I grew up listening to The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Supremes, and The Vandellas, and many more Girl Groups in the early 1960s. I loved songs like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Then He Kissed Me,” and “Be My Baby” and celebrated when those songs made it to Number One on the BILLBOARD charts.
As Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz describe this musical era, the story of the Girl Group Sound was also a tale of race and power. The women singers, most of whom were Black and many of whom were only teenagers when their first songs were recorded, were cultivated, packaged, and marketed by a music industry that eventually cut them out of the lion’s share of their profits.
Although many of the Girl Groups would tour with Civil Rights leaders and performed at some of the earliest desegregated concerts, many of the singers found themselves cast aside by the record companies as trends shifted in favor of the largely white British Invasion bands of the mid to late ’60s.
While over Time the voices of the Girl Group Sound have become essential to the American musical canon, many of the singers remain all but anonymous to most listeners. Weaving together over 300 hours of interviews across more than 90 singers and music industry insiders, But Will You Love Me Tomorrow: An Oral History of the ’60s Girl Groups gives voice to the many women of the era who have long been consigned to silence.
But Will You Love Me Tomorrow captures a time when young girls found a brief moment in music history when artistic success was possible. The tales of their struggles and of the inequity faced by these women at that time make a compelling story. Do you have a favorite Girl Groups? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION — xi
The beginnings of the girl group sound: the 1950s — 1
The sound on the street: 1960-1963 –73
Hitsville USA, 1960-1963 — 137
Topping the charts: 1963-1964 — 175
Motown becomes the sound of young America: 1964-1966 — 235
The end of an era: 1965-1970 — 261
Motown outgrows Detroit: 1967-present — 303
Coming back together and saying goodbye: 1970-present — 353
Acknowledgements — 415
Bibliography — 417
Index — 423