Review: The Shirelles, “Happy and in Love/Shirelles”

It’s an early “Happy New Year” from Real Gone Music, as the label has just announced its January 6 slate! Look for a full rundown soon on a super slate featuring two classic RCA albums from The Main Ingredient, the complete Atlantic recordings of Jackie Moore (Sweet Charlie Babe), a hilarious (and need we say profane?) comedy classic from Redd Foxx, a vintage 1981 Grateful Dead concert, and two soundtracks from the films of auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky! Full details are coming up, but we’re first taking a look at a recent release from The Shirelles!

The first major female group of the rock and roll era, The Shirelles claimed the first girl group No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Discovered in New Jersey by Florence Greenberg’s daughter Mary Jane, the group laid the cornerstone for Greenberg’s Scepter Records family of labels – later home to Dionne Warwick, B.J. Thomas, Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, Ronnie Milsap and The Kingsmen – and paved the way for the Motown revolution with their blend of uptown soul, pop, and street corner harmonies. This potent combination, of course, found the quartet – Shirley Alston, Beverly Lee, Doris Coley (Kenner) and Addie (Micki) Harris – “crossing over” to the predominantly white audience and quietly breaking down barriers of gender and race with an intoxicating series of pop songs from some of the greatest songwriters of all time. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Baby It’s You,” “Soldier Boy” and “Foolish Little Girl” were just a few of the triumphs of The Shirelles. But the times they were a-changin’, and the group’s lawsuit against Greenberg over allegedly unpaid royalties led them to be considered persona non grata around Scepter. With Doris Kenner’s departure in 1966, The Shirelles were a trio, and in 1968, the label dropped them altogether. Further singles followed for Blue Rock, Bell and United Artists before their signing to the venerable RCA label in 1971 for a pair of albums which have just received their first-ever reissues from Real Gone Music and SoulMusic Records on one CD: Happy and in Love and Shirelles.

Happy and in Love aimed for a modern R&B sound and appropriately upped the funk quotient from the girls’ earlier singles. Perhaps it wasn’t a radical enough reinvention to have succeeded in a major way, but Happy, like its follow-up Shirelles, makes for a completely enjoyable listen in this sterling two-for-one package. Producer Randy Irwin assembled the album with tracks culled from Bell and United Artists as well as new recordings. The album’s sole single was “No Sugar Tonight,” a loose and brassy reworking of The Guess Who’s hit single (likely not coincidentally also on RCA). It was backed by a song from The Ice Man, Jerry Butler, written and recorded during his Philadelphia days. “Strange, I Still Love You,” co-written by MFSB member and ace producer-arranger Norman Harris, was swathed in luxuriant strings by arranger George Andrews for The Shirelles; it’s one of the strongest cuts on the LP.

There are other Philly connections on Happy and in Love. A second Jerry Butler song was tackled via the dramatic “Go Away and Find Yourself,” a former Bell Records release co-written with the legendary Kenny Gamble. “Boy You’re Too Young” was written by Gamble with Thom Bell and Archie Bell (no relation to each other or the label!) and has that familiar Philly-soul swing. More urgent is “There’s Nothing in This World,” with strings vying for supremacy with drums, and the Motown/Stax meld of Jr. Walker’s “Gotta Hold On to This Feeling” with Eddie Floyd’s “I’ve Never Found a Boy” (or a “Girl,” in Floyd’s original.)

After the jump: more on Happy and in Love, plus Shirelles!

Release Round-Up: Week of July 29

The Allman Brothers Band, The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings (Mercury/UMe)

The four shows in March 1971 that made up the band’s legendary breakthrough album are presented in full for the first time, along with the group’s closing set at the Fillmore East that following June. The Blu-ray version features the material in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound.

6CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
3-BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
4LP Highlights: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Peggy Lipton, The Complete Ode Recordings / Gene Rains, Far Away Lands — The Exotic Music of Gene Rains /How to Stuff a Wild Bikini: Original Stereo Soundtrack / Cass Elliot, Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore Plus Rarities – Her Final Recordings / Dee Dee Warwick, The Complete Atco Recordings / The Shirelles, Happy and in Love/Shirelles / The Dream Academy, The Morning Lasted All Day — A Retrospective (Real Gone Music)

This diverse Real Gone set includes a compilation from underrated ’80s synthpop group The Dream Academy and recordings from Peggy Lipton, star of The Mod Squad; she covers the songs of Carole King, Laura Nyro, Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Jimmy Webb on this release, which has liner notes from our own Joe Marchese!

