Jones<\/a>, a slick-talking New Orleans musical artist who had his own 1960 hit, \u201cYou Talk too Much.\u201d That night he saw three local girls who were young, attractive, and na\u00efve who happened to have a boatload of harmonic talent. Lose the guy, and they just might become a hot Girl Group like the Chiffons and Ronettes, who were then running up the charts with \u201cHe\u2019s So Fine\u201d and \u201cBe My Baby.\u201d<\/p>\n The Meltones, sisters Barbara and Rose Hawkins, and their cousin, Joan Marie Johnson, with her brother Howard were no polished act. This was the first time they had formally appeared together, although everyone had been singing since elementary school in church choirs and talent contests.<\/p>\n Looking back, Rosa, the youngest (then 17) and tallest of the group, claims that \u201cthe rhythm and blues and rock n\u2019 roll hothouse of talent enveloped us growing up in New Orleans.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Rosa was content with that music-rich hometown environment, older sister Barbara\u2019s ambition and drive pushed the girls to look beyond New Orleans, particularly when Jones preached them the Big Time.<\/p>\n They could sing and, true to the lyrics of his only hit song, Joe Jones could talk. He had enough charisma and a tall storyline to convince the girls\u2019 mothers that the Meltones had a big future of recording contracts and big hits if they went to New York with him as their manager. He could hook them up with the right people, the right record label, and, of course, don\u2019t worry, he would take care of them.<\/p>\n So the promise outweighed the skepticism, the mothers relented, and the girls lit out for New York toward the end of 1963. They traveled in a three-car caravan of New Orleans hopefuls, including the three Meltones, the Five Deejays, a singer named Vivian Bates, and an assortment of band members, all under Jones\u2019s sketchy leadership. They barreled through the cold, segregated deep South winter, stopping for food but not to sleep.<\/p>\n Photo taken by local photographer at the Hawkins home in New Orleans. Photo: Courtesy of Rosa Hawkins<\/p><\/div>\n For Joe Jones, his troupe of aspiring musicians from New Orleans and countless other artists from around the country, the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan and its neighbor, 1650 Broadway, was the Mecca of the early sixties pop music scene. Nearly every producer, recording artist, songwriter, musician, record label impresario, and fast-talking talent huckster of the era\u2019s mainstream popular music passed through there and defined what became known as the \u201cBrill Building Sound.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n When Joe Jones and the Meltones arrived in early 1964, some 165 music businesses were located there. Teams of professional songwriters penned lyrics focused on idealized romance and adolescent anxieties for many of the best chart-topping Girl Groups and teen idols, including The Chrystals, The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Coasters, The Drifters, Dion and the Belmonts, The Everly Brothers, Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis, Neal Sedaka, Buddy Holly, Fabian and many more.<\/p>\n It was one-stop shopping where natural talent could be discovered, recorded, packaged, and marketed.<\/p>\n Joe Jones convinced the producer of his one hit calling card, \u201cYou Talk Too Much,\u201d into investing in his new talent discoveries. Although Sylvia Robinson<\/a>\u00a0 never got credit for producing Joe\u2019s biggest hit, she was in New York, knew the drill, and knew Jones had an eye for talent.<\/p>\n Plus, she was anxious to make a name for herself as a record producer (Years later, she founded the super successful Sugar Hill label that earned her the moniker \u201cQueen of Rap\u201d).<\/p>\n When Jones and his troupe landed on Sylvia\u2019s Brooklyn doorstep, she knew just what to do. She told the girls, \u201cTomorrow, we pound the pavement.\u201d<\/p>\n The girls soon discovered that pounding the pavement meant one stop after another at various record companies in Manhattan, hit or miss, to get an audition on the strength of Joe\u2019s pitch as a somewhat successful recording artist, not just some bum off the street. \u201cYou Talk Too Much\u201d and some credible names to drop usually worked.<\/p>\n The Meltones had a three-song repertoire prepared to sing when Jones got them through the door. Sometimes when they had a chance to perform, Joe would insist on \u201cfront money,\u201d and they would find themselves back on the street.<\/p>\n Then came the day when they arrived in the Brill Building office of lyricist and tunesmith Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich<\/a>.\u00a0 Jones gave his typical spiel as the young couple was eying the girls as if to say, \u201cCan they sing?\u201d<\/p>\n According to Rosa, \u201cJeff sat down at the piano, and we stood nearby. He played one note to bring us in, and we sang our \u201cThank you, Mama.\u201d I could see they liked what they heard.\u201d After hearing another song in their repertoire, Jeff looked suspiciously at Ellie and said, \u201cI bet they\u2019re going to tear that song up.