Girl Groups In The 1960s

The conventional wisdom is that rock and roll "died" between 1959 and 1964 - roughly the period between Buddy Holly's plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa and the Beatles' more upbeat arrival at JFK airport. In this scenario, The Day The Music Died is only the beginning, as Elvis enters the Army, Chuck Berry goes to jail, Jerry Lee Lewis is ruined, and Little Richard leaves the stage for the church.
By the late 1950s, a number of female vocal groups began to produce songs. The groups were 2-3 women one sang a lead part while the others sang a background vocal. This was the birth of "girl groups". This sound was the trend for the early 1960s. Girl groups remained on the Billboard pop charts in 1962 to 1965 but, by 1965 the popularity of this
The system just wasn’t open to women.” Many of the groups' careers only lasted until they were not longer able to hit the Billboard Top Forty and when that didn’t happen the group just faded away, to be replace by the next latest and greatest group. For this reason, few groups were able to stay on top for more than two or three years. A large portion of the media at the time ignored them. Some of the teen magazines and television variety shows that helped the male performers all but ignored the girl groups, limiting the amount of exposure they received. Most of the best known girl groups were black.. Some of the white groups and singers like the Shangri-las and Lesley Gore, had their photos plastered everywhere. Fewer of the black groups and singers enjoyed the same privilege.
Racism was prevalent within the music industry and it ensured that these groups would have very limited shelf life. Because media coverage of the groups was scarce, the girl groups had to rely solely on their songs to maintain their popularity. Once the public's interest diminished, the producer would abandon the group and move on to another “project”, this abandonment usually signaled the end of the group's