Peggy Lipton: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Gene Rains: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Wild Bikini: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Cass Elliot: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Dee Dee Warwick: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
The Shirelles: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
The Dream Academy: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Deep Purple, Hard Road: The Mark 1 Studio Recordings 1968-1969 (Parlophone U.K.)

Deep Purple’s first three albums get the box set treatment with bonus tracks and stereo and mono mixes of the first two albums. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

James Brown, Get on Up: The James Brown Story – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Polydor/UMe)

In honor of the new film opening this week, Universal’s got a new JB compilation, naturally featuring a pair of unreleased live tracks from 1966. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Eric Clapton and Friends, The Breeze (An Appreciation of J.J. Cale) (Bushbranch/Surfdog)

The legendary bluesman and some famous friends (Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer) pay tribute to the late blues singer-songwriter on this new album.

Standard Edition: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2CD Box Set: Surfdog Records
4LP: Surfdog Records

L.C. Cooke, The Complete SAR Records Recordings (ABKCO)

This anthology collects the complete recordings of L.C. Cooke for his older brother Sam’s SAR Records label, including one complete shelved album produced and largely written by Sam, plus alternate takes, unreleased tracks, session chatter and bonus recordings from the Checker and Destination labels!  Musicians include Bobby and Cecil Womack, Billy Preston and “Pink Panther” saxophonist Plas Johnson! (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Silver Convention, Get Up and Boogie: Expanded Edition / Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., I Hope We Get to Love in Time: Expanded Edition / Phyllis Nelson, Move Closer (Big Break Records)

Big Break has three more R&B classics arriving on CD this week  including the first post-5th Dimension album from Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. featuring their smash “You Don’t Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show).”

Silver Convention: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Marilyn & Billy: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Phyllis Nelson: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Van Dyke Parks, Super Chief (Yep Roc)

Yep Roc reissues Van Dyke Parks’ 2013 “orchestral fantasy” on standalone CD (previously only available as part of a Record Store Day vinyl package) for the first time! (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Various Artists, Guardians of the Galaxy: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/Awesome Mix Vol. 1 (Hollywood Records)

Here’s the only collection approved for listening by The Star Lord! This indeed-awesome all-catalogue mix includes vintage cuts from The Jackson 5, The Raspberries, David Bowie, The Runaways, Blue Swede, Rupert Holmes and more – all but one of which (Norman Greenbaum’s immortal “Spirit in the Sky”) play key roles in the Marvel blockbuster-to-be! Also available as part of a 2CD or 2LP deluxe edition also including the film’s orchestral score by Tyler Bates!

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

*NSYNC, The Essential *NSYNC (Jive/Legacy)

This two-disc set from the late ’90s/early ’00s boy band lives up to its name for fans, featuring all the great hits (“Bye Bye Bye,” “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” “Pop”) plus a myriad of rarities from compilations, soundtracks and international pressings. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Various Artists, Ghostbusters: Original Soundtrack Album (Arista/Legacy)

A sequel of sorts to the Record Store Day single co-produced by our own Mike Duquette, this is a straight reissue of the original soundtrack, newly remastered for vinyl. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Real Gone’s Sizzling Summer Features Cass Elliot, Peggy Lipton, Annette, The Shirelles, Dee Dee Warwick and More

Summer is finally here, and Real Gone Music has a bevy of offerings due on July 29 which should make your vacation even sunnier!  The label is throwing a beach party, sixties-style, with the original stereo soundtrack to How to Stuff a Wild Bikini featuring screen legends Annette Funicello and Mickey Rooney and “Louie, Louie” rockers The Kingsmen; celebrating true California royalty with an expanded edition of “Mama” Cass Elliot’s Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore (sorry, Cass!) featuring previously unreleased music from the powerhouse singer; and going tropical with the perfect tunes for your Tiki party via an anthology from vibraphonist and exotica hero Gene Rains!

If New York-style soul is more your thing, Real Gone hasn’t left you out, either.  Two titles stem from the partnership with the SoulMusic Records label. Dee Dee Warwick’s The Complete Atco Recordings boasts the late, great vocalist’s entire 1970 Atco album Turning Around, the As and Bs of three non-album singles, eight tracks previously released on various compilations, and 12 previously unissued songs!  Real Gone and SoulMusic also have The Shirelles’ two RCA albums from 1971-1972 for the first time on CD!

