ABSTRACT
While the Chantels were studying Palestrina motets and harmonizing on the basketball bench and the Bobbettes were hollering and shouting their way into the Apollo Theater, that hallowed sanctum of R&B, a quartet of seventeen-year-old African American girls in suburban Passaic, New Jersey, was experimenting with voice parts and doo wop vocables in an effort to create a group sound. The Shirelles, as they came to be known, were inseparable friends who entertained their classmates with renditions of popular doo wop songs at school talent shows and local dances. A school friend convinced them to audition for her mother, Florence Greenberg, who ran a small record label called Tiara and would later be a record producer and owner of Scepter Records. 1 The Shirelles performed their own composition, “I Met Him On a Sunday,” in Greenberg’s living room, impressing her enough to sign them to her label and take them into the studio to record the piece. The song entered the pop charts in 1958, reaching a modest #49. Minimal instrumentation of drum kit, bass, and a single muted horn was added to handclaps, finger snapping, and singing, and its “do-it-yourself” aesthetic was an important part of its appeal.
