At least you\u2019re all \u201cstill alive and kicking,\u201d as the Toys\u2019 (\u201cA Lover\u2019s Concerto\u201d) lead singer Barbara Harris said, calling out her other two originals Barbara Parritt and June Montiero to take a bow from the audience. Harris led off Sunday night\u2019s Girl Group Sound Spectacular Show at B.B. King\u2019s, consisting of many of New York\u2019s great girl group singers from the 1960s.<\/p>\n
![\"THE-TOYS\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/THE-TOYS.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
It was a big crowd full of bald heads and a few Brill Building \u201crelics,\u201d as one relic\u2014Tuff City Records\u2019 head Aaron Fuchs\u2014put it to another such relic. Some might actually have been older than the second relic, though he wasn\u2019t about to ask. Then again, Louise Murray of the Jaynetts (\u201cSally Go \u2019Round The Roses\u201d) volunteered her age (74!), as did 71-year-old Margaret Ross-Williams of the Cookies (“Chains”), who said she and absent Cookie Earl-Jean McCrea were still \u201changing in there for [surviving] the Cookies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Incredibly, both Murray and Ross-Williams looked and sounded great\u2014as did most everyone else (Baby Washington, the Raindrops\u2019 Beverly Warren, the Exciters\u2019 Lillian Walker-Moss, Maxine Brown, Reparata and the Delrons\u2019 Nanette Licari, and Toni Wine) on the bill. They also moved great for any age, as Brown, who looked especially stunning, had them all showing off youthful dance moves at the end of her closing set.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s set, by the way, was topped by her big hit “Oh No, Not My Baby,\u201d by the then budding Brill Building team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Another Goffin-King hit came with the Cookies\u2019 classic \u201cChains,\u201d while Brill Building relic Toni Wine, also a noteworthy backup singer for the likes of Gene Pitney and Tony Orlando, stood out in accompanying herself on a slow electric piano version of \u201cA Groovy Kind Of Love,\u201d her hit composition for the Mindbenders.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/The-Exciters_album.jpg\")
One of the greatest girl group songs ever came from the Brill Building team of Jeff Barry and the late Ellie Greenwich, who wrote\u2014and as the Raindrops, sang\u2014\u201cThe Kind Of Boy You Can\u2019t Forget.\u201d Beverly Warren, who sang with the group, dedicated it to Greenwich and her sister Laura Greenwich, who also sang with them and was in the house.<\/p>\n
But while most of the artists were known for one signature hit, none of them were really \u201cone-hit wonders.\u201d As opener Harris pointed out, the Toys, for whom it was written, cut \u201cCan\u2019t Get Enough Of You Baby\u201d before Question Mark & the Mysterians had the better-known hit with it. Likewise, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,\u201d which the Exciters cut after their signature hit \u201cTell Him\u201d and just ahead of its hitmaker Manfred Mann; both sounded great in Walker-Moss\u2019 performance at B.B.\u2019s., same with Baby Washington\u2019s \u201cThe Time\u201d and \u201cI Can\u2019t Wait Until I See My Baby\u2019s Face\u201d: the former Heart performed both in addition to her big solo hit \u201cThat\u2019s How Heartaches Are Made.\u201d<\/p>\n
And speaking of the Hearts, Murray was an original member of the group, said to be perhaps the first girl group. Long and lovely, she sang its 1955 hit \u201cLonely Nights\u201d as well as her Jaynetts\u2019 masterpiece \u201cSally Go \u2019Round The Roses\u201d\u2014and was also quite the sight clutching two bouquets of floral gifts in addition to her microphone.<\/p>\n
Quite the sight, too, was a bald man in the back, as Licari sang her Reparata and the Delrons hit \u201cWhenever A Teenager Cries.\u201d Borrowing from \u201cSally Go \u2019Round The Roses,\u201d it\u2019s the \u201csaddest thing in the whole wide world\u201d whenever a sexagenarian cries, as he most certainly was, though in his case, presumably over the joy of still being alive to listen to these living legends.<\/p>\n
Jim Bessman<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GIRL GROUPS Still Alive and Kicking The problem with going to an oldies show is that not only do you see how old the oldies artists are, you also see how old their audience is, which, of course, you yourself are a part of. At least you\u2019re all \u201cstill alive and kicking,\u201d as the Toys\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976],"tags":[7223,5334,7214,5736,7215,7226,7222,7225,7217,7218,7224,7220,7219,7216,7221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10976"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10980,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10976\/revisions\/10980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}