We’ve already filled you in on the first-ever authorized retrospective from The Dream Academy.  And that’s not all.  Last month, we announced the release of Peggy Lipton’s The Complete Ode Recordings which expanded the Mod Squad star’s Ode solo album with her complete singles and two previously unissued songs.  You might have noticed that this release – which features liner notes from yours truly, with the input of, and fresh quotes from, Ms. Lipton – has been delayed to July 29.  Why?  We’ve found even more music!  The Complete Ode Recordings now boasts a whopping eight bonus tracks: four 45s and four never-before-released tracks from the pens of Carole King and Toni Stern (“Now That Everything’s Been Said,” which Peggy performed on The Mod Squad), Brian Wilson and Tony Asher (“I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”), Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“Wanting Things” from their musical Promises, Promises) and Peggy herself (“I Know Where I’m Going”).  Trust me: this lost California pop gem, produced by Lou Adler and featuring the powers of the Los Angeles Wrecking Crew, will be worth the wait.

After the jump, we have Real Gone’s press release with many more details on every title plus pre-order links!

It’s Love That Really Counts: Él Continues Vintage Burt Bacharach Series

In 1962 alone, Burt Bacharach premiered more than 30 new compositions, recorded by a variety of artists from Marlene Dietrich to The Drifters.  It’s even fair to say that ’62 was the year the composer truly came into his own.  While previous years offered their share of hits for the songwriter – “I Wake Up Crying,” “Tower of Strength,” “Baby, It’s You,” “Magic Moments,” “The Story of My Life” – the Bacharach sound hadn’t completely crystallized.  With Jerry Butler’s July 1962 single of Bacharach and Hal David’s “Make It Easy on Yourself,” Bacharach became his own producer.  Vee-Jay’s Calvin Carter turned over the sessions to the songwriter when he realized “he felt the song better than anyone else did.”  The credit on the 45 still just read “Arranged by Burt Bacharach,” but a new chapter was being written.  That landmark song with melody, orchestration and production by Bacharach, gives the title to the third volume in a series of Bacharach collections from Cherry Red’s Él label.  Make It Easy on Yourself 1962 follows First Book of Songs 1954-1958 and Long Ago Last Summer 1959-1961 and compiles 27 of Bacharach’s songs (some in multiple versions) from one pivotal year with outgoing partner Bob Hilliard and incoming partner Hal David.

One of the essential “love triangle” songs in all of pop music, the stirring “Make It Easy on Yourself” was the fullest expression yet of the mature Bacharach style.  Ethereal backing vocals melded with majestic strings and wistful, sighing horns before Butler bleakly intoned, “Breaking up is so very hard to do…” in a way that Neil Sedaka couldn’t have imagined.  Bacharach and David found beauty and poetry in the blues: “And if the way I hold you can’t compare to his caress/No words of consolation will make me miss you less/My darling, if this is goodbye/Oh, I just know I’m gonna cry/So run to him before you start crying, too…”   Bacharach’s orchestration melded the above instruments with roiling drums, chiming percussion, and well-placed guitar licks, adding up to just over 2-1/2 minute of tension in which the music and lyrics were in perfect harmony.

The new compilation also makes room for the sublime original recording of “Any Day Now,” the most successful song penned by Bacharach with Bob Hilliard.  Soul great Chuck Jackson anticipates his lover’s departure (“My wild beautiful bird, you will have flown/Any day now, I’ll be all alone…”) with just enough anguish and pathos, finding the space in the offbeat arrangement which featured Bacharach playing an ashtray (!) as percussion.  (Jackson previously recorded Bacharach’s “I Wake Up Crying” in 1961; you can hear it on Long Ago Last Summer.)  A contemporary, more “pop” cover by Philadelphia’s Dee Dee Sharp is included for contrast’s sake.

Indeed, Bacharach and David were turning out stone-cold classics at quite a clip.  (After the success of “Blue on Blue” in 1963, Bacharach would make his partnership with David an exclusive one.)  Tremolo guitar and tinkling piano notes signify Tommy Hunt’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” another unbearably lonely, and unbelievably beautiful, song.  Hal David, as always, put into the words feelings that so many – perhaps everybody – had experienced at one time or another: “Goin’ to a movie only makes me sad/Parties make me feel as bad/When I’m not with you, I just don’t know what to do…”  Bacharach matched David’s words with another eloquent, sophisticated and dramatic melody that ran the gamut of emotions itself, veering from serene to pensive to pained.  It’s no wonder everybody from Elvis Costello to the White Stripes cottoned to the song.