\u201d<\/p>\n At that moment, Jeff got up and ushered Joe and everyone out of the room except the three girls, presumably to hear the Five Deejays somewhere else. In a few minutes, Jeff and Ellie returned by themselves, and Jeff went right to the piano with Ellie standing close by. Rosa recalled the instructions: \u201cNow listen to this. Even if you don\u2019t like it at first, we just want you to listen. We\u2019ll ask you about it afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff played \u201cChapel of Love\u201d on the piano.<\/p>\n \u201cTo us, the song had a slow, almost country beat,\u201d said Rosa later. \u201cI was dubiously wondering, does he want us to sing that?\u201d<\/p>\n Ellie caught their reaction and stopped Jeff from playing it again. \u201cGirls,\u201d she said, you don\u2019t seem to like this song.\u201d<\/p>\n They were alright with the wording but were unsure of the melody and stumbled around trying to be diplomatic until they finally asked if they really had to sing it like that.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, no,\u201d Ellie said, \u201cCan you do something else with it? It\u2019s a song Jeff and I wrote, and we think you girls can do something with it.\u201d\n\u201cYeah, we probably could, but not the way you want it!\u201d was the cheeky reply from Joan Marie, the most outspoken of the group.<\/p>\n Ellie smiled and said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to leave you in here, and you do what you want to do with it, and we\u2019ll come back and listen.\u201d\nWhen they were alone in the room and had a few minutes, Rosa recalled, \u201cWe sang the words in a softer version of what they presented to us because neither Barbara, Joan Marie nor I would have listened to that song on the radio the way it was first presented.<\/p>\n \u201cWe grew up singing with our mother in the church choir where we sang in three-part harmony, and that\u2019s how we treated \u201cChapel of Love\u201d when left alone at the piano. We called them back into the room and sang \u201cChapel of Love<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 our way, in three-part harmony, and blew their heads off.\u201d<\/p>\n The girls had no idea that they had just blown away one of the hottest songwriting duos among Brill Building composers whose hits included \u201cDa Do Ron Ron\u201d and \u201cThen He Kissed Me\u201d by the Crystals, \u201cBe My Baby\u201d by the Ronettes, and many more.\nWhat followed was a whirlwind of excitement. The famous songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stolle<\/a>r was pulled in to listen.\nBefore long, the four had concocted a plan to form a new recording company that became Red Bird Records to launch \u201cChapel of Love\u201d as their first hit.<\/p>\n The Meltones name had to go (not catchy enough), and Jeff and Ellie\u2019s suggestion of \u201cLittle Miss and the Muffets\u201d was flatly rejected by the girls who finally settled on the Dixie Cups.<\/p>\n Within days, arrangements were confirmed, photographers booked, dresses and silver shoes purchased (from Macy\u2019s discount basement), rehearsals held, and the final cut recorded in February 1964. Red Bird released \u201cChapel of Love\u201d in April, and by June, it bumped the Beatles \u201cLove Me Do\u201d from number one on the Billboard charts, where it stayed for three weeks.<\/p>\n In just one year, the Meltones had gone from a mediocre performance in a high school talent show to recording one of the top Girl Group songs of all times as the Dixie Cups.<\/p>\n Rosa, Barbara, and Joan Marie returned to New Orleans right after \u201cChapel of Love\u201d was recorded to resume normal life at home. Not long after the record was released in early spring, it started playing on the radio throughout the country.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time I heard \u201cChapel of Love\u201d on the radio, it was on a Saturday morning, and I was doing chores in the living room,\u201d Rosa recalls. \u201cThis record came on, and it was like, \u2019Oh, that record sounds familiar. Oh, I know that song\u2019. And then I realized, \u2018Hey, that\u2019s my voice over there!\u2019<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before the realization that \u201cChapel of Love\u201d would become a major hit. The girls were summoned back to New York, where Red Bird took control of their promotion, new recordings, and life on the road as performers. They recorded two more hits in 1964, \u201cPeople Say\u201d and \u201cIko Iko\u201d but neither made it past #12 on the charts.<\/p>\n Dixie Cups being interviewed on a United Kingdom television show<\/p><\/div>\n The Dixie Cups were based in New York for the next five years, performing with other top sixties groups and artists on whistle-stop tours and TV shows.<\/p>\n They traveled overseas to Great Britain and Viet Nam and took to the road with Dick Clark\u2019s Caravan of Stars Tour between appearances on popular TV shows like American Bandstand and Shindig.<\/p>\n Joan Marie, suffering from sickle-cell anemia, left the group and was replaced by Beverly Brown, a singer that Joe Jones brought to them from New Orleans.<\/p>\n It was a turbulent time for The Dixie Cups. Despite encountering pockets of racial prejudice throughout the South, they were popular with fans and fellow artists wherever they went.