The Andrews Sisters
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 Sophia Andrews (1911–1967), soprano Maxene Anglyn Andrews (1916–1995), and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie Andrews (1918–2013).[1] The sisters have sold an estimated 80 million records.[2] Their 1941 hit "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" can be considered an early example of jump blues. Other songs closely associated with the Andrews Sisters include their first major hit, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Means That You're Grand)" (1937), "Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel)" (1939), "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" (1940), "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)" (1942), and "Rum and Coca-Cola" (1945), which helped introduce American audiences to calypso.
The Andrews Sisters
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
1925–1967
LaVerne Andrews
Maxene Andrews
Patty Andrews
The Andrews Sisters' harmonies and songs are still influential today and have been copied and recorded by entertainers such as Patti Page, Bette Midler, Christina Aguilera, Pentatonix, and others. The group was among the inaugural inductees to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame upon its opening in 1998.[3] Writing for Bloomberg, Mark Schoifet said the sisters became the most popular female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century.[4] They are still widely acclaimed today for their famous close harmonies. They were inducted into the Minnesota Rock/Country Hall of Fame in May 2006.
Early life[edit]
The sisters were born to Olga "Ollie" (née Sollie) and Peter Andreas. Peter Andreas (later "Andrews") was Greek and his wife was of Norwegian ancestry raised in the Lutheran faith. The Sollie family disapproved of Olga's marriage, but the relationship was repaired once their first child, LaVerne, was born July 6, 1911. Their second daughter, Anglyn, died at eight months of age on March 16, 1914. Maxene arrived on January 3, 1916, and Patty was born February 16, 1918.
Patty, the lead singer of the group, was 7 when the trio was formed, and 12 when they won first prize at a talent contest at the local Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, where LaVerne played piano accompaniment for the silent film showings in exchange for dancing lessons for her and her sisters. Following the collapse of their father's Minneapolis restaurant, the sisters went on the road to support the family.[5] All three attended Franklin Junior High School and North High School, both in Minneapolis.[6]
Career[edit]
History[edit]
They started their career as imitators of an earlier successful singing group, the Boswell Sisters, who were popular in the 1930s.[7] After singing with various dance bands and touring in vaudeville with Leon Belasco (and his orchestra)[8] 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, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" (translation: "To Me, You Are Beautiful"),[9] originally a Yiddish tune, the lyrics of which Sammy Cahn had translated to English and "which the girls harmonized to perfection."[10] They followed this success with a string of best-selling records over the next two years and, by the 1940s, had become a household name.[11]
Instrumental to the sisters' success over the years were their parents, Olga and Peter, their orchestra leader and musical arranger, Vic Schoen (1916–2000), and Jack and David Kapp, who founded Decca Records.
Marriages, family, and deaths[edit]
LaVerne Andrews married Lou Rogers,[24] a trumpet player in Vic Schoen's band, in 1948. The two remained together until LaVerne's death from liver cancer on May 8, 1967, at the age of 55. Lou died in 1995.[39]
Maxene Andrews married music publisher Lou Levy in 1941, separating in 1949. They adopted a girl and a boy, Aleda Ann and Peter.[40] Levy was the sisters' manager from 1937 to 1951. Later in life, according to her adopted daughter, Maxene entered a thirteen-year relationship with her manager Lynda Wells and they later spent many years as life partners. "To me, being gay was not a central focus of Maxene's life at all," Wells told radio station The Current (KCMP) in a 2019 interview.[41] "Her art was. Her singing was." But Wells says that their status as companions, and Maxene's health issues as she got older, led Maxene to adopt her as a daughter. "There was no such thing as being married at that time," she said. "During her lifetime, there was no such thing that existed for us."[41] Maxene died October 21, 1995, at age 79. The ashes of LaVerne and Maxene Andrews are interred in the Columbarium of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California,[29] close to the ashes of their parents.
Patty Andrews married agent Marty Melcher in 1947 but left him in 1949, when he pursued a romantic relationship with Doris Day. She then married Walter Weschler, the trio's pianist, in 1951. Patty died of natural causes at her home in Northridge, California, on January 30, 2013, at the age of 94. Weschler, her husband of nearly 60 years, had died on August 28, 2010, at the age of 88.[5][42]
Joyce DeYoung Murray, who replaced LaVerne from late 1966 to 1968, died in March 2014 at the age of 87.[43]
Legacy[edit]
The Andrews Sisters were the most imitated of all female singing groups and influenced many artists, including Mel Tormé, Les Paul and Mary Ford, the Four Freshmen, the Supremes, the Beach Boys, the McGuire Sisters, the Lennon Sisters, the Pointer Sisters, the Manhattan Transfer, Barry Manilow, and Bette Midler. Their style was even emulated internationally; the Harmony Sisters, a popular Finland group that performed from the 1930s to the 1950s, was one such example.[44]
Most of the Andrews Sisters' music has been restored and released in compact disc form. Over 300 of their original Decca recordings, a good portion of which was hit material, has yet to be released by MCA/Decca. Many of their Decca recordings have been used in such television shows and Hollywood movies as Homefront, ER, Agent Carter, The Brink's Job, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Swing Shift, Raggedy Man, Summer of '42, Slaughterhouse-Five, Maria's Lovers, Harlem Nights, In Dreams, Murder in the First, L.A. Confidential,
American Horror Story, Just Shoot Me, Gilmore Girls, Mama's Family, War and Remembrance, Jakob the Liar, Lolita, The Polar Express, The Chronicles of Narnia, Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!). Comical references to the trio in television sitcoms can be found as early as I Love Lucy and as recently as Everybody Loves Raymond. In 2007, their version of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" was included in the game BioShock, a first-person shooter that takes place in an alternate history 1960, and later in 2008, their song "Civilization" (with Danny Kaye) was included in the Atomic Age-inspired video game Fallout 3. The 2010 video game Mafia II features numerous Andrews Sisters songs, with "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", "Strip Polka" and "Rum and Coca-Cola". The 2011 video game L.A. Noire features the song "Pistol Packin' Mama", where the sisters perform a duet with Bing Crosby.[45] The sisters were again featured in a Fallout game in 2015, when their songs "Pistol Packin' Mama" and "Civilization" were featured in the game Fallout 4.