Tommy Hunt is also the (unexpected) voice you’ll hear on “Don’t Make Me Over.”  This was the song that changed the lives of Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David forever, beginning pop’s most successful “triangle marriage.”  But not long after Dionne charted with the defiant powerhouse of a ballad, Scepter reused its backing track for Hunt’s recording which sat on the shelf until 1986.  Much as “Any Day Now” was transformed from male to female, “Don’t Make Me Over” works just fine with a male singer, proving early on the adaptability of Bacharach’s hits.  Another great soul man, Jimmy Radcliffe, has his breakup moment with Bacharach and David’s deliciously offbeat, Latin-flavored “There Goes the Forgotten Man.”  One of the best of the quotient of (relatively) rare tracks here is “Don’t Envy Me,” which only received one other recording, by George Hamilton in 1963.  Both Powers’ vocal and the production by Hugo and Luigi are a touch histrionic, but the song has a killer melody rendered with almost reggae-style percussion, not to mention an amusing lyrical conceit from Hal David: the singer has lots of girls, but none of them love him…so he’s “filled with such misery,” imploring, “don’t envy me!”  Bobby Vee’s teen waltz “Anonymous Phone Call” is another enjoyable find, flecked with a light country sound.

There’s more after the jump, including the complete track listing with discographical annotation!

Baby, It’s Burt: Cherry Red’s Él Label Collects Early Bacharach On “Long Ago Last Summer”

Although Burt Bacharach had been composing songs at least since 1952, when he kicked off a long career with the instrumental “Once in a Blue Moon” for Nat “King” Cole, the Burt Bacharach “sound” didn’t truly crystallize until the early 1960s.  Prior to his reshaping of the sound of adult R&B, Bacharach teamed with a variety of lyricists to craft songs in virtually every genre imaginable: rock-and-roll, rockabilly, country, pop balladry, jazz, even the novelty song.  Naturally, the earliest period in Bacharach’s career has long taken a back seat to the post-1962 works.  That was the year that Bacharach and lyricist partner Hal David first recorded “Make It Easy on Yourself” for Jerry Butler and the year that Dionne Warwick recorded her first Bacharach/David song, “Don’t Make Me Over.”  Although not credited beyond an “Arranged by” on the label of “Make It Easy on Yourself,” Bacharach has often cited Butler’s recording as his first real production, including orchestration.  With that track, a style was born.

Cherry Red’s Él label (itself a venerable institution, founded by Mike Alway in the 1980s) first tackled the earliest years of Bacharach’s career in 2009 with The First Book of Songs (ACMEM166CD), covering the period between 1954 and 1958 over 28 songs.  (That set erroneously included Patti Page’s “Another Time, Another Place,” credited on the label to Bacharach and David but actually written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, also of publishing house Famous Music.)  The label has just released a belated sequel, Long Ago Last Summer: 1959-1961 which culminates in The Shirelles’ 1961 hit “Baby, It’s You,” written by Bacharach, Mack David and Barney Williams, a.k.a. Luther Dixon.  Although its whopping 33 songs don’t represent every song from Bacharach’s pen recorded during those years, it’s a true cross-section of both the best and the weirdest!  As such, it’s a must-own for collectors, premiering a number of long-lost tracks on CD.

Hit the jump to dig deep with Bacharach and the Él team, including a full track listing with discographical annotation for the new CD!

A Grande Cup of Burt: Starbucks Brews “Music By Bacharach”

If you see me walking down the street, and I start to cry…or smile…or laugh…there’s a good chance I might be listening to a song by Burt Bacharach.  Since beginning his songwriting career with 1952’s instrumental “Once in a Blue Moon” as recorded by Nat King Cole, Bacharach has provided the soundtrack to many of our lives, often in tandem with lyricist Hal David.  (Their first collaborations date to 1956, including The Harry Carter Singers’ “Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil,” and Sherry Parsons’ “Peggy’s in the Pantry,” a song Bacharach would rightfully rather forget!)  A new compilation on the Starbucks Entertainment label is bringing Bacharach’s music to coffeehouses around the world, and is making quite a splash in the U.S., actually opening at a none-too-shabby No. 59 on the Billboard 200.  It offers sixteen selections, the majority of them drawn from the most famed period of the composer’s still-thriving career.  This was the time when Angie Dickinson was on his arm, the drink was Martini and Rossi, and the composer-conductor-producer- arranger-performer was proclaimed “The Music Man” on the cover of Newsweek.  The simply-titled and elegantly-designed Music by Bacharach will take you back to the mid-1960s, when Bacharach matched David’s universal lyrics to sophisticated melodies, the likes of which weren’t seen in pop music.  They still aren’t.