<\/p>\n Their biggest challenge came from Joe Jones, who turned out to be the manager from Hell. At first, he took advantage of their innocence and inexperience by playing fast and loose with their finances, recording contracts, and lives.<\/p>\n As Rosa revealed in her book, \u201cJoe seemed to be a talented man who knew the music business, and that attracted many an up-and-coming performer. Unfortunately for anyone who fell into his orbit, the truth was very different than the fa\u00e7ade. In reality, he was greedy, exploitive, angry, untruthful, and manipulative, and he was a rapist.\u201d<\/p>\n By the late sixties, adolescent songs of sweet dreams and innocence by Girl Groups and others of the Brill Building Sound had succumbed to the British Invasion. Plus, Bob Dylan and the lyrics of rebellion and social upheaval made songs like \u201cWill You Still Love Me Tomorrow\u201d and \u201cChapel of Love\u201d seem pretty irrelevant.<\/p>\n In early 1969 the Dixie Cups returned to New Orleans. Joan Marie had left the group and got a job with Bell South, the telecommunications company. She died in 2016.<\/p>\n After finally ditching Jones, Rosa and Barbara kept the Dixie Cups alive with third singers, Beverly Brown and Athelgra Neville. Between gigs as the Dixie Cups, Rosa became a fashion model until 2004 and Barbara a real estate agent.<\/p>\n Neither married, although Rosa has raised a son and Barbara adopted a daughter, both of whom are now grown and have successful lives, but not as musicians. The sisters left New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and now share a home in Tampa, Florida.<\/p>\n Looking back, Rosa summed up the miraculous rise of the Dixie Cups: \u201cOften it\u2019s not just the talent but timing that works in your favor\u2014and that was the case with the Dixie Cups. Some performers struggle for years and years before catching the break of a lifetime, and some singers never get the break. In comparison, three girls from New Orleans, newly arrived in New York, walk into an office in the Brill Building and are handed what ends up to be a #1 song to be recorded on a spanking new label.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2014, on the 50th anniversary<\/a>\u00a0 of their number one hit, Rosa Hawkins said that as long as people still want to hear it, she\u2019ll be singing \u201cChapel of Love.\u201d<\/p>\n Chapel of Love, The Story of New Orleans Girl Group, the Dixie Cups<\/em> <\/a>goes into all the detail behind this fascinating story. With candor and the perspective of time, Rosa Hawkins tells how the Dixie Cups overcame the racism of the early sixties. She explains how artists and composers were created and controlled by men like Phil Spector, how competing record companies and famous AM radio jocks like Murray the K and Cousin Brucie promoted the top hits of the day.<\/p>\n For the first time, Rosa reveals the dark side of her relationship with Joe Jones and how, at age 17, he sexually abused her and, through shady business deals, controlled the group\u2019s finances and limited their opportunities for additional success for many years.<\/p>\n For sixties music fans, you\u2019ll recognize the era\u2019s best songwriters and meet the top pop artists like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Shirelles, and the Supremes, who all became friends with the Dixie Cups. They met Dick Clark and toured with his Caravan of Stars and the popular Shindig Tour. They thrilled crowds with \u201cChapel of Love\u201d and \u201cIko Iko\u201d in gigs at high school sock hops, military bases, the Apollo Theatre, and in clubs and TV shows in England and Vietnam throughout the turbulent sixties.<\/p>\n Chapel of Love, The Story of New Orleans Girl Group, the Dixie Cups<\/em> is a fascinating glimpse into one of the most prolific eras in American pop music as seen through the eyes of Rosa Lee Hawkins, a young black girl from New Orleans who grew up in the middle of it all.<\/p>\n How the Dixie Cups sang to the top of the pop charts in 1964<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2021","category-spring-summer-2021-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11401"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11491,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11401\/revisions\/11491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/The-original-Dixie-Cups-in-1965-with-Joan-Marie-Johnson.750.jpg\")
Discovery<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Photo-taken-by-local-photographer-at-the-Hawkins-home-in-New-Orleans.750w.jpg\")
New York City<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Being-interviewed-on-a-United-Kingdom-television-show.750.jpg\")
Epilogue<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Chapel-of-Love-cover.650.jpg\")
The Book<\/h3>\nChapel of Love, The Story of New Orleans Girl Group, the Dixie Cups<\/em> <\/a>by Rosa Hawkins, one of the three original members of the Dixie Cups. She still performs with the group today and Steve Bergsman, a longtime journalist who has written over a dozen books. Publisher: University Press of Mississippi.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"