Christina Aguilera used the Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" to inspire her song "Candyman" (released as a single in 2007) from her hit album Back to Basics. The song was co-written by Linda Perry. The London-based trio the Puppini Sisters uses their style harmonies on several Andrews Sisters and other hits of the 1940s and 1950s as well as later rock and disco hits. The trio has said their name is a tribute to The Andrews Sisters. The National WW2 Museum's Victory Belles are proud to pay tribute to the Andrews Sisters performing their music daily in the Stage Door Canteen in New Orleans. The Manhattan Dolls, a New York City-based touring group, performs both the popular tunes sung by the Andrews Sisters and some of the more obscure tunes such as "Well Alright" and "South American Way".[46][47]
In 2008 and 2009, the BBC produced The Andrews Sisters: Queens of the Music Machines, a one-hour documentary on the history of the Andrews Sisters from their upbringing to the present. The North American premiere of the show was June 21, 2009, in their summer vacation enclave of Mound, Minnesota. In 2008, Mound dedicated "The Andrews Sisters Trail". The sisters spent summers in Mound[1] with their uncles Pete and Ed Solie, who had a grocery store there. Maxene Andrews always said that the summers in Mound created a major sense of "normalcy" and "a wonderful childhood" in a life that otherwise centered on the sisters' careers. The Westonka Historical Society has a large collection of Andrews Sisters memorabilia.[48]
Filmography[edit]
Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne appeared in 17 Hollywood films. Their first picture, Argentine Nights, paired them with another enthusiastic trio, the Ritz Brothers.[49] Universal Pictures, always budget-conscious, refused to hire a choreographer, so the Ritzes taught the sisters some eccentric steps. Thus, in Argentine Nights and the sisters' next film, Buck Privates, the Andrews Sisters dance like the Ritz Brothers.
Buck Privates, with Abbott and Costello, featured the Andrews Sisters' best-known song, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."[50] This Don Raye-Hughie Prince composition was nominated for Best Song at the 1941 Academy Awards ceremony.[51]
Universal hired the sisters for two more Abbott and Costello comedies and then promoted them to full-fledged stardom in B musicals. What's Cookin'?, Private Buckaroo, Give Out, Sisters (in which they disguise themselves as old women as part of the zany plot) and Moonlight and Cactus were among the team's popular full-length films.[52]
The Andrews Sisters sing the title song as the opening credits roll and also perform two specialty numbers in the all-star revue Hollywood Canteen (1944). They can be seen singing "You Don't Have to Know the Language" with Bing Crosby in Paramount's Road to Rio with Bob Hope, that year's highest-grossing movie. Their singing voices are heard in two full-length Walt Disney features: "Make Mine Music",[53] in a segment which featured animated characters Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet; and "Melody Time", in the segment Little Toot (both of which are available on DVD today).
Stage and radio shows[edit]
The Andrews Sisters were the most sought-after singers in theater shows worldwide during the 1940s and early 1950s, always topping previous house averages.[54][55][56] The trio headlined at the London Palladium in 1948[57] and 1951.[58] They hosted their own radio shows for ABC and CBS from 1944 to 1951,[59] singing specially written commercial jingles for such products as Wrigley's chewing gum,[60] Dole pineapples,[61] Nash motor cars, Kelvinator home appliances,[62] Campbell's soups, and Franco-American food products.[63] The western-themed "The Andrews Sisters' Show" (subtitled "Eight-to-the-Bar Ranch"), co-hosted by Gabby Hayes, began in 1944 and featured a special guest every week.[64]
They recorded 47 songs with crooner Bing Crosby, 23 of which charted on Billboard, thus making the team one of the most successful pairings of acts in a recording studio in show business history. Their million-sellers with Crosby included "Pistol Packin' Mama",[65] "Don't Fence Me In",[34] "South America, Take It Away", and "Jingle Bells".[66]
The sisters' popularity was such that after the war they discovered that some of their records had actually been smuggled into Germany after the labels had been changed to read "Hitler's Marching Songs". Their recording of Bei Mir Bist Du Schön became a favorite of the Nazis, until it was discovered that the song's composers were of Jewish descent. Still, it did not stop concentration camp inmates from secretly singing it, this being most likely since the song was originally a Yiddish song "Bei Mir Bistu Shein", and had been popularized within the Jewish community before it was recorded as a more successful "cover" version by the Andrews sisters.[67]
Edward Habib in the CD program notes for Songs That Won the War Vol. 2 The Hollywood Canteen states that the Andrews Sisters' radio transcription of Elmer's Tune was "so popular it even played on German radio," noting that "the opposition embraced the Andrews Sisters and their songs in the same way the Allied Forces adopted Lili Marlene."
Along with Bing Crosby, separately and jointly, The Andrews Sisters were among the performers who incorporated ethnic music styles into America's Hit Parade, popularizing or enhancing the popularity of songs with melodies originating in Brazil, Czechoslovakia, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Trinidad, many of which their manager chose for them.[68][69]
The Andrews Sisters became the most popular female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century.[70]
Early comparative female close harmony trios were the Boswell Sisters, the Pickens Sisters, and the Three X Sisters.