Music by Bacharach doesn’t offer any rarities, and doesn’t purport to cover Bacharach’s entire career.  (He’s still active today; in 2011, Bacharach scored a hit in the U.K. with his Ronan Keating collaboration When Ronan Met Burt, and also wrote the original score to the musical Some Lovers, which premiered in San Diego.)  Instead, it focuses on the halcyon hitmaking era, when Bacharach provided 39 consecutive chart hits for Dionne Warwick alone.  Appropriately enough, the collection offers two songs by Warwick, the third part of the Bacharach/David “triangle marriage.”  Also figuring prominently with two tracks each are Dusty Springfield and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.  Bacharach himself participated in nine of the album’s sixteen tracks, with the remaining seven tracks all well-chosen “cover” recordings. Though far from comprehensive, the collection is a potent and well-curated time capsule nonetheless.

Warwick is represented by her first hit (No. 21 pop), “Don’t Make Me Over,” written to order by Bacharach and David for the young firebrand, as well as with her iconic reading of “Walk on By.”  Across the pond, many considered Dusty Springfield to be Bacharach’s supreme interpreter, and her catalogue is tapped for the charming “Wishin’ and Hopin’” (originally a Warwick B-side) and the incendiary “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” first recorded by Tommy Hunt.  Warwick’s own recording arrived two years after Springfield’s, in a rare reversal.  Herb Alpert is heard on the theme to Casino Royale as well as on the 1968 “This Guy’s in Love with You,” somewhat unbelievably the very first pop No. 1 for Bacharach and David.  Another iconic performance, Jackie DeShannon’s original 1965 take of “What the World Needs Now is Love,” is also included.  Warwick followed DeShannon with a 1967 version of the song.

The most recent tracks on Music by Bacharach are two 1990s collaborations.  “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” originally a 1963 hit for Warwick, may be one of the most musically challenging of Bacharach’s songs.  It announced Dionne on the scene as her first Top 10 hit in 1963, as the singer navigated with ease the tricky time signature shifts (5/4 to 4/4 to 7/8 and back to 5/4).  Ronald Isley takes on the song here in a supremely soulful rendition from his 2003 Isley Meets Bacharach.  Just a few years earlier, Bacharach had teamed with Elvis Costello for the song “God Give Me Strength,” written for Allison Anders’ film Grace of My Heart.  The song’s success led to a full-blown album collaboration, Painted from Memory, which remains one of the strongest sets of songs in either man’s considerable oeuvre.   From its opening horn salvo, “God Give Me Strength” announced a return to classic form for Bacharach after his successful detour into modern pop in the 1980s (“On My Own,” “That’s What Friends Are For,” “Arthur’s Theme”).  It shares the signature Bacharach sound that’s highlighted on each of the older tracks here.

Hit the jump for much more on Music by Bacharach, including an order link and the full track listing with discography!

Dionne Warwick “Playlist” Includes CD Debut of Isaac Hayes Duet

A couple of weeks back, Mike filled you in on the track listings for Sony’s upcoming slate of Playlist releases.  This eclectic bunch – including Muddy Waters, Dave Brubeck, Janis Ian and the Psychedelic Furs – hits stores next week on May 10.  Only one title’s track listing proved elusive, and now we can reveal that, too.  Most happily, it’s worth the wait.  Playlist: The Very Best of Dionne Warwick is, like many of the titles, an odd collection.  It’s not a “greatest hits” but more a random selection of key tracks and under-the-radar favorites.  And though Sony controls Warwick’s Arista catalogue, tracks have been licensed to make this more than just another “Dionne in the 1980s” compilation.

