The Bobbettes

by Erika Cox

The Bobbettes were another girl group popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s and the first female group to have both a number one song on the R&B charts and a Top Ten song on the Pop charts.

The Bobbettes were one of the youngest female groups with ages of the members ranging from nine to eleven. All of the members grew up in Harlem and attended the same school.

They would practice singing at one of their school’s club activities. At first it was eight of them and they called themselves the Harlem Queens, eventually the group became a quintet.

Like many teen groups in New York trying to start out in the music business, the Bobbettes decided to perform at the Apollo Theater’s amateur night.

Although, they never won any of the contests on the amateur show they gained recognition as a group and their popularity grew around the city.

Their new manager, James Dailey, didn’t like the name Harlem Queens, feeling it was inappropriate for the age of the members, so he changed the name to the Bobbettes.

Noticeably, most of the girl groups had similar sounding names, almost rhythming with each other’s name; the Ronettes and the Bobbettes, the Shirelles and the Chantels, get the point.

Nevertheless, whatever the reason the strategy (or maybe it was purely incidental) worked, each group became a success not because of the similarity in their names but because of their talent. In 1957, Dailey got them a contract with Atlantic Records and the group started recording and writing songs.

One of their songs “Mr. Lee” was about a teacher many of the members had in school, at first the lyrics were not the nicest since the members did not like the teacher, however, once the song was released the lyrics changed to something more flattering.

Released in 1957, the song made it all the way to the Top Ten of the Pop and R&B charts. It’s a good thing the producers changed the lyrics of the song as popular as the song had become there could have been some potential negative feedback.

The group’s only Top Ten and number one song was “Mr. Lee”. They would go on to record a few more songs between 1957 and 1959 but all failed to make any noise and didn’t even make the Top 100.

The girls were too young to perform in any clubs at the time, girls, unlike boy groups, couldn’t perform in clubs under a certain age. So, the group performed during the day and as background singers for a number of artists.

Ultimately, the group left Atlantic after failing to make it back to the top of the charts. They signed with Triple X, and released a new version of their song “Mr. Lee” called “I shot Mr. Lee”, which showed their true feelings about the teacher, the single made it to the top of the charts.

However, the group had recorded this version with Atlantic but it was not released. This incident led the music industry to include the five-year clause in artists’ contracts, which means an artist cannot record the same song for another company for a minimum of five years.

Signing with a number of different record labels, the group went on to record songs that reached the Top 100, but never becoming big hits.

The Bobbettes continued to perform together throughout the 1970’s oldies revival in American and England and still perform together today.

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