Day 29: Girl Group

The Cookies
The Complete Cookies

Though a number of solo singers charted highly at the time, the Brill Building era was undeniably the era of the girl group. The note-perfect pop songs of Barry and Greenwich, Mann and Weil, and Goffin and King, and the parlor-symphony productions of Phil Spector found no better collective voice than that of the girl group. Even a cursory search of the Billboard charts from the early 60s turns up a smattering of hits by the Shirelles, the Ronettes, the Chiffons, the Shangri-Las, and the Dixie Cups, to name just a handful of these acts. In addition to the many girl groups that hit it big, many others recorded handfuls of wonderful sides that, for whatever reason--bad luck, bad timing, lack of promotion--never became radio mainstays. In 2005, Rhino Records brought many of these records to the public's attention with it's stellar box set One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found.

This writer's vote for best overlooked girl group goes to the Cookies--specifically, their second incarnation. The initial lineup recorded in the 50s and eventually became Ray Charles' backing group, the Raelettes. Later, in 1962, a revised version of the Cookies emerged retaining Earl-Jean McCrea as the sole holdover from the original group. That second lineup started singing backup for such Brill Building mainstays as Neil Sedaka and Tony Orlanda and recorded under its own name for Dimension Records, the label founded in 1962 by Don Kirshner, co-founder of the successful publishing company Aldon Music. Aldon was home to many of the greatest songwriting teams in Brill Building history, in particular, Sedaka and Greenfield, Mann and Weil, and Goffin and King, the team that provided most of the material for Dimension recording artists. Released alongside solo recordings by Carole King and Little Eva, the Cookies records achieved only modest success, though a number of the songs they performed were among Goffin's and King's finest. The Cookies biggest hit was "Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby," which charted at number seven in early 1963, but the song that cemented their place in pop history is undeniably "Chains," if only because it was later recorded by the Beatles. Still, their best song was neither of the two, but rather, "I Never Dreamed," an utterly gorgeous mid-tempo ballad with lush harmonies that provide ecstatic release when they eventually border on classical counterpoint.

Sadly, The Complete Cookies has gone out of print. Serendipitously, Rhino decided to include "I Never Dreamed" on its aforementioned girl group box set.

To hear the song "Chains," click here.