Warwick’s Playlist boasts one new-to-CD song, and it’s a keeper, the nearly 8-minute duet between Warwick and Isaac Hayes on two Burt Bacharach and Hal David classics, “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” and “Walk On By.”  Taken from the 1977 ABC Records live release A Man and A Woman, this long-unheard epic track finds Hayes and Warwick melding their distinct (and very different!) renditions of the songs into one harmonious whole.  Kudos to Playlist for going the extra mile to license this track.  Now, would a reissue of the entire album be too much to ask…?  (If you like what you hear, the Warwick/Hayes duet of “By The Time I Get to Phoenix/I Say a Little Prayer” made an appearance on CD via the 2005 Stax compilation Ultimate Isaac Hayes: Can You Dig It?. )

Other duets appear, as well.   The Thom Bell-produced Philly soul chart-topper “Then Came You,” with The Spinners, makes an appearance, licensed from Warner Bros., while The Shirelles reprise “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” with their former Scepter labelmate.  Smokey Robinson turns up on 1987’s “You’re My Hero,” and of course, “That’s What Friends Are For” is present, with Dionne singing alongside Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder.

The lone Scepter-era track is “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” not the Elton John song but rather a bossa nova-flavored Bacharach and David original from 1966’s LP Here I Am.  Two songs from 1980’s No Night So Long, only recently reissued in a wide release as an import, take a place on Playlist, though not the hit title track.  Three songs have been selected from Warwick’s 1979 Arista debut Dionne, including “Deja Vu,” written by Isaac Hayes and album producer Barry Manilow’s frequent lyricist Adrienne Anderson, and the radio staple “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.”  The Bee Gees-penned hit “Heartbreaker” has also been included, from the album of the same name.

Hit the jump for the full track listing with discography!

Back Tracks: The Shirelles on Scepter

Diana Ross, Martha Reeves and Mary Weiss – and even Joan Jett, Victoria Beckham and Nicole Scherzinger – all owe a debt to Shirley Owens, Doris Coley, Addie Harris and Beverly Lee. That quartet doesn’t have the name recognition of those that followed them, but those four young women from Passaic, New Jersey ignited the girl group phenomenon when they joined forces as The Poquellos, soon to be renamed The Shirelles. Were The Shirelles the first girl group? Probably not. Were they the first to gain national prominence? Unquestionably.

The first major female group of the rock and roll era, The Shirelles claimed the first girl group No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Discovered in New Jersey by Florence Greenberg’s daughter Mary Jane, the group laid the cornerstone for Greenberg’s Scepter Records empire – later home to Dionne Warwick, B.J. Thomas, Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, Ronnie Milsap and The Kingsmen – and paved the way for the Motown revolution with their blend of uptown soul, pop, and street corner harmonies. This potent combination, of course, found them “crossing over” to the predominantly white audience and quietly breaking down barriers of gender and race with an intoxicating series of pop songs from some of the greatest songwriters of all time. Yet The Shirelles have unaccountably been overlooked as the years have passed despite induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The songs written for them by Luther Dixon, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David and others have endured, but the voices behind the songs have receded into the background.

The new Broadway musical Baby, It’s You!, named after the 1962 hit penned by Bacharach, Mack David and Barney Williams (actually Dixon, writing under his brother-in-law’s name), redresses this, giving The Shirelles some overdue attention. The Floyd Mutrux/Colin Escott musical (readers here may recognize Escott’s name from the innumerable CD liner notes he has penned) utilizes the Shirelles’ deep back catalogue and that of other period artists to illustrate the dramatic dual stories of Greenberg’s founding of Scepter Records and The Shirelles’ rise and fall. It may have taken fifty-odd years, but The Shirelles are back on Broadway, where their career began at Greenberg’s 1650 Broadway offices just seven blocks away from the musical’s home at the Broadhurst Theatre. Only Shirley Owens (now Shirley Alston-Reeves) and Beverly Lee are still alive to enjoy the accolades, but in celebration of the remarkable body of work recorded by The Shirelles, we offer today’s Back Tracks.

The Shirelles’ catalogue hasn’t been particularly well-served on CD, other than by numerous compilations. Sundazed reissued a small handful of the original albums almost twenty years ago as straight reissues with no bonus tracks; Ace has improved on these editions with a copiously-annotated series of two-on-one CDs containing bonuses where possible, and utilizing stereo mixes where they exist. Ace’s four-volume series now has collected the entire eight-album Scepter output of The Shirelles.

Whether you’ve seen the musical and are looking to find your favorite songs on CD, or you’re a longtime fan of the group hoping to fill some gaps in your collection, have we got a musical tour for you! Hit the jump to begin with 1960’s Tonight’s The Night. We’ll go through 1967’s Spontaneous Combustion and then take a detour to all of the key anthologies and rarities discs!