Today we are really travelling back in time. Looking through YouTube you will find that many modern groups will cover songs orginally made famous by the Andrews Sisters, so today we shall clebrate the originals. The Andrews Sisters were an American close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne, soprano Maxene, and mezzo-soprano Patty.
They started their career as imitators of an earlier successful singing group, the Boswell Sisters, who were popular in the 1930s. After singing with various dance bands and touring in vaudeville with Leon Belasco (and his orchestra) and comic bandleader Larry Rich, they first came to national attention with their recordings and radio broadcasts in 1937, most notably via their major Decca record hit, “Bir Mir Bist Du Schon”.
In the years just before and during World War II, the Andrews Sisters were at the height of their popularity, and the group still tends to be associated in the public’s mind with the war years. They had numerous hit records during these years, both on their own and in collaboration with Bing Crosby. Some of these hits had service or military related themes, including “Boogie Wogie Bugle Boy”, “Three Little Sisters”, “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree”, and “Rum and Coca Cola”. The sisters performed their hits in service comedy films like Buck Privates and Private Buckaroo.
During the war, they entertained the Allied forces extensively in Africa, and Italy, as well as in the U.S., visiting military bases, war zones, hospitals, and munitions factories. While touring, they often treated three random servicemen to dinner when they were dining out. The sisters’ 1945 hit “Rum and Coca Cola” became one of their most popular and best-known recordings, but also inspired some controversy. Some radio stations were reluctant to play the record because it mentioned a commercial product by name, and because the lyrics were subtly suggestive of local women prostituting themselves to U.S. servicemen serving at the then naval base on Trinidad. The song was based on a Trinidadian calypso, and a dispute over its provenance led to a well-publicized court case. The sisters later told biographers that they were asked to record the tune on short notice and were unaware either of the copyright issue or of the implications of the lyrics.
In the 1950s, Patty Andrews decided to break away from the act to be a soloist. Maxene and LaVerne tried to continue the act as a duo and met with good press during a 10-day tour of Australia, but a reported suicide attempt by Maxene in December 1954 put a halt to any further tours. The trio reunited in 1956 and signed a new recording deal with Capitol Records, for whom Patty was already a featured soloist. By this point however, rock-and-roll and doo-wop were dominating the charts and older artists were left by the wayside. The sisters recorded a dozen singles through 1959, some of which attempted to keep up with the times by incorporating rock sounds. None of these achieved any major success.
In addition, they produced three albums, including a vibrant LP of songs from the dancing 1920s with Billy May’s orchestra. In 1962, they signed with Dot Records and recorded a series of stereo albums until 1967, both re-recordings of earlier hits which incorporated up-to-date production techniques, as well as new material.
