The Shirelles

by Erika Cox

The Shirelles were one of the most popular and long lasting of the girl groups. The group consisted of sixteen and seventeen year old females that grew up in Passaic, New Jersey and attended Passaic High School. The Shirelles were Shirley Owens born June 10, 1941, Addie “Micki" Harris born January 22, 1940, Beverly Lee born August 3, 1942 and Doris Coley born August 2, 1941.

Owens with her distinctive and strong voice was the lead singer. Similar to the Chantels, the group would often get together and sing during and after school. Also, like the Chantels, the group wrote their own songs unlike many other girl groups. One day a teacher heard them singing and recommended that they sign up for talent shows and focus more on promoting their group.

Taking the teacher’s advice, the group got together and wrote a song for an upcoming talent show, the name of the song was “I Met Him on a Sunday”. They sang this song a capella style at one of the talent shows and won over the audience.

Seeing their performance, a friend of the group wanted to introduce them to her mother, Florence Greenberg, who owned Tiara Records but the group wasn’t interested and decided against it.

However, the friend, Mary Greenberg, wouldn’t give up she knew the girls had talent and at the time, their style of singing was becoming very popular. She knew the group had what it took to become famous like the Chantels, so she continued to suggest that they audition for her mother. Finally, the group decided to go ahead and give it a try. They met in Greenberg’s living room and sang “I Met Him On a Sunday”, Greenberg loved what she heard and rushed the girls into the studio to record that song and another one called “I want to you to be my Boyfriend”.

At the time, the group was going by the name Poquellos when Greenberg decided the girls needed a different name, a catchier one, so she combined Shirley’s name with the Chantels and came up with the Shirelles. In March 1958, the song “I met him on a Sunday” was released and did fairly well on the charts.

It did well enough that Decca Records became interested in the group and signed them to a contract. Shortly after, the group was booked to perform at the famous Apollo Theater and Dick Clark’s famous show. From there, the group started touring around the chitlin circuit. However, like most girl groups (if not all) the Shirelles were dropped immediately by Decca when two follow up singles failed to reach the charts.

The Shirelles got back on track in 1959, when they signed with Sceptor Records after a producer so their performances at a couple of shows.

The group would record a number of songs including a remake of the 5 Royals song, “Dedicated to the One I Love”, which reached the charts but was not the big hit. They released a few more songs, changing the leads between Doris and Shirley, some of the songs did okay but others failed to make much noise.

In April 1960, they recorded “Tonight’s the Night”, which did pretty well on the charts, but the group was desperately looking for that big hit. Songwriters, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, gave the group’s manager a song they had written called “Tomorrow”, however, the girls didn’t like it and had to be persuaded by their manager to record it. When it was released in 1960, the title of the song had changed to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and had more of an up tempo beat and an stimulating string arrangement way ahead of it’s time.

The song would become the big hit the group was looking for, it reached number one on the Pop and R&B charts in two weeks. The group became the first black female group to hit number one. The success of this song allowed “Dedicated to the One I Love” and Tonight’s the Night” to become successes also after being reissued. All three songs went gold and hit the Top Ten on the charts.

The group started touring with big name artists like Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Drifters, and Neil Sedaka. Their popularity soared, and along with Owens’s voice maturing and becoming even more distinctive, the group became a huge success. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to write a song for the Shirelles and most of the songs made it to the Pop and R&B charts, more than twenty times in their career.

The group continued going despite temporary changes in their line-up, some members of the groups got married and during their brief hiatus, Dionne Warwick would fill in as a substitute for the absent members. The Shirelles continued to make songs until the mid-60’s when the British Invasion happened and like many groups, their career suddenly came to a halt. During the 1970’s, after Doris left the group they revamped and continued to record and perform, however, Doris eventually returned with the group to perform.

In June 1982, Miki Harris died of a heart attack while performing with the group. The group continues to perform with different members but with at least one of the original members. The Shirelles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

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